In an election that for once wasn’t a fight about flags, an SNP that is radical where powerless, but neoliberal when responsible, was finally held to account. Stephen Low reports.

In Scotland, unlike the rest of UK, Labour’s shift to the right managed to register a gain in votes as well as seats. An impressive shift from one Labour MP to 37 and an extra 340 000 votes. Despite this though, the significant development is less Labour advance and more Nationalist decline. Labour’s increase is some way short of the over half a million drop in the SNP vote.

The results aren’t the only thing that was different about this election. For the first time in at least a decade, Scottish voters weren’t taking part in a contest defined by the independence question. Instead, and to reiterate, this hasn’t happened for a long while. the SNP’s track record in government was scrutinised during an election. This might seem perverse given it was a contest to elect a Parliament that sits in London not Edinburgh; but the centre of gravity of Scottish politics is Holyrood.

All of the parties’ campaigns were fronted by MSPs, not candidates – the Tories Douglas Ross did eventually become a candidate, an episode with an ending that pleased everyone, except Douglas Ross. Debates were dominated by Holyrood issues, specifically the state of public services in general and particularly the wholly devolved NHS.

The end result was a reduction of the SNP parliamentary group from the majority of Scottish seats to a number that could fit in a campervan. The SNP line on the night was they had been squeezed because voters’ priority was getting the Tories out.

As an explanation this barely stands up, and to the extent that it does it points to a serious problem. If Labour’s vote increase is down to a desire to shift the Tories, it shows the SNP are no longer trusted to do that. The slogan in 2019 was “Vote SNP to lock Boris out of Downing Street”. People voted SNP and, well …. It also leaves a six figure gap in votes between the SNP loss and Labour gain in votes unexplained.

Less official explanations have been voiced from within the ranks of those who are awaiting the arrival of their P45. They point to scandals, failures in government and a lack of progress towards independence. All of which are undeniable but the contribution of each is difficult to estimate.

Independence supporters haven’t changed their mind but many of them are now prepared to put other issues ahead of that – things like tackling the cost of living crisis or – yes – getting rid of the Tories. Put bluntly, while support for it remains in the high 40% range, Independence is now an issue rather than the issue.

Not that the SNP have been pursuing independence in any meaningful sense, but they now have no independence strategy at all. Their formal stance in this election, having previously suggested and then abandoned the idea of treating the election as a ‘de facto referendum on independence’, was that winning a majority of seats (note, not votes) would provide a mandate to negotiate secession. This wasn’t taken particularly seriously. Leading figures would mention independence, but the reluctance to discuss how it was going to happen was palpable. Incidentally, when the SNP adopted this policy they already had a majority of seats. They don’t now.

The only thing that seems clear about where the SNP go from here is that, despite the catastrophic results, John Swinney isn’t either drafting his resignation letter or living in fear of a deputation from ‘the men in grey kilts’. He can plausibly enough point to the fact that he has only been in the job for a few weeks; so this can’t really be put down to him. More significantly, he got the job because no one else wanted it – and the chalice of leading the Scottish Government is no less poisoned now than it was in April.

To regain ground, the SNP will need to start to resolve the several and overlapping crises in public services and find some new way to make independence seem both relevant and attainable. It isn’t obvious how those at the top of the party, who have presided over the drift in government and been resistant to any approach on constitutional matters other than their own masterly inactivity, can do this. John Swinney was put in place precisely to avoid any new thinking on anything.

The SNP are certainly down, but not yet out. As Anas Sarwar was saying before the nationalists had time to wipe their tearstained cheeks, change in Scotland “is a two stage process”. The second stage would be his installation as First Minister. This isn’t the slam-dunk Thursday night might make it look. Elections to the Scottish Parliament are of course conducted under a more proportional system. Historically the SNP traditionally do better in Scottish-only elections. As well as that, finding out how many of those former SNP voters who supported Labour on Thursday were indeed doing so ‘to get the Tories out’ is now the most urgent question in Scottish politics.

This is, however, a stunning reversal for the party who have been hegemonic in Scottish politics for over fifteen years. The relegation of flag-waving to the political background allows arguments for social change to come to the forefront. It is an opportunity and the left in the Labour Party and the trade union movement must make as much use of it as we can. 

 Stephen Low is a member of Glasgow Southside CLP. He is a former member of Labour’s Scottish Executive and part of the Red Paper Collective 

Image: John Swinney. Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/scottishgovernment/50910935183/. Author: Scottish Government, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.