The referendum didn't just spook the British establishment

The National

16 hours ago

This after First Minister John Swinney had been insisting the only way to beat Reform UK – who won more than 7000 votes and were in touching distance of the two main parties – was to vote SNP. It all turned into a somewhat embarrassing affair.
But it did go to show that the SNP's rather cynical electoral ploy came a cropper earlier than anticipated. The idea was to centre the threat of Reform in their communications, and discipline their base into mobilising to vote.
It would also, in theory, have fragmented the Scottish Labour campaign, especially given how susceptible the party has been, the party lost votes to Reform south of the Border last month.
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And, while motivating its ailing activist base, this would also provide a neat way to avoid talking about the lack of tangible change the SNP have delivered for working-class Scots despite their long years of political dominance.
But any strategy that makes sense on paper is only worth its salt if it meets the challenges posed in reality. This didn't.
And we know the SNP special advisers at least partly agree, because in the days following, the First Minister started talking about independence again.
That is a word that was barely uttered during the by-election. Indeed, it has been near absent from the SNP's public platform for quite some time now.
Many in the independence movement, quite naturally, point to this as yet more evidence that the party cannot deliver on what is supposed to be its reason for existence in the first place. At the same time, it is also true to say that the national question is not exactly at a high watermark.
Nevertheless, there will now be an attempt to 'push the independence button' once again. But herein lies the rub: independence has been reduced to a phrase, rather than struggled for as a cause.
The blame for that lies not with Unionist opponents, but with the SNP leadership, who over the years since the referendum have sought to sanitise the issue and to exert control over a once-vibrant movement. It was wheeled out like a party trick in the run-up to elections, with empty proclamations about a coming referendum.
This worked for a period, but was already reaching its limitations before the Supreme Court ruling – itself a product of strategic misadventure – brought the false promises to a conclusion. Thus, there is a healthy dose of cynicism among the electorate that the SNP have a plan to deliver independence, not least among those who support national self-determination.
It doesn't end there. Precisely because it had been utilised as a mechanism to marshal support at the ballot box and little else, the issue has not been properly developed over the last 10 years.
Any work on the prospectus via the Growth Commission was shown to be contradictory on its own terms. It was widely discredited, as well as being repudiated by independence campaigners themselves.
Disastrously, even the crucial questions like currency have been run into a cul-de-sac. Even now the official position is for sterlingisation, which effectively leaves monetary control with the Bank of England for an indefinite period.
In the meantime, the Scottish Government has been busily selling off key assets and parts of Scotland's future industrial base to the lowest – yes, the lowest – bidder.
And that is not to mention the integration of freeports, which are subnational tax havens, over which the Scottish Government has no ability to intervene.
In essence, it's a kind of paint-by-numbers neoliberalism, where the only point of governing is to administer on behalf of, and to outsource to, the corporate sector.
It is often said that the independence movement of 2014 gave the British state a fright. It did. But it also spooked the Scottish establishment. This is why it was always seen as a problem to be contained, rather than an asset to be nourished, by the SNP leadership.
It is why, in the months after the referendum, the whole issue was syphoned off into a cult of personality around then-first minister Nicola Sturgeon. And let's be clear: blame for that goes two ways. Yes, the SNP leadership worked with some skill to defenestrate any challenges that might emerge from below. But the independence movement, in its majority left critical thinking at the door too.
This was an unfortunate product of the No vote, which submerged the radical and irreverent energies imbued in the Yes campaign. It means that today independence has become divorced from the big questions around living standards, public services and so forth.
It's a far cry from 2014, when quite organically, people understood that a vote for independence was a vote against the failed legacy of New Labour and Conservative austerity.
Now that class dimension has been lost, thanks to years of turning independence into a substance-free phrase. And Swinney is not going to be able to bring it back.
Even if he wanted to, his political instincts are that of the consummate manager, and the steady-as-she-goes technocrat.
Those are sensibilities which have been drummed into the party hierarchy too. Any turn to independence will have an air of desperation about it, and sense of it being built upon quicksand, rather than on the strong foundations which many independence supporters will feel should have been installed well before now.
You can never extrapolate too much from a by-election. As of now, the SNP remain on track to win in 2026, according to polling. But there are deeper problems of ideology, purpose and strategy that are not going to go away. That goes for the whole movement.
Unless and until there is a genuine intellectual rehabilitation of the meaning and purpose of independence, it will remain that way.