The Economist: The wider lessons of Scotland’s political turmoil

 

The wider lessons of Scotland’s political turmoil

“INDEPENDENCE feels frustratingly close,” said Humza Yousaf, the outgoing leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) and first minister of Scotland, as he announced his resignation on April 29th. The comment captured Mr Yousaf’s personal limitations: secession is, in fact, as distant a prospect now as it has been at any time since Scots voted against it in a referendum in 2014. As such, it is a reminder of the SNP’s need to find fresh purpose.

Mr Yousaf’s departure had been precipitated, days earlier, by his ditching of the Bute House Agreement, a power-sharing deal signed by the snp and the Scottish Greens in 2021. That deal gave the snp a slim pro-independence majority in Holyrood, the Scottish Parliament. But it also tied the party to a progressive agenda, covering matters from climate change to gender identity, that had begun to fray. By dumping the Greens, Mr Yousaf hoped to shore up his authority. Instead he revealed he didn’t have any. When it became clear he was not wanted to lead any government, minority or otherwise, he resigned.

The search for a new leader of the snp has now begun. Two front-runners have emerged: John Swinney, a trusted SNP stalwart who was briefly party leader two decades ago, and Kate Forbes, who came a close second to Mr Yousaf in the SNP’s last leadership contest a little over a year ago. Mr Swinney will stand; at the time of writing, Ms Forbes had yet to declare her hand. If there is a contest between candidates, a new leader will be chosen in a ballot of members in the coming weeks. Mr Yousaf will stay on until his successor is in place.

Whoever succeeds him faces a gigantic task. The party’s fortunes began to nosedive in June last year, when Nicola Sturgeon, its former leader and a charismatic champion of Scottish independence, was arrested as part of a police investigation into the SNP’s finances (she denies any wrongdoing). In April Peter Murrell, her husband and a former chief executive of the party, was charged in connection with the embezzlement of funds.

Mr Yousaf was an unimpressive successor. But the SNP’s real trouble is less one of leadership than the loss of its raison d’être. Although support for independence remains steady, at about 46% of voters, it has become less salient as an election issue. A ruling in 2022 by the Supreme Court, that a second independence referendum cannot be held unless Westminster agrees to it, dealt the SNP a heavy blow. The blocking of the obvious path to independence has had two consequences.

The first is that the record of the SNP in other areas has come under the spotlight. The party has ruled Scotland since 2007, and does not have a lot to shout about. Voters give low ratings to Scotland’s schools, which do not perform as well as England’s, and to its health service, which also has long waiting lists. On April 18th the government said it was scrapping unachievable climate targets that were part of the Bute House agreement. (This enraged the Greens who threatened to tear up the deal; Mr Yousaf got there first.)

A set of progressive policies designed to make the SNP look more enlightened than other parties has instead made it seem divorced from voters’ everyday concerns. A policy of accommodating trans women (biological men) in women’s prisons caused outrage after a rapist was housed with female prisoners. A new law on hate crimes has attracted widespread criticism for its potentially chilling effect on free speech. nhs Scotland’s adoption of a recommendation last month by Hilary Cass, a respected paediatrician, that doctors stop prescribing harmful puberty blockers to children exposed rifts between progressives and conservatives within the SNP’s governing coalition.

The second, related consequence is the effect on the Labour Party, which once held sway north of the border. As recently as 2010 the party won 41 of Scotland’s 59 seats in Westminster. But after the referendum in 2014 it lost a lot of ground to the snp. In the general election in 2019 it took one solitary seat. Its prospects have since brightened considerably. An average of recent Scottish polls suggests that the SNP is now neck-and-neck with Labour (with 34% and 33% of the projected vote respectively). Sir John Curtice, a polling guru and professor of politics at Strathclyde University, says that if this were the case in an actual Westminster election, it would mean Labour winning 28 seats in Scotland and the SNP 18. That would greatly ease the path to Downing Street for Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader.

How can the snp reverse its slide—if not before the general election, due by the end of January 2025, then at least in time for the next Holyrood elections in 2026? Neither of the front-runners is a straightforwardly good choice. Mr Swinney, 60, who is competent but uninspiring, is often described as a “continuity candidate”. That reflects his decades of experience in the senior echelons of party as well as his endorsement of the snp’s progressive social policies, including on gender. Given the SNP’s levels of dysfunction, continuity doesn’t sound much like a compliment.

Ms Forbes, who is just over half Mr Swinney’s age and a lot more charismatic, offers a vision of sensible government designed to raise Scots’ living standards. But her conservative Christian views (on things like abortion) are unacceptable to many in the snP and would widen fissures with the Greens, whose support still matters to a minority government. Lefties worry that her fiscal conservatism and drive for economic growth could come at the cost of things like workers’ rights.

Politicians on both the left and the right of the party agree that it will not rebound without first demonstrating an ability to run Scotland more effectively. But that is easier said than done. The new first minister will have to win support for SNP policies in a fractured Parliament. They will have to hold together a broad coalition of both politicians and voters—who range from stolidly conservative to a faction called the SNP Socialists—when there is no prospect of another independence referendum to galvanise support. Mr Yousaf may not have been much cop as leader. But this is a task that would stretch much more talented politicians than him. ■

The Economist, May 2nd 2024