Panicked by the polls, the SNP is frantically swatting at British Labour hoping to inflict enough damage to turn things around. They have a point, of course. British Labour is just as dishonest and hypocritical as the SNP claims. But British Labour bad does not in any way imply SNP good. Although this is how the SNP hopes it will be perceived. I can’t see it working.
Think about it! Think of all the Starmer U-turns and petty scandals and support for Israel and the rest. Bear in mind that British Labour in Scotland (BLiS) is challenging the SNP in the polls despite all the negatives. A careless remark from Wes Streeting is hardly going to do what endorsement of baby-killers hasn’t. The interesting question here is why British Labour seems to be unaffected by the negatives that must be evident to all but the willfully blinkered.
Disinterest and disengagement play a part, I’m sure. Apathetic people don’t read the news. And if they do, they are unmoved by it. They shrug it off as business-as-usual in the world of politics. The electorate is best thought of as a dumb beast. However intelligent and aware individual voters may be, when they are all lumped together, intelligence and awareness tend towards the bottom of the scale for the simple reason that it is far easier to reduce these things than increase them.
People don’t vote what they know, anyway. They vote what they feel. As individuals, voters may look at specifics and be pleased and supportive or angry and opposed. The electorate, however, goes by general impressions. Its choices are based on a blurry overview, not detailed information.
In terms of general impressions, British Labour has two things going for it. It is the ‘other’ party. And it looks like a winner. The first plays on the notion has been instilled in the electorate that the solution to all ills being laid at the door of one establishment party is vote for the other establishement party. The second stems from the fact that voters have to be convinced the other can win before they will switch. The more an individual politician or party looks like a winner, the better they are they are able to take advantage of being the other party.
The SNP meanwhile is managing the remarkable feat of being all but certain to win (most seats) yet still look like losers. And the ‘other party’ factor which plays such a crucial role in the British political system, doesn’t operate to the same extent in Scotland. To the extent that it does operate in Scotland, it has ceased to work in the SNP’s favour.
Somewhere in that fat catalogue of the party’s mistakes there’s a listing for trying to be the other relative to one or other of the British establishment parties. Mainly the Tories, for obvious reasons. But the SNP leadership has belatedly (as always) realised that the real electoral threat this year is BLiS, piggy-backing on its parent party’s success in being the other and looking like a winner. Hence, they’re pouncing on things like Wes Streeting’s gaffe.
Most of the SNP’s electoral success to date – remarkable as it has often been – is attributable to the fact that they were the other relative to the British parties in Scotland as a whole. In the simple mind of the electorate, the SNP was distinctive both for being the ‘party of independence’ and by being the ‘party of quietly competent government’. Neither of these as now applicable. The party leadership had a winning formula, and contrived to shred it.
The SNP is now the establishment party relative to which Alba seeks to be the other. That Alba is failing in this effort is a fact borne out by the polls. Frankly, I find it surprising that Alex Salmond’s party has convinced as many voters as it has of its ‘other’ status. More perceptive individuals recognise that Alba has not made itself distinctive enough to be regarded as the other party. That it has so ignominiously failed in what should have been an easy task is entirely down to the choices made by Alba’s leadership. If my sources are a true indication, there’s a lot of very unhappy bunnies among the members.
So, here we have arguably the two main electoral options for pro-independence voters, and neither of them looks like a good choice. Because they aren’t. Not if the constitutional issue is anywhere near top of your list of priorities. Neither presents as the ‘other party’ – that is to say, the party people mostly turn to when the status quo becomes intolerable. Neither generates the aura of a winner.
It’s not as if either of these things is difficult to achieve. The SNP managed it effortlessly while Alex Salmond led the party, the government and Scotland’s cause. Which makes it difficult to explain why he has so signally failed to bring that winning formula to Alba Party.
Just a word or two on Streeting’s remark. If Westminster is the problem and if all roads lead there, why travel those roads? Why not sever those links? Why not #EndTheUnion?
Peter A Bell 
“In the simple mind of the electorate, the SNP was distinctive both for being the ‘party of independence’ and by being the ‘party of quietly competent government’. Neither of these as now applicable. The party leadership had a winning formula, and contrived to shred it.”
