News from the New Party

Our very own Quebec

A number of opinion polls seem to be indicating that the Labour Party is set for heavy losses at the hands of the Scottish National Party in the coming elections to the Scottish Parliament.  For some reason Labour strategists are surprised that their campaign of scaring the electorate with the threat of separatism is not hitting home.  For one thing, it is evident that in spite of the groundswell of support for the SNP, there is no enthusiasm for independence from the United Kingdom (only about 25% of Scots support this option).  The growing support for the SNP does not derive from support for Scottish Nationalism at all - it derives from the fact that the SNP is not the Labour Party.

Every so often in a democracy the electorate will demand change.  If the electoral system does not provide an obvious alternative (and proportional representation systems in a multi-party context such as currently applies in Scotland frequently do not), then the voters will do their best to manufacture one.  It so happens that the SNP is currently the most plausible non-Labour Party in Scotland.  Hence Alec Salmond looks likely to be the beneficiary of a long-awaited backlash against Scottish Labourism.

Whilst it is true that the emergence of the SNP as the largest party in Scotland would mark a seismic shift after decades of Labour dominance, it will not mean the end of the Union either.  As previously noted, the demand for Scottish independence is just not there.  What it does mean, however, is that New Labour's new constitutional settlement will have foisted upon the United Kingdom its very own Quebec.  There will be lots of huffing and puffing about independence from SNP governments at Holyrood (if they can find the coalition partners to put one together, which is in any case doubtful), but this will be insufficient to bring the UK house down.  Whether or not this sort of thing will increase the Scots' ardour for independence or put them off remains to be seen: we rather expect the latter.

If Alec Salmond does find himself with the job of First Minister we will all have the opportunity to see whether his undoubted rhetorical talents also extend into the field of administration.  We nevertheless expect that an Executive which is obsessed with manufacturing constitutional crises will exhaust the patience of the public reasonably soon.  Scotland's soviet-style economy is not well equipped to deal with independence anyway, as things stand.  There are other problems which require more immediate attention than the question of independence.  Energy and time spent on pointless referenda and nationalist propaganda would be a waste which any sensible electorate would be reluctant to forgive.

That said, if not the SNP, then who?  The Scottish Liberal Democrats have positioned themselves well as the Scottish Sidekick Party.  Proportional representation means that if they want ministerial power badly enough then they can have it providing they are not too fussy about whose political bed they are prepared to jump into.  The Scottish Tories, on the other hand, are in such a state that they have been practically disowned even by their one and only Westminster MP.  And both the Greens and the scattered remains of the Scottish Socialist Party seem set for a significant and well deserved decline in electoral fortunes.

Scotland needs a genuinely liberal, progressive alternative to the discredited, incompetent socialist establishment which is currently entrenched at Holyrood.  It's time for a real change.