MEDIA ATTENTION galore has been lavished on the supposed incipient Scottish revolution. London-based political journalists breezily asserted last week that a constitutional tsunami was imminent which would swamp the complacency of the British government. Tom Bradby, political correspondent of ITN tweeted, as the results of the 6 May election came in:
“If the SNP can assemble a pro-independence majority here tonight or tomorrow, I just can’t see how it would be credible to deny them another referendum. It would make an absolute mockery of the principle of democratic devolution.”
There was an electoral upheaval – but it turned out to be in the regions of England holding local and mayoral elections, especially the North and the West Midlands, where a meltdown in the Labour vote occurred. BBC folk and those in sister media platforms could hardly contain their distress. When required to linger over the revolt of the plebs, it was treated as a painful aberration.
There was much anticipation that ordinary Scots whose dislike of Prime Minister Johnson seemed almost as visceral as that of the denizens of the metropolitan media would deliver a stronger mandate so the carnival of secession could get underway. BBC’s Newsnight programme on 7 May had a long segment “that was indistinguishable from an SNP campaign video.” commented @DamCou. The clans were taking the dirks down from their thatched roofs. But by the following evening, with counting still not compete, the air was escaping from the media’s nationalist helium balloon.
On an increased 63.2 per cent turnout, non-Voters comprised 37 per cent of the electorate, Unionists 32 per cent and Nationalists 31 per cent. The SNP remained the largest party, slightly increasing its total by 1.2 per cent to 47.7 per cent – still a minority of the votes. The position had hardly altered from last time, in 2016, when the SNP had lost its majority (six seats going to the Conservatives). Much of course has happened since then, including Britain’s decision to leave the EU, the realignment of UK domestic politics, and above all the Covid pandemic, wreaking much social and economic harm as well as a sad toll of deaths.
But the Scottish political scene remains almost petrified in stone. In order to cross the psychologically important 50 per cent threshold of votes cast, Nicola Sturgeon seemed to enjoy critical advantages. Under her the franchise has been carefully massaged to give not only 16-18 year-olds the vote but prisoners serving no more than twelve months in prison too. Foreigners who have only been in the country for a few months can vote. Campaigning was greatly restricted on the pretext of the Covid emergency. But for a year and more, Sturgeon had a free platform on BBC Scotland where she delivered a daily party political broadcast in the guise of a report on the battle against Covid. By contrast, the new nationalist party, Alba, was denied the right to appear on campaign debates despite having two members in the UK parliament.
Sturgeon and much of the UK broadcasting media now have a very neat set-up going on between them. She breathes fire about not having the will of the Scottish people trampled on as she did in her splenetic interview on the BBC’s Marr Show yesterday. The excitement of the hacks grows and grows. Viewers across the island are treated to breathless reports about a bill for a referendum being tabled at Holyrood and being sure to pass. SNP notables will court foreign leaders (perhaps with the quixotic Macron or the rising German Greens in mind.) This way foreign pressure will be piled on London to start round two of the drive to break up Britain. Broadcasters neglect to point out to viewers that the devolved government has no powers to alter the constitution or initiate secession. Bradby, Adam Boulton, Martin Geissler, and the rest stay tight-lipped about the fact that no other country would go down the referendum path the SNP insists that Britain must take twice in one decade.
In reality a majority of those who voted denied her any grounds for a second referendum. Not only has the electoral arithmetic hardly changed but Sturgeon was unable to disguise her anxiety that the Alba party might do well. Much effort was invested in hobbling this radical pro-Indy force. Sturgeon bluntly stated there would be no cooperation with Alba if it reached Holyrood.
Her priority is to continue to be in charge. That’s it!
It is clear, as her former ally and mentor Alex Salmond said two days ago that she is far happier consenting to Green measures than to taking Scotland closer to exit from Britain. She admits there is no plan for securing independence nor preparations to ensure what to do about currency, the border with a foreign Britain, or how to find the money to run things. Instead, social engineering to put Scotland in the vanguard of countries going down a radical Woke path is primarily what turns her on. She prefers compliant MSPs who are unlikely to challenger her ‘Brave New World’ preferences to independent thinkers. Her main support base is no longer the party but the sprawling managerial state, many of whose officials owe her personal loyalty because she guarantees their career advancement. As the economy tanks and she turns Scotland into a Woke factory, her most ardent followers are drawn from professionals, student activists, social radicals and ultra-liberals living in bourgeois redoubts.