That pretty much sums up and nails the current situation.
I recall looking forward to the 2015 British General Election with great anticipation. All indicators were for a runaway SNP victory in Scotland. And I wasn’t disappointed, with famously only 3 seats remaining in Unionist hands.
The British Tories retained Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale & Tweedale by a mere 798 votes and the British Liberal Democrats held onto Orkney and Shetland by 807 votes. Christ even my own constituency of Edinburgh South/Heart of Darkness returned Ian Union Jack Suit Murray as MP by only 2637 votes.
Overall the SNP took a smidgeon under 50% of the vote and, coupled with the Scottish Greens taking the popular vote to 51.3% in aggregate for parties purporting to be in favour of the restoration of this country’s full self-government and independent statehood.
I stayed up most of the night and watched the ‘other’ party – British Labour – in Scotland getting dumped by the Scottish electorate, sickened as they were by being taken for granted by this arrogant Mafiosi party since the 1950s, witnessing their local parties run our biggest Council’s into the ground with the whiff-stench of fraud never far away and finally disgusted by the teaming up as Better Together with the remaining two London based political entities.
I admit to enjoying in seeing the likes of Douglas Alexander, Tom Harris and Margaret Curran getting their political just desserts. Schadenfreude has rarely felt so pleasurable.
Things looked ripe for a Scotland’s Cause. The distinct possibility of achieving that noble aim transformed into a highly probable outcome very much sooner rather than later when the Brexit vote UK-wide took place in 2016.
Fast forward a mere 9 years on from the ‘Tsunami’ Election.
I now look on the upcoming (probably) 2024 British Election with extreme trepidation. If (current) opinion polls and seats projections are to be believed this points to significant losses for the now erstwhile ‘party of Independence’. I will cry no crocodile tears if (when) persons such as John Nicholson, Pete Wishart, Kirsty Blackman and Kirsten Oswald are given the heave-ho by their constituency electorates.
But where now for Scotland’s Cause?
For myself, there is no dilemma. The Unionists have got their act together in Edinburgh South – British Labour took 48% of the vote in 2019 with twice as many ballots as his nearest challenger – and Ian Murray is a shoo-in with no bone fide ‘Independence: Nothing Else! Nothing Less!’ candidate on offer.
So it’s #EndTheUnion for me.
For many others who yearn for the return of Scotland as a nation-state, however, it’s a case of Hobsons Choice.
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“I recall looking forward to the 2015 British General Election with great anticipation. All indicators were for a runaway SNP victory in Scotland. And I wasn’t disappointed, with famously only 3 seats remaining in Unionist hands.”
I like your 2015 nostalgia, duncanio, not just the quote I’ve chosen but your other comments too.
I remember thinking it was bounce back after the disappointment in 2014. Psychology students might recognise it as cognitive dissonance; renewed fervour following disconfirmation, as hypothesised by Leon Festinger and others in When Prophecy Fails.
For me, it certainly wasn’t a ringing endorsement of Nicola Sturgeon as opined by some political analysts.
Neither was it the beginning of an inevitable march to independence as predicted by boozers in my local on the day of the referendum result. One said, “the is just the start, we’ll be independent in 5 years,” and I was laughing at the naivety.
My post-referendum analysis was that any early indyref2 or similar would be self-defeating. Unionists would refuse to fully participate in, or respect, any process and any favourable result for Yes. I thought they’d have a winning argument too; why would anyone respect indyref2 if indyref1 wasn’t respected.
My prediction was entirely pessimistic. I thought Sturgeon would be a disaster. Mind you, I was entirely wrong about how bad it would all become. No one could’ve predicted the state we’re in now.
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At the time I thought that the 2015 result kept the pot simmering, increasing the temperature even. I knew that it wouldn’t be enough on its own.
