The SNP's Trap
18 Months Ago I predicted trouble for Scotland's ruling party. Sturgeon's fall and investigations are distractions from the real issues.
(I plan to resume using Substack for longer form pieces. They will have to compete with time for my commissioned work, especially for AMAC. 250 articles in just under two years is a lot. But I hope if I produce enough content that is worthwhile here there may be a prospect of a voluntary paid option if there is demand for content like this. )
In early 2022, I submitted a draft article for publication in the Oxford Politics Review. Ultimately the original version was rejected for being too long, and because the use of graphics, required for charts and tables, was not allowed. Time interfered with editing it down to a viable form. I now regret that because it would have appeared prophetic.
The inspiration was a series of discussions I had on and off Twitter regarding the certainty with which British political pundits treated the Scottish National Party’s dominance of Scotland. While the party had been highly successful electorally, it struck me that the reasons given for that success - opposition to Brexit, positioning itself as a better left-wing opposition to a Conservative government in London - had either reached their expiration point or begun to work against the party.
In particular, while initially providing a rationale for a second referendum on independence, and an issue that probably could have won such a vote if it were held following the Brexit referendum but before the UK left the EU, the departure of the UK from the EU has made Scottish independence all but impracticable. The difficulties over the Northern Ireland Protocol are unlikely to make a Europe sick of British drama want to attempt the task of managing a land-border between Scotland and England, much less indulge whatever hare-brained schemes are hatched to keep the Pound in circulation. By making Scottish membership of the EU next to impossible on any realistic basis(an open border with England), and with EU membership having become the justification for why Scottish independence was viable, the prospect effectively died at the end of 2019.
To her credit, Sturgeon seems to have grasped this, and it partially explains her pivot to the left in an effort to reframe Scottish politics around a two-party race between the SNP and the Tories. This succeeded for a time, but there was an obvious contradiction. The SNP was a nationalist party and it could only maintain its position as both a nationalist and a left-wing party as long as London was under right-wing rule. In effect, once a Labour government was in office in Westminster, the SNP would be faced with the choice of either going far to the left of Labour in order to maintain the hat trick, pivot to the right, or somehow revive independence.
The divisions within the SNP reflect fundamental divisions over which of these three routes to pursue. In reality, there are only two, and only one which in the long-run is electorally and internally viable. Reviving the prospect of independence is a PR stunt because independence is not, in fact viable. There is not only no path to it except through a Westminster approved referendum, but there is no way an independent Scotland would be viable in the 2020s outside the EU. And no way to join without a hard border with England and accepting the Euro. So it is an approach which can only appeal to the gullible and fools.
As for moving to the Left, this explosively threatens both the party’s internal cohesion and its electoral appeal. There are many more conservative nationalists who were willing to back Sturgeon’s movement leftward out of both hostility to a Conservative government in London which clearly did disdain Scottish interests and a belief that exploiting Brexit would produce independence. But without the prospect of independence all they have are policies they hate. Even before she resigned Sturgeon faced accusations that she was a “captive” of the Scottish Green party, with whom she had entered into a coalition after the SNP lost its majority in the Bute House Agreement of 2021. That agreement has come to symbolize everything wrong with the governance of Scotland to SNP supporters, not least because Sturgeon, and now her successor Humza Yousef, are happy to blame everything unpopular they undertake on the need to maintain the coalition.
But there is limited space to move further left, and even in Scotland there is unlikely to be enough to secure 48-55% of the electorate for a course to the left of a Labour government in London.
Moving rightward is the only alternative and in the long-run it is the correct course of action. But as the leadership election showed, the idea it can provide a solution to the SNP’s current problems is a mirage. While Kate Forbes’ 48% in the second round of the leadership election is testimony to the unpopularity of the Green coalition, especially given the line-up of virtually the entire establishment against her, she had no viable plan to govern. Green warnings of departing from the coalition were almost certainly warranted, and an alliance with Labour would have come at a high cost, including for 2024. The only actual option for someone of Forbes’ politics would have been a minority government supported by the Scottish Tories, but that option, while it will be the most viable after Labour takes power in Westminster, is impossible for either side as long as the Conservatives control Number 10. It was the correct plan attempted too early, and it would have failed miserably if attempted.
That then is why the SNP has a serious problem for 2024. It is not that the party has no options or is doomed to select the wrong ones. Rather, for structural reasons, there is no option that will avoid disaster in 2024, as the correct long-term option will not be viable until after the next general election.
The reason Nicola Sturgeon’s last few months appeared to be that of a cornered animal is because that was what not only she was due to the investigations but the entire party.
