In May 2015, as part of my newspaper’s general election coverage, I went out with Labour campaigners as they canvassed in one of the party’s heartlands: Airdrie and Shotts. The campaigners were in denial, but the signs of collapse were everywhere: in the many saltires, the “red Tories” graffiti, and the “I didn’t leave Labour, Labour left me” line repeated in every vox pop. A few days later, Airdrie and Shotts was taken by the now Scottish secretary for health and social care, Neil Gray (one of 56 seats won by the SNP), and the party that had kept an iron grip on central Scotland was consigned to the political wilderness.
What goes around comes around, they say. Less than a decade on, the SNP are heading for, if not quite the wipeout Scottish Labour experienced, then an electoral humiliation on a scale that would have been unthinkable 18 months ago. More humiliating still is that the decline comes against a backdrop of sustained support for independence. Not only do polls suggest the party will lose 27 seats (with Labour gaining 28), they suggest two-fifths of 2019 SNP voters will back Labour, despite its continued stance on the union.
This has less to do with a rekindling of passion for Labour than it does a desperation to see the Tories kicked out and a disillusionment with the SNP. You can pick away at the myriad factors that have undermined the SNP’s popularity: its centralising tendencies, the splits over the trial of Alex Salmond, the gender recognition reform bill and the (lack of a) strategy to secure a second independence referendum, and a fraud inquiry that resulted in the party’s former chief executive Peter Murrell being charged with embezzlement. But really, the problem boils down to this: the SNP failed to learn Labour’s lesson. Having wooed poorer voters, it did little to alter the status quo. It talked the talk without walking the walk, and took its supporters for granted.
The wheels had begun to come off the SNP project before Nicola Sturgeon resigned, but in the year that followed it careened wildly across the political carriageway. The bitter leadership contest between Kate Forbes and Humza Yousaf deepened divisions, making it more difficult to regain control. And then Yousaf resigned after a series of misjudgments that culminated in his abrupt ending of the party’s coalition with the Greens.
The new first minister, John Swinney, looked a good bet to bring stability, but he’d barely had time to set out his stall before Rishi Sunak called his snap election. The SNP started its campaign five seats down from the 2019 election (two defections to Alba, one defection to the Tories, one expulsion, and the suspension of Margaret Ferrier for Covid breaches, after which she sat as an independent).
Then, Swinney jettisoned his “safe pair of hands” reputation by refusing to support the recommendation of Holyrood’s standards committee on former Scottish health secretary Michael Matheson. The committee had ruled that Matheson, who wrongly claimed £11,000 expenses to cover laptop streaming charges, should serve a 27-day suspension. Swinney referenced previous comments made by Conservative committee member Annie Wells and suggested the decision might have been “prejudiced”.
In the face of this, all Scottish Labour needs to do is not self-sabotage. With no second referendum in the offing, it should pick up votes from independence supporters and centrist Tories outraged by the cynicism and incompetence of current Conservative leaders. Last week, Keir Starmer kicked off his campaign in Scotland, emphasising the importance of Scottish seats – not only in numerical terms, but because he wants to put Scotland “at the beating heart” of the UK. He courted disaffected Scots by tapping into their sense of being politically abandoned. Over and over, he used the word “change”, backing it up with placards bearing the same word.
This attack on the hegemony of the SNP (and the hegemony of the Tories in England) is interesting because it comes straight from the SNP playbook. “Look at your lives,” the SNP said in 2015. “Only we care enough to improve them.” This tactic worked in the short- and medium-term, as SNP supporters placed their faith in the party’s promise of radicalism. But the problem with basing your campaign on change is that, at some point, you will be expected to deliver it. Seventeen years on from first taking power, most things have stayed the same: the council tax has not been scrapped, the educational attainment gap has not closed, and child poverty has not been eradicated.
Labour’s strategy faces the same pitfalls; more so, perhaps, on “once bitten, twice shy” grounds. And yet, even as he poses as the great catalyst, it is not easy to work out what Starmer plans to do better. He is not committing to funding free school meals for all primary pupils. Or to scrapping the two-child benefit cap. Or to abandoning the Tories’ austerity agenda.
Labour will no doubt make great gains in Scotland at a time when the SNP is in the doldrums and the priority for many people is to get the Tories out, but it remains to be seen how sustainable its “resurgence” will prove. Because for the almost 50% of Scots who support independence, the change that matters – the change they see as the gateway to a more fundamental transformation – is separation from the UK, not a promise to be placed at the heart of it. Labour will have to produce policies much bolder and braver than anything Starmer has offered so far to convince them otherwise.
Dani Garavelli is a freelance journalist and columnist for the Herald
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