When the Brexit vote occurred 20 months later I did feel that this was the trigger for another referendum and that the upshot would be a net YES vote. I didn’t believe that it would be a silver bullet that would end the Union on its own but it would be the final straw when allied to the Better Together false promises compared to their lying outcomes. You had a full package:
• EU Membership Guarantee v Brexit
• HMRC Jobs v Cumbernauld Closures
• T8 Clyde-built Frigates: 13 Contracts v 8 Orders
• The Vow v EVEL
• Home Rule/Federalism/Devo-Max v Smith Commission Whitewash
Once Sturgeon bottled it after the 2017 British General Election and the whole attempt to stitch-up Alex Salmond it was obvious the current SNP leadership (cabal) were not going to pursue Scotland’s Cause of their own volition.
Despite all attempts to pressurise them into fulfilling their SNP’s remit they show no sign of budging.
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Yeah, all good points.
During Saturday’s Scotland Speaks podcast, Alex Salmond said he “thought the heavy lifting had been done” when he handed the leadership to Nicola Sturgeon.
Unlike the people in my local pub who, after registering 45% for Yes, thought indy was inevitable and would be delivered in 5 years, I don’t think Salmond had that in mind. I think he was talking about the heavy lifting being done on building support for Yes.
In line with your comments, all the circumstances pointed to support for Yes growing. EVEL, Tory austerity, then the Brexit vote followed by Teresa May who created far more poverty than David Cameron, and next, Boris Johnson! In theory support for Yes should’ve hit 60% or more.
Do you remember when ‘sources’ close to the SNP leadership used to say that support should be running at around 60% before considering indyref2? I do and I thought 60% it was doable. I’m sure I wasn’t alone.
Nowadays, I mention building support to 60% and people look at me as if I’m aff ma heid.
I point out to them that the “settled will” in favour of devolution was well over 60% in ’97 so it’s entirely possible to build such support.
I think I’m right in saying that Wings recently calculated the average support at 45%.
The reason for this is Nicola Sturgeon, her clique, her continuity candidates and the undeniable fact that the SNP / Scottish Government are not nationalists. They are devout devolutionists.
No one is telling the low information voters that the SNP are devolutionists. Therefore, the devolutionists are going to win. The British establishment and the Scottish establishment are going to win. They are all devolutionists.
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I definitely think that getting some kind of ‘supermajority’ vote in favour of YES is possible. I don’t know for sure but my instinct is that there are probably only 20%-30% ‘hardline absolutely not, no never, over my dead body die-hard’ Unionists in Scotland.
So there’s a big pool of potential YES supporters in my view. The real problem is that we need a combination of:
I’m not saying it would be easy: Just because YES sentiment rose on average from 37.8% (8 polls) in 2012, to 39.7% in 2013 (27 polls) to 44.6% in 2014 pre-referendum (69 polls) to 44.7% in the actual plebiscite (18.09.14) doesn’t guarantee that the same thing would happen next time around. It is not necessarily a linear progression – the hardest nuts might still have to be cracked.
Hence, my aforementioned 1-2-3 conditions.
Incidentally, having analysed all survey history on the Independence question since 2011 to date I can tell you that the average unweighted YES polling results are as follows:
(I calculated these from Wikipedia, having first checked them against the individual polling firms’ published website data tables).
These are just average of course. You can also look at it simply by individual pollster so that you have like for like and can pick out trends but even then there are specific factors at play such as survey firm bias, weightings used and sample size which may affect levels.
As best as I can make out YES sentiment is roughly at the same level as it was in quarter 4 of 2014 i.e. around 48%-49%.
This is all immaterial of course until such time as we have a united front with a determined leadership and a practical plan and process for realising Scotland’s Cause.
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Further proving the point that Scotland’s cause has been moribund for a decade. There has been ‘campaigning’ activity of various kinds organised by a numbr of organisations, the names of which you don’t need me to tell you. There has even been a swathe of ‘initiatives’ from the SNP. What there hasn’t been is progress. All of it more or less replicating stuff done during the first referendum campaign.
Despite this – despite the proven ineffectiveness of all this activity – nobody in a position of influence or authority has presented any new ideas. The entire professional political class in Scotland can think of nothing other than to just run a repeat/continuation of the same campaign. The one that has achieve fuck all in ten years of the most ideal circumstances any campaign strategist might have wished for.
