Boris, Brexit, and still the SNP can’t persuade Scots to break with Britain

I visited Scotland several times during the pandemic, most notably for last year’s Holyrood Parliament elections. It was a bleak experience each time: shops closed, no service in hotels, compulsory mask wearing — all imposed with a greater unsmiling steeliness than in England. 

This week it was a pleasure to return to Edinburgh to find the capital city coming back to some semblance of normal life. Foreign tourists are back, especially the Americans. Stations and airports are packed. Those shops which have survived Covid are open, though there are now many empty properties on Prince’s Street, just as there are in the West End of London and most other city centres. Restaurants and hotels are operating in spite of a pervasive lack of staff. 

Judging by the results of the parliamentary elections last year and this May’s local elections Scottish politics appears to be almost back to normal. The SNP continues to enjoy hegemony; the nationalists took just under half the seats at Holyrood under PR last year and continue to rule comfortably, in partnership with the Greens. The SNP came first in the council elections, with a third of the votes, increasing its number of local councillors. To cap it all, this week Nicola Sturgeon became Scotland’s longest-serving First Minister, finally eclipsing the previous seven-and-a-half-year record of her mentor-turned-tormentor Alex Salmond. 

One other thing that has not changed since the referendum on independence in 2014 is the settled view of the Scottish People about going it alone. They voted 55 per cent to 45 per cent against leaving the United Kingdom then, and the balance was exactly the same in the recent YouGov poll for The Times. Paradoxically this no change points to an awful lot of change in the future prospects for the Scottish National Party and perhaps also for Scotland.

In spite of never having voted Conservative for 60 years, in spite of near-universal disdain in Scotland for Boris Johnson the misbehaving English Tory toff prime minister, in spite of demographic shifts and votes for sixteen-year-olds, and in spite of Sturgeon making good use of the bully pulpit of daily TV during the pandemic, Scottish public opinion has wobbled back to sticking with Brexit Britain. 

The opinion poll analysis is no more favourable to independence when “Don’t Knows” are taken into account. The figures are then Yes 38 per cent, No 46 per cent, Don’t Knows 11 per cent. Converting all the doubters would still most likely leave Yes short of a majority — even though Sturgeon enjoys a personal net approval rating of 51 per cent to 42 per cent. 

Sturgeon still insists that she intends to hold IndyRef2 by the end of next year, by fair means or foul since it is technically in the gift of the Westminster Parliament. In preparation, the Scottish government plans to start publishing a series of papers soon on the possible shape of independence. But 59 per cent in the YouGov poll think holding another referendum so soon is a bad idea. This is a mocking mirror image of the 60 per cent support for Independence in polls which Sturgeon has previously suggested she’d like to see before holding a second vote.

The good news for the First Minister is that, for now, Scots are at least content for the SNP to go on bearing the burdens of national office as they get heavier. Next week the Scottish government is due to publish its spending review. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, there will be a £3.5 billion black hole in national finances by 2026-2027. The options facing the executive are tax rises, spending cuts and cancellation of promised infrastructure projects. Or they could go on deficit financing a net £640 per person overspend, on the assumption that the UK Treasury will eventually make it good. For obvious political reasons that has happened before and is a sound practical reason for voters to back a nationalist party to exert leverage on London. 

Meanwhile, after fifteen years of the SNP in charge Scottish public services are creaking. The newly re-nationalised Scotrail has had to slash 700 regular train services because of a dispute with train drivers. With pay levels already above those in England and Wales, Aslef is balloting on a 4.2 per cent pay offer but a national strike remains a possibility. There have been costly overruns and delays in the building of major new “NHS Scotland” hospitals in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Male mortality rates from suicide, alcohol and drug addiction are setting international records. The alleged decline in Scotland’s once golden educational standards is a constant element in the national conversation. There is little love for the service delivered by the amalgamated “Police Scotland”, which is trying to reverse a decline in police numbers.

International developments have also cast a pall over some of Sturgeon’s long-held positions. Scotland’s energy richness has long been cited as a good reason for going it alone, but the alliance with the Greens has only strengthened opposition to developing new oil and gas fields in the North Sea, just as the Ukraine crisis makes them seem more viable. Sturgeon hosted the US Speaker Nancy Pelosi and gave a speech pledging that an independent Scotland would join NATO, without mentioning the fact that the SNP also intends to weaken NATO’s nuclear deterrent by kicking out the UK nuclear submarine base at Faslane. Scotland’s pretensions to joining a club of similar peace-loving small Nordic independent nations will need to be recalibrated following Finland and Sweden’s applications to NATO. France and the EU might also be less keen on welcoming Scotland into the community at the cost of weakening the defence of Europe.

In an effort to reassure the wider public, the SNP is increasingly stressing that its vision of independence does not challenge establishment values. It would keep the Queen and her heirs as head of state and belong to NATO and the EU. This is causing tensions with others in the independence camp such as the Greens and Alex Salmond’s Alba party.

Although proportional representation has allowed the SNP to dominate Scottish politics, the unionist parties combined — Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat — have always commanded more votes. Each of these three Scottish parties now brands itself completely differently from its counterpart based in England. They have their own leaders who have differentiated themselves, sometimes awkwardly, from the party leaders in Westminster. 

Nevertheless, hints are emerging that the pro-unionist parties may be ready to work together against the nationalist threat. The SNP were the largest single party on Edinburgh council after the local elections, but to their fury, Labour will now run the council backed by Liberal Democrat and Conservative councillors, following a 32 to 29 vote this week. 

If the SNP manages to force a binding IndyRef 2 it could face an existential threat either way. If it loses a second time — what would be the raison d’etre for the party? But if it wins would it not have fulfilled its useful purpose? Conventional left-right-centre politics might then resume. 

No wonder the impressive Nicola Sturgeon often looks careworn these days. There are suggestions she might like to step down soon, but she and her party have failed to cultivate potential successors of equivalent standing. 

Boris Johnson’s essentially English nationalist government could yet mishandle and provoke separatism in Scotland or Northern Ireland but an independent Scotland no longer feels like the near inevitability it has often seemed during the past generation of nationalist excitement. It is just as likely that Edinburgh and Scotland may be heading back to an even older normal than the pre-Covid world now struggling to be reborn.