Such people are not drawn to the pro-Indy ‘Yes’ movement but many in the SNP still are. Prevarication on the national question will mean a steady flow of defectors to Alba in the time ahead. Sturgeon will run an ever tighter ship. As she grooms the new MSP for Edinburgh Central Angus Robertson as her successor (a key accessory in the heave against Salmond), she and her husband Peter Murrell will make it perhaps impossible for Joanne Cherry MP for Edinburgh South-west to remain in the party.
Turning to the main opposition parties, their preoccupations parallel Sturgeon’s own. They wish to retain their status and patronage such as they enjoy without doing anything radical or bold. The Scottish Conservatives failed to set out an eye-catching programme for government because they were inured to staying in opposition. New leader Douglas Ross indulged in scare-mongering to keep loyal voters from defecting to new unionist parties. He warned erroneously that ‘an SNP majority is a guarantee of another referendum.’ But when questioned by STV’s Bernard Ponsonby on the matter he floundered and failed to point out that Holyrood lacked the legal powers to hold a referendum.
Another Tory preoccupation was to see off the pro-Union ‘interloper’ Alliance4Unity and emphasise the liberal rather than the conservative face of the party. It held its own on 31 seats but it is hard to take seriously the victory statement of Jackson Carlaw, a short-lived party leader in 2019-20 after winning his suburban Glasgow seat: “As we emerge from the pandemic, we will be absolutely focused on exposing the failings of the SNP and making this term in office their last.”
Labour’s leader Anas Sarwar was only weeks in the job before the election was called. He was a more accomplished campaigner and communicator than Douglas Ross whom he saw as his main opponent in television debates. He was firmly opposed to even a limited electoral pact whereby in 5 or 6 seats, held on a minority vote by the SNP, the lowest scorers dropped out to help secure victory for the best-placed pro-UK challenger. Voters had to engage in tactical voting on their own. It was successful in Southern and North-East Scotland but its absence in East Lothian saw an abrasive local SNP worthy winning the seat.
The media also played an outsized role in ensuring that a largely unaltered status quo prevailed on 6 May. All the broadcasters closed ranks to keep new forces led by individuals who happened to be highly-fluent politicians out of the debates. News programmes overlooked financial scandals and revelations of serial state incompetence as well as sleaze. It meant Sturgeon’s probity and efficiency never came under the media microscope. Instead her role as a disruptor was legitimised.
The media’s visceral hatred of Boris Johnson in particular led commentators to deify Sturgeon as the radical grand-dame of the North. The journalists paid from the public purse to provide information about electoral shifts, showed themselves as ill-informed about the facts and simplistic in their judgments as those Scottish voters whose only concern was to deliver a snub to ‘English Tories.’
The appeal of tribalism enabled dismal figures like Joe Fitzpatrick to romp to victory in Dundee West. As drugs minister, he consolidated Scotland’s grim position as the part of Europe with the worst drugs record. Next door in Dundee East, the former health minister Shona Robison also increased her vote after having been a byword for incompetence in that role.
Sturgeon and her party have succeeded in lowering expectations and diverting downscale citizens and middle-class ones who think their SNP loyalties mark them out as trendy and sophisticated, from appraising the SNP record on its core devolution competences – health, education, public safety and the economy. There was massive abstention in mainly working-class seats which have suffered the most harm because of the SNP’s contemptuous attitude to its governing responsibilities. Whereas in Aberdeenshire West the turnout was 70 per cent, in three of Glasgow’s seats, Maryhill & Springburn, Pollok, and Shettleston it was only 52, 53 and 54 per cent respectively.
Despite naked manipulation by broadcasters who had crossed the line to become political activists, most Scots were unimpressed by Sturgeon’s siren calls for people to place themselves on a war footing with the rest of Britain. At the grimmest of starts to a new decade, many do not need to be told how crucial the Union has been for shielding Scots from far worse suffering during the pandemic.
Unfortunately, new storms are likely to batter the world through the 2020s which means that Sturgeon will find it hard to exploit the ‘neverendum’ or keep the social consequences of her misrule from jeopardising her survival. With the archetypal number two Angus Robertson now installed as MP for Edinburgh Central, the succession seems to be safe if the media adulation enables her to bag an international job in a branch of Wokery. But she has fractured her own movement by her ruthless misconduct and the fissures will only widen in the months and years to come.
If you appreciated this article please share and follow us on Twitter here – and like and comment on facebook here.