I had an exchange with one of the organisers of these activities last week. They not only declined to even contemplate altering their formula, they were more than a bit annoyed that I’d even sggest such a thing. These are the same people who criticise the SNP leadership for lack of imagination and strategic thinking.
It’s only natural that the party of government should take the brunt of the condemnation for failing to put ten points on those Yes figures. But the inertia and dearth of fresh ideas runs through the whole independence movement. A rot has set in. The main cause? Not the SNP. Not Sturgeon. The most important factor in the development of this rot is time.
Ah telt ye! There should have been a new referendum no later than September 2018.
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The ‘strategy’ seems to amount to ‘nearly there, just one more heave!’
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The notion that insisting on the right of self-determination is ‘disrespecting’ the result is a very popular trope among Unionists. I try to remind them that democracy is a process, not an event and I point out that precisely nobody voted to relinquish the right of self-determination and that they couldn’d have done so even if they wanted to because the right of self-determination is an inaslienable human right, but they are totally baffled by such fundamental principles of democracy.
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The pearls that they are clutching usually get ground down back into sand should you have the temerity to suggest that the Scots should choose their constitutional arrangements whenever and however with whatever frequency.
It’s quite bewildering that the basic tenets of democracy should be such a stranger to them.
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Is it only Unionists or are nominally pro-independence people “totally baffled by such fundamental principles of democracy” too?
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Many sincerely pro-independence people are.
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If many sincerely pro-independence people are baffled by such fundamental principles of democracy how is Scotland’s cause served by the principles, or served by running the argument in public?
I find the political anorak stuff interesting but it’s academic and inaccessible to many, both nationalists and Unionists.
If many nationalists are baffled and can’t or won’t be convinced there’s little chance of baffled Unionists being convinced or converted, and that’s the ultimate failing.
It seems to me that nationalists spend too much time leaving Unionists “baffled,” sometimes othered, and too little time convincing Unionists to convert.
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Educate us. How did you go about converting all those Unionists?
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The reason people are baffled by fundamental principles of democracy is that these have never been explained to them. They have been deceived about them. They have been brainwashed over generations to believe things that aren’t true. It’s not that they are generally incapable of understanding. Some are. Some are too bigoted to change their views. But for the most part, people are perfectly capable of understanding the right of self-determination and sovereignty and the rest. It’s just that, for all the time the supposed independence campaign has been running, none of the people doing the most and loudest talking has addressed these issues. They’ve been too busy selling independence as if it was a time-share in Marbella or trying to find magic answers to pointless questions. Answers that satisfy everyone.
It’s a fucking constitutional issue! For ten years and more self-styled Yes activists have talked about everything except the constitution. They claim that taliking about the constitutional issue as if it’s a constitutional issue puts people off. Meanwhile, all their babbling about currency and central banks and the rest has been so effective in engaging voters that polling for Yes has been frozen for a fucking decade.
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Good points Peter, I also think party stands or falls by what the electorate thinks about it leader.
For example take Nicola Sturgeon we know now what she’s really like but she portrayed herself as a leader of the people a champion for women’s rights, a seeker of justice and public even some BLiS voters loved it.
Image in my opinion comes second to policies when the fickle electorate chose which party to vote for. Take Boris Johnson, he won the hearts of the electorate by being popular who could forget his slide down the zip line in London, he played the part of the buffoon.
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Apologies for the cutting short of my comment.
I meant to say imagine come before policies not after in the minds of the fickle electorate
Anyway Johnson was a hopless PM but folk voted for him because they liked his image and style.
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Peter, I’d like to suggest that the SNP / Alba situation defies any face-value political analysis. Past events are so murky, so dark.
If no one is making a mini series, Netflix and others are missing a trick. I know it’s only a devolved, child parliament but the alleged events are both unique and truly horrific, making this a one-off drama like no other.
Public allegations, some from Alex Salmond himself, suggest that Nicola Sturgeon and others became so desperate to dissuade Salmond from making a return to front-line politics that they tried to not only ruin his reputation but to jail him, perhaps for the rest of his life (given the severity of some of the charges, including attempted rape).
