New Times,
New Thinking.

  1. Politics
  2. The Staggers
28 March 2019updated 26 Jul 2021 11:25am

Did the SNP bring really down the Callaghan government and pave the way for Thatcherism?

By Steve Fielding

According to Jeremy Corbyn, the SNP ended the 1974-9 Labour government and is therefore ultimately responsible for the de-industrialisation, miners’ strike and poll tax that followed under the Conservatives.  

There is some truth to this charge: Scottish Nationalist MPs did not back the government in a vote of confidence held in the Commons on 28 March 1979. Given that Jim Callaghan’s minority government lost by just one vote, the SNP could have saved it, as it had done a few months before.

Subscribe to The New Statesman today for only £1 per week
Content from our partners
Securonomics? Don’t forget UK agriculture
The future of exams
Skills are the key to economic growth