Cutting Loose: Scottish
Labour and the SNP
David Purdy writes:
As recently as last September, a poll for the Scottish Mail on Sunday on Westminster
voting intentions gave Scottish Labour a six-point lead over the SNP, with
Labour on 39%, the SNP 33%, the Conservatives 18% and the Lib Dems 3%. Since
the referendum, Labour has lost one third of its support in Scotland, while the
SNP has climbed to 45-47%, a lead of around 20 points. On a uniform national
swing, Scottish Labour would be annihilated, losing all but a handful of its 41
Westminster seats. Even if the party were to claw back to 35%, while the SNP
slipped to 38%, Labour and the SNP would each win 28 seats, an outcome that
could still put paid to Labour’s chances of forming the next UK government.
So far, despite the best efforts of its newly elected
leader, Jim Murphy, Scottish Labour has yet to reach base camp. A seat-by-seat
survey of 16,000 Scottish voters conducted by Michael Ashcroft’s polling
organisation and reported in the press on 5th February confirmed the
bad news for Labour. The poll, covering 16 constituencies – 14 held by Labour,
two by the Lib Dems and all areas where there was strong support for Yes in the
independence referendum – showed an average 21-point swing from Labour to the
SNP. If these results were replicated across Scotland, Labour would lose 35 of
its seats. Among voters under 44, support for the SNP is nearly double that of
Labour. Indeed, the SNP leads across all age groups, except among those aged 65
and over. Even allowing that the swing against Labour might be lower in areas
where the Yes vote was lower, the party’s prospects look bleak.
In what follows, after tracing the forward march of the SNP
from protest to power, I examine the impact of the referendum and its aftermath
on Scotland’s political landscape, explore the implications for May’s election
and suggest that Scottish Labour’s best – and perhaps only – hope of recovering
from defeat is to cut loose from its sister parties south of the border,
embrace the cause of Home Rule and challenge the SNP’s lingering attachment to
neo-liberal “common sense”.
The
rise and rise of the SNP
Table 1 UK election results in Scotland 1970-2010
Con Lab Liberal/ SNP Other
1970 38.0 44.5 5.5 11.4 0.6
1974 (Feb) 32.9 36.6 7.9 21.9 0.6
1974 (Oct) 24.7 36.3 8.3 30.4 0.3
1979 31.4 41.5 9.0 17.3 0.8
1983 28.4 35.1 24.5 11.8 0.3
1987 24.0 42.4 19.2 14.0 0.3
1992 25.6 39.0 13.1 21.5 0.8
1997 17.5 45.6 13.0 22.1 1.9
2001 15.6 43.3 16.3 20.1 4.7
2005 15.8 38.9 22.6 17.7 5.1
2010 16.7 42.0 18.9 19.9 2.0
The SNP’s initial electoral breakthrough came at the
Hamilton by-election in 1967. Thereafter it fielded candidates in more or less
every Scottish constituency in UK general elections. The party’s share of the
vote peaked at 30% in the October 1974 election, when it pushed the
Conservatives into third place, yet it won only 11 (15%) of the 71 Scottish
seats then in existence. After a lean spell in the 1980s, the SNP averaged
around 20% of the votes, but even its best result, in 1997, yielded only 6
seats.
This discrepancy between votes and seats is easily
explained: the SNP’s support is spread evenly across Scotland, both
geographically and socially. Unless a party is in the lead across the piece, an
even geographical spread is always a disadvantage under first-past-the-post
elections. And the SNP’s vote varies little by occupational class or type of
housing tenure, making it difficult to break into Labour’s heartlands in the
Central Belt, where most of the population lives.
Thus, prior to devolution, the SNP struggled to make headway
in Westminster elections. With the new Scottish parliament, however, came a new
electoral system. Under the Additional Member System (AMS), the 72 existing
first-past-the-post constituencies (with Orkney and Shetland divided into two)
were supplemented by 56 party list seats, allocated within each of eight
regions so as to ensure that the overall distribution of seats in each region,
both constituency and list, would reflect, as closely as possible, the division
of votes among parties. This system, agreed after protracted negotiation
between Labour and the Lib Dems, the senior partners within the Scottish
Constitutional Convention that campaigned for devolution during the 1990s,
offered a compromise between the Lib Dems’ preference for PR and Labour’s need
for reassurance that should the SNP start coming first in votes, it would still
fail to achieve an overall majority of seats.
