A few weeks ago, I pointed out that polling had lulled the SNP into a false sense of security in the run-up to the 2017 general election. As it’s Panelbase polling we have at the forefront of our minds just now, let’s use a Panelbase poll as an example of what I meant. With around a week or ten days to go until polling day in 2017, this is what Panelbase were showing –
SNP 42%
Conservatives 30%
Labour 20%
Liberal Democrats 5%
No obvious cause for alarm there – the SNP were clearly going to lose a few seats to the Tories, but the vast bulk of their seats looked rock solid, because Labour were the only potential challengers in most of them, and the lead over Labour was almost as big as it was in the landslide of 2015. But when the real votes were counted, the SNP were five points lower than Panelbase had suggested and Labour were seven points higher, wiping out more than half of that lead. Six SNP seats were lost to Labour, and it was very close to being a lot, lot worse. The Tories also made more gains than expected, because in the end they trailed the SNP by only eight points, not the twelve suggested by Panelbase.
Now, it may be there was simply a systemic error in the polling. But it’s also possible that there was genuine movement against the SNP as the campaign drew to a close, due to the disadvantages any Scotland-only party has always faced and always will face in UK general elections. (You can guarantee that next year our wonderful impartial BBC will want so-called “Prime Ministerial Debates” featuring only Sunak and Starmer.) So just imagine for the sake of argument that next year’s campaign goes as badly for the SNP as 2017 did. Taking last night’s Panelbase poll as a starting-point, a similar type of further swing to Labour could see a result along the lines of –
Labour 41%
SNP 29%
Conservatives 17%
Liberal Democrats 9%
Seats projection (with changes from 2019 general election result): Labour 41 (+40), Conservatives 7 (+1), SNP 6 (-42), Liberal Democrats 5 (+1)
The above is not in any sense a prediction, because sometimes momentum can catch you out by going into reverse very dramatically. 2017 actually offers a demonstration of that phenomenon, because the wheels seemed to be coming off for Jeremy Corbyn in the local elections of May 2017, and nobody would ever have believed that Labour would be making gains and depriving the Tories of a majority just a month later. But nevertheless, I do think the above numbers are a perfectly reasonable illustration of what could easily happen if the SNP don’t take drastic action to change the direction of travel.
As you can see, it would be an unmitigated calamity for the independence movement. We’d be right back to where we were prior to the 2014 indyref, with the SNP reduced once again to fringe status in the House of Commons. And once Labour have their feet under the table in those Westminster constituencies, it would be very difficult to dislodge them. The SNP might find themselves once again ghettoised as a Holyrood party, which would make independence more difficult to win. The London establishment will scoff at the idea that independence is even on the agenda for as long as the SNP have only a handful of Commons seats, given that Nicola Sturgeon didn’t come close to the Holy Grail when she had 48 or 56 seats.
This is why I despair at the current lack of perspective in SNP ranks. Remember the leadership loyalist Twitter account who said during the early spring that party members had the luxury of electing someone as unpopular as Humza Yousaf, because if he turned out to be an election-loser at the “less important” Westminster vote, it wouldn’t matter that much because they could then correct the mistake in time for the 2026 Holyrood election? Well, no, actually, you don’t have that luxury. The Westminster election isn’t one you can afford to be drubbed in, because you and the independence cause might never recover from that. I sometimes get the impression that people think 20-30 seats is the lowest the SNP can possibly fall to next year, but as you can see above that’s far from the case. Under first-past-the-post, relatively small movements can result in total carnage. And frankly, I think this is a mistake that even Kate Forbes’ allies are making. All the mood music suggests they think they can afford to wait until Yousaf crashes and burns at the general election, but in the very plausible worst case scenario, there may not actually be much left for a new leader to inherit. The SNP need to save themselves before the general election, not afterwards.
Perhaps the most dispiriting part of the Sunday Times’ write-up of the new Panelbase poll was the revelation that SNP MPs under Stephen Flynn are alive to the danger they face, but that their proposed “solution” is to double down on Yousaf’s shelving of independence rather than reverse it. I’m sure it’s possible to squint at focus group results and convince yourself that Labour can be beaten at a general election in Scotland by sidelining independence and concentrating on the bread and butter issues that “people really care about”, but the stark reality is that you will just never get away from the fact that Labour can form a government at Westminster and the SNP can’t. It doesn’t matter how wonderful your proposals are – people will stop listening because you can’t do anything about them. What you really need to do is put your proposals in the context of independence – say “this is how we will fix the economy and public services in an independent Scotland” and invite people to vote SNP in a de facto referendum so that independence negotiations can start.
As far as the problem of Yousaf’s leadership is concerned, I hold no brief for Kate Forbes. If I was going to construct my perfect SNP leader, I’d want someone a bit more left-wing than Forbes, a bit more socially liberal, and certainly someone who is committed to a de facto independence referendum (Forbes distanced herself from that plan during the leadership election almost as much as Yousaf did). But if you look at the qualities that are required in the current circumstances, Forbes is quite plainly the nearest fit the SNP have actually got. She’s liked, trusted and regarded as credible by the public. She’s capable of injecting some optimism and ambition on the subject of independence while all Yousaf does is drain the life from everyone’s veins. And most importantly of all, she would represent a decisive break from the Sturgeon leadership, whereas Yousaf represents a continuation of it (as indeed would other potential alternative leaders such as Angus Robertson and John Swinney).
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