Things are looking up. For so long the Tories have looked utterly bereft, cast adrift by their former supporters. Alone and friendless. It couldn’t have happened to nicer people. But now they find themselves with company – albeit not the bedfellows they might have expected or even wanted. For the SNP is now facing its own electoral Armageddon. The latest polls suggest the party could win only 15 seats out of a possible 57 on 4 July. Cast your mind back to 2015, when you couldn’t move for Scots Nats MPs. It’s not quite a wipeout, but it’s not far off. At the very least it’s a profound existential crisis.
Not that you would have known that from its election launch event four weeks ago. That was a massive rally, rammed with activists. The SNP has traditionally been a master at marshalling its troops. But things have changed somewhat over the last month. You can sense the optimism draining out of its campaign. The smiles are slightly more fixed. The conversations more terse. There’s a tetchiness rising to the surface. Say one word out of line and you feel like you could get your head bitten off.
A kind interpretation of the decision to hold Wednesday’s manifesto launch in a small room on an industrial park near Edinburgh airport would be that it was determined to keep its supporters out. To stop them booing the BBC whenever they ask a question about independence. The more practical – and possibly more accurate – reading is that this is a party looking in on itself. Running out of steam. All but having given up this election and going through the motions.
It’s not about the money. The SNP suddenly finds itself relatively comfortably off thanks to a bequest of £120,000 from a former supporter. In the entrance hall to the venue, the SNP had laid on quite the spread. Some of the largest croissants I have ever seen. Shame I didn’t get to eat one. Heart healthy and all that.
The room itself was suitably corporate and anonymous. Apart from some wall hangings. Free childcare. Free tuition fees. Free prescriptions. It felt a bit meh. The last two were achieved 10 years ago and it rather suggested that the SNP hasn’t actually been doing that much recently. That it hasn’t got much new to say. All passion spent.
It’s a feeling that was endorsed when the manifesto itself was passed around about 15 minutes before the start. Close your eyes and it could have been just a reprint of the manifesto for the last election. And the one before that. There was the central demand for independence. The reversal of Brexit. An end to austerity.
All stuff that has been on the agenda for years. Now you could argue this says as much about the intransigence of the Westminster government, but it still makes it hard to keep voting for a party that can’t achieve its goals. Especially when its track record of government in Scotland is mixed at best. There comes a time when people just want decent schools and hospitals and for junkies to stop dying of overdoses more than they want independence.
There was one noticeable change to the manifesto. There were no photos at all apart from the one of John Swinney on the front. There were more photos of Keir Starmer being nice to babies in the Labour manifesto than there were pages in the SNP’s. Back in the day, all SNP election material would be plastered with pictures of Nicola Sturgeon. Nicola healing the sick. Nicola walking on water. Now, nothing. Six weeks into the job and Swinney is still largely anonymous to most people. We have a problem, Houston.
In dribs and drabs, the great and the good of the SNP made their way into the room. MSPs and former MPs for now. Some may lose their seats. Hannah Bardell, the candidate for Livingston, made the introductions. This was an election about hope, she said. We want a better life for Scotland. Mmm. Remind me: which party has been governing Scotland for the past 15 years? Mostly, though, she seemed a bit irked that the Labour candidate in her constituency was a newcomer to the area. Keep it classy.
“Be upstanding for John Swinney,” she said. Everyone obeyed and gave him some polite applause. The first minister took the stage and rattled through the key points of the manifesto. Starting with independence. Here’s how it worked. If the SNP won over half the 57 seats, then independence was there for the taking. If they didn’t, independence was still there for the taking because they had won a majority in Holyrood in 2021. The democratic mandate for 2021 would supersede the one for 2024. Go figure. Maybe Swinney isn’t actually very bright.
Thereafter he mainly took aim at the Labour party. The SNP’s main rival. Everyone knows the Tories are finished. He wanted an end to austerity, more money for everything. An end to the two-child benefit cap. All worthy and progressive demands.
Only it turned out that the Reform manifesto was better costed than the SNP’s. In that Reform had at least gone to the trouble of assembling some imaginary numbers. Nowhere in the SNP manifesto was there any mention of how things were going to be funded. Swinney seemed to think it was up to Labour to work out the costings for him. He’s going to get a hell of a shock should Scotland gain independence.
Still, if the SNP was having a mediocre day – even the nationalists were underwhelmed by this manifesto – the serial losers that are the Tories were having a worse one. Having briefly promised to help out with the campaign, Boris Johnson decided to go on holiday instead. How unlike him. Normally he’s so keen to take responsibility.
Just about the only cabinet minister still visible is the anonymous Mel Stride. Our very own Hiroo Onoda. No one has yet told him the war is over and his is the sole government voice being heard on the morning media round. Day in, day out. Everyone else has left the bunker. Even the idiotic Welsh secretary, David TC Davies, has given up the ghost. “We’re doomed,” he sobbed. Normally he is the last person left standing to talk nonstop doggybollox. Though there’s no point him telling everyone to run for the hills. They left long ago.
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