As can be seen from Table 2 below, until 2011 the SNP found
it difficult to win constituency seats and depended for its heft within the
Scottish Parliament on the top-up regional list seats. Even in 2007 when, for
the first time, the party won the largest share of the constituency vote,
Labour still had a majority of constituency seats (37 out of 73) as against 21
for the SNP. Nevertheless, because the allocation of list seats gave it one
more than Labour overall, it won the election and went on to form a minority
government, with the support of the Scottish Greens. In 2011, the SNP managed
to achieve what AMS was designed to prevent: a single-party majority in the
Scottish Parliament, coming first in 53 constituencies and winning 69 seats
overall, compared with 15 and 37, respectively, for Labour.
The referendum and after: how Scotland has changed
There was now no parliamentary barrier to holding a
referendum on independence, but the legal position was still unclear. After
nine months of negotiation, in October 2012 a deal was struck: the UK
government agreed to a temporary transfer of the requisite legal powers on
condition that the referendum was confined to a single question offering a
straight Yes-No choice. The Scottish government had been open to the
possibility of two questions, offering voters three options – the status quo,
“devo max” (or Home Rule within the Union) and full independence – but the
pro-Union parties ruled this out, anticipating that a clear majority for
remaining in the UK would “settle the issue for a generation.”
Table 2: Scottish Parliament election results in votes and
seats, 1999-2011
%
constituency vote (no of seats)
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
1999 2003 2007 2011
SNP 28.7 ( 7) 23.8
( 9) 32.9 (21) 45.4
(53)
Lab 38.8 (53) 34.6 (46) 32.2 (37) 31.7 (15)
Cons 15.6 ( 0) 16.6
( 3) 16.6 ( 4) 13.9 ( 3)
Lib Dem 14.2 (12) 15.4 (13) 16.2 (11) 7.9
( 2)
Greens – –
0.1 ( 0) 0.1 ( 0) –
–
SSP 1.0
( 0) 6.2 ( 0)
0.0 ( 0) –
–
Others 1.7 ( 1)
3.5 ( 2) 2.0 ( 0) 1.1
( 0)
% regional list vote
(no of seats)
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
SNP 27.3 (28) 20.9 (18) 31.0 (26) 44.0 (16)
Lab 33.6 ( 3) 29.3
( 4) 29.2 ( 9) 26.3 (22)
Cons 15.4 (18) 15.5 (15) 13.9 (13) 12.4 (12)
Lib Dem 12.4 ( 5) 11.8
( 4) 11.3 ( 5) 5.2
( 3)
Greens 3.6
( 1) 6.9 ( 7)
4.0 ( 2) 5.2
( 2)
SSP 2.0
( 1) 6.7 ( 6)
0.6 ( 0) 0.4
( 0)
Others 5.7 ( 0)
8.9 ( 2) 10.0 ( 1)
6.5 ( 1)
What they had not reckoned with was the transforming impact
of a long referendum campaign. For the next two years, the SNP combined
incumbency with insurgency, continuing to govern Scotland while holding out the
vision of Scotland as a new self-governing nation. In a bid to quell voters’
anxieties about “separating” from the UK, the party limited its ambition to
“independence lite”, offering assurances that in the event of a Yes vote,
Scotland would cease to be represented at Westminster, but would retain a
shared monarch as ceremonial head of state, along with the pound sterling, the
Bank of England, membership of NATO and membership of the EU.
In the event, this attempt to secure the repeal the 1707 Act
of Union, while preserving a common currency, crown and geo-political
alignment, came to grief. Yet despite losing the referendum by a wider margin
than polls taken in the last six weeks of the campaign had suggested, Yes
Scotland did well to secure 45% of the vote (on a remarkable 85% turnout).
1.6 million Scots had voted to leave the UK, the highest level of support for
independence ever recorded at the ballot box. According to polls conducted at
the outset of the campaign, in a three-way choice between the status quo, more
devolved powers and full independence, 35-36% of the Scottish public favoured
more powers, while 32-33% supported each of the other options. With the
referendum reduced to a binary choice, the rival camps had to win over the
middle ground, now reclassified as undecided voters. On this reckoning, support
for independence grew by 12-13 percentage points over the course of the
campaign, though by the same arithmetic, two thirds of those who wanted more devolution
short of independence ended up voting No.
What no one expected was the sequence of events that
unfolded after the referendum. Within minutes of the result being announced, a
relieved David Cameron issued a “Counter-Vow”: if returned to office at the
next election, he declared, the Conservatives proposed to tackle the West
Lothian question by amending the procedures of the House of Commons so as to
secure “English Votes for English Laws”. In the weeks and months that followed,
Scotland’s political landscape was transformed as supporters of other parties
who had voted Yes in the referendum, together with some who had voted No,
defected in droves to the SNP.
Hitherto, as a comparison of Tables 1 and 2 shows, the SNP
had won a higher share of the constituency vote in elections to the Scottish
Parliament than it achieved in the preceding Westminster election. Indeed, the
gap widened from 4 percentage points in 2003 to 15 in 2007 and to 25 in 2011.
