Why the Tories are right to put opposition to Scottish independence at the heart of their campaign
With the SNP pressing for a second independence referendum, someone needs to stand up for the Union
A regular criticism of the Scottish Conservatives’ approach to successive elections since 2014 has been the party has little to say other than the familiar “Say no to indyref2”. A glance at any poll over the last few weeks would suggest that whatever the plan, it isn’t working.
Another glance, at the Tory manifesto, shows Russell Findlay’s team have plenty of proposals beyond the constitutional bish-bosh, but all the parties know the average voter doesn’t read manifestos, doesn’t watch leader debates, doesn’t go to hustings and puts election literature straight in the bin. Only the top line cuts through, so in a campaign they just get one shot at it.
Experience and perception over a much longer timespan is what counts and, as both the Conservatives and Labour are painfully aware, what happens in Westminster trumps what happens in Holyrood; if things are bad, there’s not a lot they can do in Scotland to counter the effect. For the SNP, the Greens and, for now anyway, Reform, having no record to defend is a godsend.
Swinney’s UK-funded popcorn
Unfortunately, for the unionist parties, the record of successive UK Governments in the past decade since the brief interregnum of relative calm between the independence and Brexit plebiscites has, to put it mildly, not been great.
The paralysis which followed the vote to leave the EU wrecked Theresa May’s tenure, Boris Johnson’s implosion in the wake of Partygate, the disaster of the Liz Truss experiment, and now the sleaze-ridden and directionless Starmer leadership, have opened the door to extreme Reform and Green alternatives. All John Swinney has had to do is stock up on UK taxpayer-funded popcorn.
The catastrophic impacts of the financial crash, Brexit upheaval, Ukraine War, Covid pandemic and the conflagration in the Middle East would have tested, if not defeated, the greatest masters of statecraft, but together they have allowed the SNP, Greens and Reform to claim they have the answers while clearly having nothing of the sort, but again what reaches voters is the soundbites they hear against the snippets of news which sink in and what they are experiencing in their daily lives.
Times are difficult, communities are changing, the world seems to be on fire and here are three parties promising simple answers for demonstrably complex issues. So why not give them a go?
It’s clearly frustrating for Scottish Labour and the Conservatives – Alex Cole-Hamilton’s Lib Dems not so much as they manoeuvre into position as John Swinney’s arm’s-length coalition partner – that the SNP has had four goes and is about to get a fifth despite two decades in which no progress has been made in any of its responsibilities except to use the billions coming up from Westminster for the expansion of welfare and an unaffordable dependency culture.
The rest is chaff
Voters see this and the result is a slump in SNP support to levels not seen since before 2011, yet the party is emboldened to double down on the cynical plan to impose food price controls on supermarkets, a proposal which ordinarily would put John Swinney in the Royal Edinburgh, not Bute House. But such is the way of modern politics, what reaches voters is the SNP wants independence, natch, and is trying to cut their shopping bills. All the rest is chaff.
And quietly, the support for independence is growing. Only for very brief moments in the 12 years since the independence referendum has support for separation been over 50 per cent, but polling in this campaign has regularly put it at around 52, most recently in Monday’s Survation analysis by the Diffley Partnership.
This is ‘frog boiling’ territory, and the opportunity for the SNP after next week is to play a straight bat, over-promise and under-deliver but keep piling in on the Westminster blame game, while the Labour government tears itself to pieces and the Nigel Farage bogeyman is ever-present to scare the nationalist-minded children.
Increasingly, this is becoming the perfect storm for the independence movement, even if support for the SNP is flagging. It’s even abetted by Reform’s Scottish leader Malcolm Offord whose position is to have an independence referendum by all means, but to grow the economy first, which if successful would potentially create more favourable conditions for a Yes victory.
I have long argued in these pages that the problem facing the SNP was the impatience of its grassroots, and the opportunity would be in 2029 and 2031 after Labour failure and a Conservative revival in England. The rise of Reform is an added bonus.
Greek-style austerity
At the same time, the rising cost of living and the housing shortage – ironically, the latter very much the SNP’s responsibility – has begun to budge the long-anticipated demographic shift, where younger independence supporters don’t grow out of it as they age and settle down.
The bedrock is higher public spending, and an uncosted promise of £1.7 billion, not including the capped food cost stunt, on top of a £5bn deficit with which the incoming administration must wrestle. Public spending at 14 per cent higher than the UK average is only possible thanks to UK borrowing, which an independent Scotland would need to match.
According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the notional Scottish fiscal deficit, the difference between spending and revenue, is an eye-watering and unsustainable 11.6 per cent compared to the UK’s 5.1, which would put promised EU membership off the table while Greek-style austerity was imposed to even get close to the EU’s three per cent requirement.
Against this background, with the SNP promising to make legislating for an independence referendum an immediate priority, why wouldn’t the Conservatives put their opposition at the heart of their campaign? Very soon, someone will need to.
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