Scotland’s voters used to be a dependable bunch – until we were rewarded for it with a parliament of our own. These days we can only be relied on to be either indecisive or disloyal. Sometimes we are both. In the 2007 Scottish parliament elections, we gave the Scottish National party (SNP) one seat more than Labour, ushering in the first pro-independence government (albeit a minority) in Scotland’s modern history. Three years later we overwhelmingly endorsed Labour in the UK general election, only to gift the SNP a Holyrood majority the following May. At the time this seemed like a kind of sophistication: Labour was best placed to take on the Tories down south, while the SNP was judged the most competent at the devolved level.
Then everything changed: the independence referendum in 2014 herded many lifelong Labour voters into the SNP’s camp, seemingly for good, and the SNP began dominating in both Westminster and Holyrood elections. When the SNP stumbled in the 2017 UK election, losing seats to both the Tories and Labour, it appeared to be more of a hiccup than a defeat, and the new order was restored in 2019 when the SNP won 48 of Scotland’s 59 seats.
