Decline and Fall
Philip Collins writing in The Times puts his finger on some of the key reasons that Labour in Scotland appears to be in terminal decline.
The first is that the Scottish Labour has indeed done a fantastic job of contributing to its own demise with a succession of dud leaders while the party's 'big beasts' all preferred to pursue their political ambitions in Westminster.
The second big problem facing Labour is that David Cameron is more popular (or less unpopular) in Scotland than the Labour leader Ed Miliband, who is seen as yet another assembly-line, career politician with little experience of life outside of the Westminster bubble.
And since the outcome of the 2015 general election is almost certain to be another hung parliament it appears that increasing numbers of Scottish voters have concluded that a big contingent of SNP MPs is the best way of protecting Scotland's interests going forward.
Not least because the current crop of Labour MPs have shown themselves over the past five years to be little more than political deadwood who have been as quiet as 'Trappist Monks', for example, over issues like equal pay.
Labour must rule out a deal with the SNP
By Philip Collins - The Times
Scottish voters are switching in droves from Labour to the nationalists. They need to realise how much is at stake
The perfect political position is to be both insider and outsider at the same time. To be the government of the day and yet the recipient of the anti-politics protest. This is the happy place in which the Scottish National Party now finds itself. The British political class has been waiting for the electoral wave to break. It has — and washed up Labour’s chance of a general election victory. More than that, Britain itself may be left on the shore to die.
Lord Ashcroft’s latest poll, which suggested that the SNP might win 50 of the 59 seats in Scotland, is catastrophic for the Labour party, which would lose 35 of the 41 Scottish seats it holds. We knew that places that voted “yes” to independence last September were sticking with nationalism. But now we learn that the SNP surge extends into places that voted “no” too. On current projections, Gordon Brown’s safe seat in Fife will fall. So will Alistair Darling’s in Edinburgh and Douglas Alexander’s in Paisley.
There is no single reason, nor any sole guilty party, for this seismic change. “Westminster” has become in Scottish politics what “Washington” means in American politics — the citadel beyond the border of reason where “they” conspire against “our” best interests. The myth that all politicians are the same was confirmed by the cross-party co-operation of the campaign for the Union. The idiocy of this case is betrayed by Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader, who is only prepared to deal with a Labour party which, in her estimation, is absolutely not the same as the hated Tories.
The rise of the SNP expresses, in part, a decline of faith in politics as an agent of change. The SNP remains a repository of grievances as much as a political project. A generation of Labour people, mostly the neglected working class, felt that politics as usual had done nothing for them and so invested instead in nationality and destiny. At the very moment that the disorientating effects of modernity were seeping into voters’ minds six years ago, the expenses scandal struck, seeming to show that Westminster politics was corrupt as well as useless. This is definitely not apathy on the march. It is native indignation.
The Scottish Labour party has also done a fine job of contributing to its own demise. Its new leader, Jim Murphy, may be Labour’s most talented politician but even he cannot fix in six weeks what has been declining for six decades. Mr Murphy is known in Scottish Labour as “the man who abolished Christmas” because he refused to allow party workers their annual obligatory fortnight off. He inherited none of the elementary political planning and discipline that every campaign needs.
As a senior figure in Scottish Labour put it: “We’re a dot com start-up, not a party.” It doesn’t exactly help that Ed Miliband is, miraculously, more unpopular in Scotland than David Cameron.
Mr Murphy has also had to give Scottish Labour an identity that is more than “We hate Thatcher. Vote Labour”. This is the sloganeering of a party that took their hold on power for granted. Mr Murphy’s plan is to remind the world that the SNP, which still acts like an opposition, blaming Labour for everything, has in fact been the nation’s government since 2007. He is starting to make the SNP accountable for the performance of the Scottish NHS, which is not impressive. It all sounds simple and obvious but politics is simple and obvious until people who don’t know what they are doing get involved.
If there is a sensible, rational course to take for Scottish Labour, Jim Murphy will find it. The hill before him right now, though, is too steep. The referendum campaign branded Labour as a unionist party and 45 per cent of people who voted for independence now feel an emotional bond to the SNP. Many of these switchers think that voting SNP carries little cost. They assume that Labour and the SNP will cut a deal in Westminster so they will be able to vote for protest and power at the same time.
This is, from their point of view, a dangerous illusion. Give or take a few Lib Dem seats, the rise and fall of the SNP and Labour is a zero-sum game. The SNP hurts Labour and benefits the Conservatives. This is a split in the left that will surpass the damage that Ukip can do to the Conservatives south of the border. Unlike Ukip, the SNP can claim outsider status from a secure electoral base and still take seats in a first-past-the-post electoral system.
This leads to one clear conclusion. Labour must rule out a coalition arrangement with the SNP. In terms and without equivocation. The SNP’s conditions — abandoning Trident and fantasy spending plans — are undesirable in any case and Labour would gain from saying no, without reservation. At the moment, a vote for the SNP is an expression of identity that comes at no cost. Labour has to somehow raise the price of an SNP vote. To make the idea stick that a vote for Alex Salmond is a vote for David Cameron.
This is something that fair-minded members of the Conservative and Unionist party need to contemplate too. Every poster that couples Ed Miliband and Alex Salmond raises fears among the Ukip-inclined in England about a government with a deputy prime minister committed to abolishing the country he helps to govern. But in Scotland that image resonates very differently. In Scotland, if Labour is on the ticket anyway, it encourages a vote for the SNP.
Is that the victory the Tories want? Fraser Nelson, editor of The Spectator has, to his credit, said that he would rather the Conservatives lose the election than win it while further imperilling the Union. We shall see whether senior Tories choose to soft-pedal on that particular campaign. Two of their professed desires are now in conflict and anyone who values the Union needs to cheer on Jim Murphy and Scottish Labour.
It has been assumed that the general election will be decided in England, in seats where Ukip deprives the Conservatives of a majority. In fact, it will be decided in Scotland. If the campaign is about finding a way of stopping Ed Miliband becoming prime minister, it seems that one might have been found. By effectively breaking up Britain, David Cameron — a natural governor of the Home Counties if ever we saw one — will be left to preside over a country he professes to love as it cracks apart.
