The Scottish National Party must think it is cursed. The murder of Jill Dando had the effect of relegating Sean Connery, the SNP’s star turn in a troubled election, to also-ran status in the news bulletins and on the printed page in Scotland. Just when the Nationalists needed all the coverage they could get from the first political speech by the world’s allegedly greatest living Scot, they were cruelly denied. Nae luck, as they say north of the border.
Yet if the SNP has had more than its fair share of bad luck in the general election, many of the Nationalists’ problems are of their own making. This was always going to be a tricky election for “Scotland’s Party” (self-styled), which has as its goal independence within the European Union but recognises that electoral success depends on continuing to pursue the gradualist strategy pioneered by Alex Salmond, their national convener. That means putting heavy emphasis on making devolution work and playing down the details of exactly how the great leap forward to independence would occur.
SNP “fundamentalists”, who have always believed that devolution was a constitutional cul-de-sac, bit their tongues. Although they believed that the central message in the election should have been independence rather than home rule, they knew that criticism during an election would be a treasonable offence.
The fundamentalists are keeping their own counsel, but polls predict that the SNP will capture fewer seats in the parliament than the 40 that were regarded as the minimum for the party to be judged a success. With the same polls predicting that Labour could come close to the 65 seats needed for an outright majority, there is a feeling that Salmond will have to watch his back after 6 May.
Questions are already being asked about the SNP leader’s strategy. Tax and the war come out on top of the list of errors. First, it is said, Salmond was wrong to commit his party to using the parliament’s limited tax powers to raise the basic rate of income tax by 1p in the pound. The SNP may claim that the “Penny for Scotland” campaign has been a success with the voters, but it has allowed Scottish “new” Labour (again self-styled) gleefully to hammer the “Nats” as a high-tax party.
Then there was the war. Salmond was allowed the unprecedented opportunity of broadcasting to the Scottish nation in response to Tony Blair’s prime ministerial broadcast. The SNP leader condemned the Nato action as “unpardonable folly”, prompting Robin Cook to charge that he had become the toast of Belgrade.
ICM polls and focus groups for the Scotsman and anecdotal evidence from election doorsteps suggest that the Kosovo address was a serious error. Even voters who have reservations over the Nato action appear to believe that when the armed forces are in action abroad it is the duty of politicians to support them.
These two critical mistakes aside, there is evidence from polling organisations that Nationalist support has been dwindling since the new year, while Labour’s has gradually increased. The vast new Labour spin machine has also moved to Scotland and turned its attentions to the Nationalists. “Millbank on Clyde”, as it has become known, has acted with its customary efficiency, pumping out the message that “separatism” means a “messy and expensive divorce” from the rest of the UK.
The SNP has found itself promoted to the Premiership only to come up against the political equivalent of Manchester United. The Labour team is fit, it has strength in depth and it can call world-class players off the bench. The Nationalists, by contrast, have a smaller squad, unused to playing at this level, and have begun to drop points under pressure. Even without Kosovo and tax as issues, this unequal battle was always going to take place. The SNP has merely made Labour’s task easier.
Yet if the SNP loses this election, there are still long-term doubts about the stability of what ministers deliberately call the devolution “settlement”. Could the Nats rise again at the next election? Will tight, London-controlled budgets provoke a revolt on Labour’s nationalist left? Will the parliament engender a new, unpleasant sense of Scottish identity that stimulates antipathy to England and all things English?
There are two views of Scotland’s future in the post-devolution age that have stood out among the millions of words that have been written in the run-up to 6 May. Kevin Toolis, an Edinburgh-born Guardian journalist, began a piece on devolution with the grim warning: “Something is rotting in the state of the Union.” Toolis maintained that the stench of the death of the UK hung over Scotland. He ended his deeply pessimistic piece by quoting approvingly a poem by Francis Gallagher that includes the lines, “. . . my instinctive intelligence tells me this/Scottish stuff is pure shit”.
A more optimistic assessment came from Gavin Esler, a Scot who has worked all over the world for the BBC. He returned to his native land looking at it through a foreign correspondent’s eye and found the nation relaxed about the future. He was pleased that the debate over national identity had been described as boring. Having covered ethnic conflict around the globe, boring was good, Esler concluded.
Both views cannot be correct. It will be long after 6 May before we know who was right. This election is the first of many events in the history of the new Scotland which, over time, will determine whether optimism or pessimism prevails.
Peter MacMahon is assistant editor (politics) on the “Scotsman”
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