In practice, while pretending to double-down on her left-wing, Green-aligned strategy, Sturgeon herself seemed to realize it was bankrupt. She was committed to the appearance of pursuing it by the personal hostility of the SNP’s rightwing and followers of former leader Alex Sturgeon who would never forgive her for her “betrayal”, but in 2022 she gradually made efforts to pursue the third option, reviving the prospect of independence. As we have already discussed, this option is a mirage. There is no path to independence, and no model of a viable independent Scotland in the prevailing international conditions of the early 2020s. However, Sturgeon’s goal was not to successfully achieve independence or even a referendum, as achieving the latter would raise the prospect of a second, perhaps final defeat. While it is unclear if Sturgeon herself would have cared by 2022, or seen the icing of the independence issue as freeing the SNP to become an autonomist party, the death of the prospect would have been fatal to her position. So her actual goal was to sell the idea to her base that she had a plan to secure a referendum.
She came up with various expedients
Calling an early election for the Scottish Parliament and declaring that a de facto referendum on holding a second referendum
Framing the next Westminster election as a referendum
Having the Scottish parliament illegally authorize a referendum and daring Westminster to block it
The first and second of these options shared the flaw that polling indicated that while the SNP would win the most votes and seats, and it would be far short of a majority. They also shared with the third the problem that they involved doing something which had no legal meaning and then hoping it would persuade Westminster into authorizing a vote.
Ultimately for Sturgeon, the greatest evidence she was not interested in testing the actual sentiment for independence was that she rejected the first option, and ended up with a modified version of the third. The downside of the first option was that its failure would be immediately evident. If she embraced it and Parliament shrugged the bankruptcy of the policy would be apparent. When it came to the second she had no control over timing. So she settled on a modified version of the third.
Sturgeon seems to have had no doubt, for good reason, that Westminster would reject any effort by the Scottish parliament to authorize an illegal referendum. The whole enterprise would be unconvincing. Even most militant nationalists conceded the Scottish Parliament had no power to do so, and it would have been a transparent farce.
But Sturgeons truck on a different tack. She wanted to test the limits of Scotland’s autonomy by seeing if she could dare Westminster into blocking a Scottish law. What she wanted was less for the law to go through, but rather for Labour and the Liberal Democrats to go on record that Section 35 of the Scotland Act, which gives the Secretary of State in certain circumstances the power to veto legislation passed by the Scottish Parliament was illegitimate. If Labour whipped against the government blocking legislation it did not approve of on the basis that it violated the democratic will of the Scottish Parliament then Labour would set a precedent against blocking a bill for a referendum passed by the Scottish Parliament. This charge of hypocrisy was unlikely to work in practice, but Sturgeon would be able to sell she set a precedent and had accomplished some step towards independence.
The Issue she chose was reform of the Gender Reform Act. This killed several bird with one stone. It is beside the point whether Sturgeon believed in it. She has been consistently radical on Trans issues, and social issues in general, but pragmatic enough to table the proposals on multiple occasions when faced with internal opposition. She likely supported it, but not enough to force it through no matter the cost on its own merits. She also sold the decision as a concession to the Greens, insisting it was part of the coalition agreement, another example of a tactic which has made the coalition so toxic to many.
That was not the basis for the decision in 2022. Rather, Sturgeon needed a bill which would
Have overwhelming support in the Scottish Parliament
Be offensive to the Conservative party that a Conservative government would be all but forced to block it
'Be supported on the merits by the overwhelming majority of Labour MPs and members, such that opposing it would incur large social costs
Be largely irrelevant to the wider English public in a way a referendum would not
The bill fit all the criteria. The Liberal Democrats are firm supporters of the issue, and Scottish Labour had clashed with the national party on the latter’s ambiguous stance. As for the Conservatives, the focus of the leadership election on trans issues and Penny Mordaunt’s campaign derailing indicated to any competent observer that it would be hard for any Tory leader, either a newly installed Truss or an unelected Sunak to approve it.
The one calculation which went awry was Starmer and the behavior of Labour. Starmer did not vote with the government, but nor did he oppose it. This would have been fine if he allowed Labour MPs a free vote. Odds are 70% at least would have voted against the Section 35 order. Instead he imposed a three-line whip forcing Labour MPs to abstain. While 12 defied it, Starmer had set a different precedent. He viewed Section 35 as fundamentally legitimate even if he reserved the right to evaluate the government’s usage on a case-by-case basis. By imposing a three-line whip, Starmer made clear he would do the same if he felt the need to use Section 35.
Rather than providing Sturgeon with a claim she had secured a path to a referendum the whole affair did the opposite. While noise was made about challenging the decision in the courts - the UK courts - this was clearly an act of desperation and an admission of weakness. It was unlikely to succeed, and was one step above suing to get an independence referendum from them.
Instead, Sturgeon was left with the bankruptcy of one policy - a path to independence of which she could offer none - and the political bankruptcy caused by the other. The GRA was deeply unpopular, not least because it was seen as a sellout to the Greens, one too many. When she was unable to defend the premise of a policy which by now she clearly wished she had never pursued in the case of a Trans-identified rapist, Isla Bryson, who Sturgeon declared “was almost certainly faking” their status, even left-wingers abandoned her.
