The Scottish National party’s Nicola Sturgeon may not hold the Tories – or their policies – in particularly high esteem. But her speech on Monday suggests that Ms Sturgeon thinks her most dangerous political opponent is the Labour party. One of the best recruiting sergeants for the SNP has been the idea, long promoted by nationalists, that Labour could not win a general election and that Scotland would suffer permanent Tory rule without independence. But that siren call – attractive to many former Labour voters – is losing its allure as Sir Keir Starmer’s party rises in the polls and the Tory government gains a reputation for economic incompetence. This explains why at the SNP’s annual conference, Sir Keir has been improbably cast as a Trumpian “handmaiden” of Tory rule.
Labour’s rise has the SNP rattled. Ms Sturgeon’s last three conference speeches combined, according to one analysis, included one reference to Labour and 22 mentions of the Tories. This time, Ms Sturgeon kept the Conservatives in her crosshairs, but also singled out Sir Keir for attack, a backhanded acknowledgment that polls suggest he is more popular in Scotland than her. On policy, the SNP says that independence would pave the way to rejoin the EU – in contrast to Labour’s position not to reopen the Brexit decision.
The SNP and Tories have fattened themselves on the Scottish Labour party, which has seen its voters split on independence. The SNP also prefers the Conservative government to remain its principal adversary, as that alienates many Scots and would bolster the ranks of pro-independence voters. The Tories decry the constitutional stalemate, but they profit from it. With the SNP as its main foe, Conservatives can pose as defenders of the status quo and against a breakaway Scotland. This explains the hardening position of the Scottish Tory leader, Douglas Ross. He told a fringe meeting at the Tory party conference last week that “no further powers need to be devolved”. The SNP could not ask for better propaganda.
If, as expected, the supreme court rules that the Scottish parliament does not have the power to call an independence referendum, Ms Sturgeon says that she will make the next general election a plebiscite on the issue. By polarising Scottish politics around constitutional issues, the SNP will throw a lifeline to Scottish Tory MPs who also want to make independence the defining battle of the next general election.
Labour’s offer is likely to be more powers for Scotland as part of a wider plan for devolution. With the party polling 30% north of the border, it looks certain to gain Scottish MPs. Edinburgh University’s James Mitchell is probably right to say that a Labour minority government would not be in Ms Sturgeon’s pocket; more likely SNP MPs would be in Sir Keir’s. The SNP leader says that she prefers Sir Keir in No 10 to the Tories. Nationalists took decades to recover after they withdrew support from the minority Labour government in 1979, which subsequently collapsed and ushered in Thatcherism. The chances are that SNP MPs would end up backing Labour’s proposals to reform a dysfunctional UK.
This is how high the stakes are for Ms Sturgeon. The SNP managed to scoop up 50% of the vote in Scotland in the 2015 election – but that was in the wake of an independence referendum. If the SNP failed to achieve that, Ms Sturgeon’s legacy might be nationalist MPs who, through gritted teeth, end up backing a programme to try and fix a union that they campaigned to end.