Presently, it appears to me that, in the eyes of many – especially Sturgeon supporters, Alex Salmond’s reputation has been ruined. Unless he can obtain the justice he seeks to redress matters, he’s condemned to fail and, for as long as he is the leader, the Alba party is condemned to fail by association.
This effectively makes Alba less of a political party and more of a campaign for justice. They are obliged to pretend to be a political party like any other but they’re not. They’re a political party in waiting, a hostage to fortune, unable to reach their potential for as long as the Salmond vs. Sturgeon vendetta remains a live issue and he remains their tainted leader.
I’ve already argued here that no opposition political party with elected politicians in Holyrood / Westminster will openly support #ScottishUDI as they rely on short money. #ScottishUDI requires a dual approach; one political, the other a massive grassroots movement.
However, even if Alba could adopt #ScottishUDI or some other strategy more to your liking, they’d still need their current leader to obtain the justice he seeks before making progress.
Alex Salmond is targeting 15% and 20 seats in 2026. Without the justice he seeks, that’s very unlikely. With the justice he seeks, who knows?
One last thought for now. Yesterday I read that Kenny MacAskill intends to stand against Eva Comrie in the forthcoming General Election. If correct, that strikes me as a disastrous move for Alba and their Scotland United policy.
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Interesting analysis. It’s certainly true that there’s a lot of stuff going on under the surface. I don’t know that it woukld be possible to deal with even a substantial part of it in a single article. Perhaps that Netflix series could do justice to the story.
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Isn’t MP MacAskill still going to defend his own Westminster seat of East Lothian?
As for your other points, I think that is a bit unfair on Alex Salmond. However, I do think it a major mistake for ALBA to be standing candidates at the upcoming Westminster election.
I see no point in it. Apart from those 2 MPs they already have, they should not be standing anyone else.
That just splits the pro Independence vote and allows another pro London stooge in, and for what gain to Scotland?
That said, SNP should not be standing against the 2 from ALBA, or MP Brendan MacNeil in Western Isles. But, it was Nicola Sturgeon who drove these 3 out of SNP.
It was she who would have no deal whatever with ALBA, much the same way Labour will never, ever have any deals with SNP, and the almost near hatred we see between SNP and ALBA, is very similar to the absolute hatred we see with SNP and Labour, (a hatred which mainly comes from Labour) and SNP is now applying to ALBA!
Humza kept with this policy, and we must hope Swinney changes tune, and fast, otherwise both sides will be condemned by the Independence movement as traitors to Scotland!
As for the general voting public, it has to be admitted, the Media play a large part in this, and help sway the electorate which way to go.
However, as has been noted so many times, depressingly so, SNP has been woeful in its response to Labour, especially the past few years.
All we ever heard was make us “tory free”, and only now have they realized, Labour are, and always have been, just as bad for Scotland.
We can only wait and see how it goes from here.
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“That just splits the pro Independence vote and allows another pro London stooge in, and for what gain to Scotland?”
We might just as sensibly ask at what cost? It’s going to be a British nationalist government regardless of how Scotland votes. To date, the cause has gained precisely nothing from sending a majority of nominally pro-independence MPs to Westminster. It simply doesn’t matter. The only argument for voting for any of the nominally pro-independence parties is that otherwise the Brits will claim that support for independence is waning. But they do that every single day anyway!
Scotland’s voice in the British parliament is worth nothing. We could send no MPs at all and be no worse off.
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Very true Peter, and by sending MPs to Westminster from Scotland all we are doing is giving Westminster an air of legitimacy over Scotland when in reality it has none, if Scottish MPs could make any difference by being at Westminster with regards to the Scottish cause of independence it would’ve happened by now.
I’m sorry but once in Westminster our MPs settle in and become part of the problem.
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Good post Republicofscotland, although I think Westminster’s “air of legitimacy” over Scotland was conferred when we voted for devolution in 1997, and confirmed by the No (pro-status quo) vote in 2014.