In a sense right-wing critics are correct that the affair finished Sturgeon, but more left-leaning commentators are not wrong in suggesting that the backlash on the issue itself did not touch the majority of the electorate. Rather she fell because she reached the end of the road. There were three paths for the SNP. One she could not pursue. One had failed. And one was approaching bankruptcy.
The results of the leadership election had elements of a stitch-up it is true, but ultimately it was a recognition that the time for the rightwing pivot had not yet come. If independence had failed, Humza Yousef was chosen to oversee the bankruptcy of the left-wing policy of Sturgeon. Not because it was widely believed that it had a future but because it needed to be winded down before another option was tried.
In particular, Humza has been chosen to preside over the almost certain to be painful 2024 Westminster elections in Scotland. Until 2022 polling and models showed the SNP gaining on its 48 seats even as the total number in Scotland was reduced. Now, with polls showing the SNP in 2nd place for the first time since 2013, it is possible the party may lose half its MPs.
The problems here are structural. Sturgeon’s legal travails do not help matters, but ultimately the SNP has no argument for why Scottish voters should send an SNP MP to Westminster. The ostensible argument is leverage. Here, the argument goes, if Labour wins a minority of seats, it would be reliant on SNP MPs to take office, and this would give the party power. This is a mirage and in reality it is another version.
While SNP leaders have put a brave face on the prospect, selling the idea this would provide them leverage, a claim Conservative-supporting media has been happy to echo, the concept is laughable. The SNP would only have leverage over a Labour government if they were actually willing to support the Conservatives if Keir Starmer rejected their demands. To make that charge. If they raise that prospect before an election, then voters who wish to remove the Conservatives from office would have the choice between a Labour MP would install a non-Conservative government and an SNP MP who would at the least undermine such a government in pursuit of something they cannot get(independence) in the process paving the way for the Conservatives to return.
An SNP MP cannot therefore answer the question of what they will do if elected when asked by voters during the campaign. If they say vote for a non-Tory government on everything, then why not vote for Labour. Especially if the SNP commits to abstaining on English legislation making them of less value to the government and less likely to be promoted? If they say drive a hard bargain, well are they willing to vote for the Tories? For Suella Braverman if she offered a referendum in return? Or to bring down the government? In that case why not vote Labour.
This leaves aside what would happen if the SNP did in fact bring down a Labour government over a referendum, and early elections would be held. The campaign would be dominated by the prospect of a Conservative government returning, a prospect created by the SNP in pursuit of an impossibility. Yes there are voters who want independence or to burn everything down, but those are the voters who brought the SNP under 6 seats in the pre Salmond era. And many hate the current party’s leftward drift.
In effect, the SNP does not have a future at Westminster. And the campaign next year will reveal that at hustings when SNP MPs will be reduced to trading on their personal vote and constituent service.
There is an analogy here. The Bloc Quebecois dominated Quebec politics between 1993 and 2011, winning at least half the seats most elections. In 2011, however, it saw its vote collapsed, and it won 4 seats compared with 49 in 2008. It had identified as a left-wing nationalist party, but the position had enabled its vote to transfer to a left-wing non nationalist party once the prospect of getting independence became implausible. At that point voters merely saw its MPs as less effective versions of their ideologically similar unionist counterparts who could actually take part in national politics. The fact is that if the goal is left-wing policy, a Labour MP will be more effective than an SNP one.
I am not predicting the SNP will fall to single-digits. Structure defines the playing field and the structural factors say, and have said for over a year that the SNP will have a rough time in 2024 because they have ensured it will have nothing to say. All efforts to avoid this have failed as they were always likely to fail for structural reasons. Odds are Sturgeon even expected her maneuver to fail but had no better option than to try.
Yet if structure defines the big picture and general environment, contingency matters, both in terms of the campaign, and events. The SNP might end up with 30 MPs. It might win 25. It might win 15. It could win 5. But its problems are clear.
For Westminster. In Holyrood the SNP does have a future. It is just not a future under Humza Yousef. That future lies in adopting the one approach that proved successful for Sturgeon and inverting it. Independence is not achievable in the near-term and no one will trust any politician pretending it is. Sturgeon’s leftwing track against a Tory government cannot work without one. But the same basic concept - defending Scotland against Westminster, can work, albeit with the SNP opposing Labour from the center-right. The problem for Yousef is this is a path he cannot lead the party down.
His job is to preside over the 2024 disaster, resign, and pave the way for someone who can exploit the opportunities that will be created. For one thing, the Green Coalition can be broken, as the Westminster election will open the door to confidence and supply cooperation with the Scottish Tories without which the leadership of someone like Kate Forbes can never be viable. That in turn opens the door to the SNP eating the conservative but not militantly unionist 10-15% of the Tory vote.
This piece is already on the long-side, but I may do a deep dive into Quebec politics from 2007 to 2022 in another note, and how the example may be applicable. This degree of versatility is to a degree foreign to British politics which may be why it is alien to most mainstream analysis. But it is not unheard of.
It won’t bring the SNP independence but can allow it to maintain its hold on Scottish politics. But not in its current form.