In part, this pattern can be explained as a mid-term protest vote. But surveys
suggest that, regardless of the state of the Westminster election cycle, voters
were more willing back the SNP in elections to the Scottish Parliament than in
elections to the UK House of Commons. In the former, people focus on who is
best fitted to govern Scotland; in the latter, on who will provide good
government for the UK as a whole. The SNP does not aspire to govern the UK, but
it is a serious contender in Scotland, offering an attractive alternative to a
dysfunctional Scottish Labour Party, which those who vote Labour or Lib Dem in
Westminster elections can safely back for Holyrood.
Since the referendum, however, Holyrood voting intentions
have been translated into Westminster voting intentions. According to the
Ashcroft polls cited earlier, 35% of Scots who voted Labour in 2010 and almost
half Scots who voted Lib Dem intend to back the SNP this time. And two thirds of Labour voters who have
switched to the SNP say they do not intend to switch back. Fear of letting the
Tories back in has been overridden by the intense focus on Scottish politics
that built up during the referendum and will almost certainly persist up to and
beyond the next Holyrood election in May 2016 until a new constitutional
settlement is reached, whether this involves some form of Home Rule or, indeed,
another referendum on independence.
Parliamentary
arithmetic, constitutional reform and political renewal
“Red Nats” sense the prospect of a landslide victory that
leaves the SNP holding the balance of power at Westminster, possibly as the
third-largest party. This, they hope, will enable it to conclude a
parliamentary pact with a minority Labour government whereby in return for confidence
and supply support, the SNP secures concessions ranging from Home Rule with
full fiscal autonomy to the cancellation of Trident and the removal of nuclear
weapons from the Clyde.
The trouble is that in a situation where neither Labour nor
the Tories are likely to achieve an overall majority, every seat that Labour
loses in Scotland makes it more likely that the Tories will end up as the
largest party at Westminster. At the very least, that would give the Tories
first shot at forming a government, though of course, whether they succeed
depends on the parliamentary arithmetic, and more specifically on the number of
seats won by the DUP, UKIP and, perhaps, the Lib Dems. If the numbers stack up,
the Tories will move heaven and earth to stay in office. And even if they fail,
there is no guarantee that the numbers will stack up for Labour or that if they
do, Labour will accede to the demands of the SNP, whether acting alone or in
concert with Plaid Cymru and the Greens. Other outcomes are possible: there
could, for example, be a second election and if that failed to resolve the
deadlock, Labour and the Conservatives could form a grand coalition to take
charge of constitutional reform, starting with a reform of the voting system.
At present it looks as if, whatever happens, the SNP cannot
lose. If it routs Labour in Scotland without letting the Tories back in, a
minority Labour government at Westminster would have to pay a price to win its
backing. If the Tories form a minority government and, with Lib Dem support,
proceed to give English and – on matters not devolved to Cardiff – Welsh MPs a
veto over legislation that does not apply to Scotland, pressure would mount
north of the border for a second referendum, especially if the Tories
simultaneously refuse to countenance a “Celtic” veto in any referendum on UK
membership of the EU. And even the hint of a grand coalition between Labour and
the Tories would make Labour even more unpopular in Scotland than it already
is, confirming the nationalist argument that the two establishment parties are
essentially interchangeable and will do anything to preserve the Union.
If Scottish Labour suffers a heavy defeat in May, its
condition, already critical, could become terminal. If it is to avoid internal
strife, stop haemorrhaging support, mount a credible electoral challenge to the
SNP in 2016 and, in the longer term, prevent its old rival from becoming
Scotland’s Fianna Fail, its best hope is to sever organisational ties with its
sister parties in England and Wales, rename itself the Independent Scottish
Labour Party and embrace the cause of Home Rule, an aspiration shared by both
Labour and the Liberals in the early twentieth century before two world wars,
the Great Depression and the post-war Labour Government turned the UK into one
of the most centralised states in Europe.
Undoubtedly, cutting loose
would be painful. But by splitting along the line of the border rather than
along a left-right axis, as happened when the ILP broke away in 1932 and the
SDP was formed in 1981, Labour would be better placed to adapt to an era of
multi-party politics that takes different forms in different parts of the UK.
In Scotland, the SNP needs to be challenged from the left. For far too long it
has been allowed to get away with advocating Scandinavian social policies on
the basis of US tax levels. With a fresh lease of life and a new sense of
purpose, an Independent Scottish Labour Party could put the SNP under pressure
to jettison its neo-liberal baggage and sign up to the project of working
towards a new social settlement and a better kind of capitalism within the
framework of a federal state.
