DECLINE AND FALL (CONT.) ...AMID A TOXIC MIX OF MISOGYNY, FEAR AND LOATHING
AMONG Scotland’s political leaders, Anas Sarwar is unique. Not because of his age, his race or his background but because going into the Holyrood election, he was the only leader whose tenure at the top of his party was secure, irrespective of the results. Having been elected to replace Richard Leonard only ten weeks ago, no one was ever going to blame him for a poor result.
If anything, his performance during the campaign was regarded by many as the best of all his rivals, conveying the impression (accurately or not) that he was enjoying himself.
His confident, smiling persona, his easy wit and ability to answer any question with a sharp intelligence reminded many voters of the Labour Party of old, before it was despatched to electoral oblivion by the unstoppable Nationalist behemoth of the SNP.
Unfortunately for Sarwar, the results declared over Friday and yesterday do not allow him to advance the narrative that he alone can turn around his party’s fortunes.
Scottish Labour lost the former stronghold of East Lothian – a blow to a party that had held on there since the very first Scottish parliament election, despite losing the equivalent seat at Westminster level.
There was some good news for the party in Dumbarton, however, as veteran MSP Jackie Baillie, one of Labour’s most effective performers at Holyrood, increased her majority against a ferocious SNP challenge. That victory was crucial, not only to Scottish Labour and to Baillie’s career, but also for Nicola Sturgeon’s hopes of securing an overall majority.
Nevertheless, overall, the post-election landscape looks every bit as bleak for Scottish Labour as it did a week ago. Few would relish Sarwar’s job as he contemplates his strategy over the next five years.
It will not have escaped his attention that the hatred for his party that emanates from Nationalists has barely evaporated since the heady days of the 2014 independence referendum and the fraught General Election campaign a few months later – an election at which Sarwar himself and 40 of his colleagues were ousted from their seats.
If anything, the bitterness of the attacks from independence supporters against Sarwar and his party has intensified since 2014. The appalling, misogynist abuse meted out to Baillie on social media after her victory in her constituency was disgusting to behold – not exactly the ‘civic, joyous’ nationalism once promised by SNP leaders.
THE question is why the SNP and its supporters even bother with Scottish Labour any more. Why go to such efforts to disparage a party that holds fewer constituencies than can be counted on one hand and which comes a regular third place in Scottish and General Elections?
True, political memory in Scotland is long indeed, and many Nationalists still burn with anger at how Scottish Labour, working hand in hand with other pro-UK parties, including the Conservatives, denied them their ultimate goal of independence seven years ago. But surely they have been punished adequately since? Why spend so much time and energy traducing a party that is now a mere shadow of the political colossus that dominated Scottish political life for decades?
The opinion polls and the overwhelmingly yellow electoral map of Scotland give a hint of the SNP’s anger and its motives.
Polling during this campaign rarely gave any comfort to any of the opposition parties. The SNP never came close to losing its 20-plus point advantage over the Scottish Conservatives, while Douglas Ross’s party rarely looked like it might be overtaken by Labour. And so the actual results have confirmed.
But instead of this being seen as confirmation of the SNP’s unchallenged hegemony in Scotland, it gives an indication of how, one day, the parties’ fortunes may yet change.
The areas of Scotland that provide the ballast to the SNP’s dominance – communities in west and central Scotland – are the same areas which once voted en masse for Scottish Labour MPs, MSPs and councillors. If the SNP ever stumbles, if it ever looks close to losing its grip on Scotland’s voters, it is these heartlands that will decree an end to the reign of Sturgeon and her party.
That Scottish Labour and the SNP remain embroiled in a symbiotic relationship is evidenced by polling over the years – neither can make any advance except at the expense of the other. Scottish Conservatism has its own specific and limited market for votes, which seems mostly unaffected by the titanic struggle taking place between the other two parties. It is this battle between the SNP and Labour that still defines Scotland’s politics and will decide its long-term future.
This zero-sum game was first in evidence after the 2014 referendum. Opinion polls suggested, and the results of the 2015 General Election confirmed, that Labour voters swung directly and instantaneously to the SNP, turning former five-figure Labour majorities in Glasgow and Lanarkshire into similar sized majorities for the SNP.
But then the 2017 General Election happened and, unexpectedly, Sturgeon’s party lost 21 of the 56 seats won two years earlier. Twice as many fell to the Conservatives as to Labour, but it was the new heartlands that most worried Nationalist strategists.
The SNP could continue to dominate Scotland while surrendering a few fishing communities in the North-East, but its dominance could not survive a new voter offer from Labour in that party’s former fiefdoms. The SNP will, for now, be satisfied that no such challenge is likely to be forthcoming in the immediate future. But if we have learned one thing about Scottish politics in the past decade it is that the unpredictable often happens. Sturgeon is secure in Bute House right now. But what happens when, as is inevitable, her government recommences its interminable obsession with independence at the expense of the policy areas that Holyrood was set up to deliver – education, health, transport and local government services?
POLLING suggests many SNP voters do not consider another independence referendum to be a priority and would rather the Scottish Government focuses instead on recovery from the Covid pandemic. If those concerns are ignored by the SNP – as they will be – it is possible that the shine could come off the Nationalist project. The only party perfectly placed to take advantage would be Labour.
Another aspect of this weekend’s results that could give the SNP a headache is the new willingness of Tory voters to grit their teeth and support Labour if it increases the chances of a pro-UK party beating the Nationalists, which is how Baillie survived.
When Labour at a UK level posed a serious electoral threat, such tactical voting would have been rejected by Scottish Tory voters. But, ironically, Sir Keir Starmer’s troubles make nice, moderate Sarwar seem less of a threat.
There is, for now, little to encourage Labour to imagine that it may one day reoccupy Bute House. Much depends on the SNP failing, rather than on Labour succeeding.
But, in Scotland the unexpected happens more frequently than you’d think. And that’s what worries our Nationalist leaders.
Labour and SNP battle will define Scotland’s future