SNP MPs won’t be missed if they lose third party status to Lib Dems

The election campaign has thrown up a wild card in the Lib Dems’ Ed Davey, whose trajectory from ineffectual buffoon to most lovable leader has taken just two weeks.

From his daft stunts – falling off paddle boards and hurtling down water slides – to his moving video where he talks of losing his parents as a youngster and caring for his disabled son, he has shown the human face of politics.

While both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer could benefit from being a bit more Ed Davey, the Lib Dems, despite their leader’s newfound appeal, are not going to win the election. But they may well come third this time.

And what that means is the SNP, for the past decade the third party in a parliament they want no part of, will forfeit the national spotlight.

Since overtaking the Lib Dems in seats, but not in the size of their vote (the Lib Dems had 15 seats to the SNP’s 43 at dissolution but significantly more UK-wide votes), the SNP has had a plum role at PMQs, being allowed to ask the Prime Minister two questions every Wednesday.

Now polls point to something of a renaissance for the Lib Dems, after almost ten years in fourth position following their five years in coalition under Nick Clegg.

Davey said his party was on course to take seats from the nationalists, along with Conservative constituencies south of the border. And Scottish Lib Dem leader Alex Cole-Hamilton insisted this week that they would “brush away the SNP”, although it is mostly Labour that will dispatch the Nats.

In Scotland, the Lib Dems are predicted to make two gains, in former Commons leader Ian Blackford’s Caithness Sutherland and Easter Ross seat and in Mid Dunbartonshire, the new constituency covering former UK Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson’s old seat.

But it is the extent of the potential SNP losses that will help propel Davey to greater prominence in Westminster. Recent polling suggests the nationalists could drop from the 48 seats they won in 2019 to just seven, with Stephen Flynn, currently SNP leader in the Commons, at risk of losing his marginal Aberdeen South seat.

The would-be cull reflects a shift in Scottish voters’ priorities, away from constitutional upheaval – independence as an issue is ranked only fifth in importance – and towards core matters such as the cost of living and the NHS, where Scottish voters, in line with the rest of the UK, trust Labour the most. 

The SNP only have themselves to blame for their coming demise. Arriving in London after winning almost all of Scotland’s seats in 2015, then-leader Nicola Sturgeon promised to make Scotland’s voice heard like never before.

But what did the Commons cohort actually achieve for Scots? How have they influenced a single policy decision since their mass occupation of the Commons benches?

With most responsibilities, including health and education, devolved to Holyrood, their power to impact Scottish lives was already limited, but they have failed to hold successive UK Tory governments to account.

Motivated by nationalist not national interests, they have squandered their sizeable representation by their obsession with a second independence referendum and a compulsion to do down the country.

They have staged futile walk-outs and performative rule-breaking to get themselves ejected, a Blackford speciality.

The fanfare that greeted firebrands like Mhairi Black has ended in a whimper (she is not even standing this time), as secessionists inevitably became frustrated by their inability to effect change.

Given that the SNP’s raison d’etre is separation from Britain, the party’s very presence in the British legislature is compromising, its purpose at odds with everyone else’s.

But aside from ideological conundrums, Nationalist MPs have indulged in internecine squabbles that have further undermined their clout. 

A reshuffle in 2021 saw Joanna Cherry, one of the SNP’s few talented MPs, dumped from her frontbench role, after she disagreed with Sturgeon’s transgender agenda.

Other high-profile MPs brought their party into disrepute in extracurricular activities around the Palace of Westminster’s many watering holes.

The late Gordon Wilson, former SNP leader and MP for Dundee East, spoke of another era but it could have been today when he reportedly said: “The SNP group get Westminsterised and enjoy the benefits and forget the reason they are here.”

We will almost certainly see less of them following 4 July, but while Westminster won’t miss them, their party will be bereft, particularly financially as the SNP relies heavily on MPs’ money.

In 2023-24, the SNP received £1.3 million in House of Commons Short Money, calculated on the number of MPs and share of the vote. For the first three months of this year, this was the only substantial money brought in by the Nats, according to Electoral Commission figures.

If they lose most of their seats, as predicted, they would miss out on more than £1 million in Short Money, a disaster on top of their existing financial woes.

Meanwhile, in Westminster the re-energised Lib Dems may prove to be just what the nation needs, checking the excesses of both a Labour landslide and a rump of right-wing Conservatives.

With the political landscape so rearranged, the electorate can hopefully look forward to a third opposition party focused on making Britain better not breaking it up.

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