Reading Peter’s blog I’ve become more convinced than ever – and I was convinced in ’97 – that the Scottish Parliament was designed to stop independence, and everyday it goes unchallenged is another small reversal in Scotland’s fortunes. The immeasurable damage being inflicted on Scotland goes on.
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I don’t think anybody was in much doubt that devolution was intended to derail the independence campaign. But it hasn’t worked as intended. I contend that the Parliament itself is the single most significant factor in the growth of the independence movement. By its very existence, it changed the way people thought about Scotland and themselves. I don’t think we’d have had this growth in the number of people identifying as Scottish but for the effect that the parliament has had.
Which is one of the reasons I maintain that the Scottish Parliament has to be the initial focus of the campaign. People have positive feelings about the parliament, I think. More so than the politicians and parties, that’s for sure. But crucially, also more so than independence. A de facto referendum on independence is a bad mistake. Make the de facto referendum on the question of the Scottish Parliament having legislative competence in matters relating to the constitution while making it clear that transferred powers would not be acceptable. That’s a winner! And it opens not just a path to independence but a six-lane motorway.
People have to be led. Leading means going first to the place you want them to go so they see that it is possible. People will not vote en masse for independence unless they are shown a process that makes it achievable.
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People have been told to have positive feelings about the parliament. People have been told to feel more Scottish. People have been told to support devolution. The people doing most of the telling are those in the parliament, growing rich at the expense of Scotland, growing rich from devolution, and laughing as they fool people into voting for them by telling lies.
I couldn’t feel any more Scottish if I tried and I didn’t and still don’t need a parliament to tell me where I’m from or what it means to me.
Education should enable people to think for themselves and not be fooled by the politicians and parties in our parliament, a parliament that has immeasurably damaged Scotland over the past 25 years, a parliament emblematic of our ongoing decline.
Still, I’m an optimist at heart, and rock bottom, recognisable at the time or not, will arrive and our country will bounce back. I can only guess how it’ll happen, but it’ll happen. It has to.
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Gordon, Kenny MacAskill is swapping from East Lothian to Alloa and Grangemouth.
https://www.albaparty.org/albas_macaskill_announces_election_bid_to_save_grangemouth
It’s good to see Alba campaigning to save Scotland’s only oil refinery. Little chance of the SNP campaigning for Scotland’s interests. However, Kenny standing against former Alba member, now independent for independence candidate, Eva Comrie reveals the Scotland United policy to be a sham. The SNP rejected Scotland United. Eva did not reject it. In fact, I think Eva strongly supports Scotland United.
Splitters!
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I told you from the very start that it was a sham. It was only proposed so as to get the knockback from the SNP.
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True, good point!
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I was unaware of that.
I’m guessing then, he hopes to get votes based on his ALBA campaign to save Grangemouth.
However, I do disapprove of such moves by sitting MPs to go from their own constituency they’ve held for years, to another one miles away. How can they expect voters to be suddenly loyal to them, especially these days?
He is not serving the Independence movement too well with this idea, I think.
Besides, I’ve never liked the way he bulldozed thru his Police and Fire merger. A merger that we didn’t need, nor was it necessary for SNP to push, either.
It was a Labour and tory policy idea, and for which both voted for. Yet at that time SNP had a majority. SNP MSPs (even those who didn’t want it), still voted it thru, purely out of Party loyalty. The very same loyalty that saw them stand by Nicola Sturgeon regardless, for the next 10 years, and where has that got us? Nowhere!
However, it has lead to Police stations all over Scotland being closed, and we see fire engines taken off the run, too. Apart from the English dude then running Strathclyde, only one other Police Chief supported the Police merger, as I recall, and he was the guy at Central,,who was formerly Strathclyde,, himself. No Fire Master wanted this merger.
As for the Scottish Parliament, I’d still rather we had it than not, as it has given us some policies we can be content enough with, otherwise, we would probably now have a private company running our water system, and the likes.
It’s not as good as we’d like it to be, however the alternative would be a form of Direct Rule from London.
I don’t see how we could be any closer to Independence with no Edinburgh Parliament. By which I mean, how with the pre 1998 system would Independence be made easier to get? I think it would have been harder.
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