SNP in crisis – but Scottish Labour offers no radical alternative

Above: Humza Yousaf [Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images]

By Ann Field (written before Humza Yousaf unilaterally ended the power-sharing deal with the Scottish Greens):

According to coverage by the Associated Press news agency, the Daily Record, The National and STV, just 2,000 people turned up to the 20 April pro-Scottish-independence march in Glasgow.

The Alba Party of Alex Salmond and Ash Regan did not mobilise for the event. Alba claims that it was not invited. Believe in Scotland, who organised the demonstration, claims that Alba was invited but did not respond.

Either way, an Alba mobilisation would not have had any significant impact on the overall turnout.

The Wings Over Scotland website, which continues to enjoy a very substantial following, not only failed to mobilise its supporters for the event but positively denounced it. Wings is involved in a full-scale war with the SNP and the Greens over trans rights.

The attempt to boost numbers by grafting the Gaza conflict onto the theme of the march – banners and placards included “Zionism is Racism” and “Boycott Israhell” and the now obligatory “Stop the Genocide in Gaza”, of the Gaza Genocide Emergency Committee – had only minimal success.

In any case, the attempt to equate Scotland’s relation to the UK with the Israel-Palestine conflict – chants included “Freedom for Palestine! Freedom for Scotland!” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free! From the islands to Dumfries, a republic will be free!” – must count as peak political delirium.

(Chants of “Freedom for Ukraine” and Ukrainian flags were entirely absent from the march. The “internationalism” of Scottish nationalism clearly has its limits.)

Even sadder than the turnout was the slogan of the demonstration and rally: “Believe in Scotland”. This is the Scottish-nationalist version of the Tory/Farrage mantra of “Believe in Brexit”.

Although Brexit has pushed up inflation, destroyed jobs, created labour shortages and produced not a single benefit, it will supposedly “work” – whatever that means – if people simply believe in it enough.

And likewise Scottish independence. In the absence of a rational coherent argument which would raise the demand for independence above the level of an article of religious faith, all that is left is the exhortation to believe in Scotland.

Believing in Scotland appears to be an alternative to believing in facts. According to the Green MSP and rally speaker Ross Greer, for example:

“We simply want to live in a democracy that allows us to make a decision. I’m more confident now than I’ve ever been that we are marching towards a day when our fate is in Scotland’s hands.”

But the people of Scotland made a democratic decision in the 2014 referendum to remain part of the UK. The 2014 referendum is certainly not binding for all time. But in the decade which has passed since then support for independence has generally remained at about 45%, the same level of support as in 2014.

Former SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon argued in 2015 that 60% support for independence throughout a twelve-month period would justify a second referendum. But no opinion poll has ever indicated 60% support for independence on even a single occasion – never mind a year.

Greer’s confidence about the inexorable advance of the independence movement should be dented by the lacklustre turnout for the 20 April event – especially given that in 2022 The National hailed the Believe in Scotland campaign as “the behind-the-scenes engine of the Scottish independence campaign”.

The turnout for the demonstration must also have suffered from the fact that it was being held at the end of a disastrous week for the SNP and their Green junior partners in the Holyrood coalition government:

• SNP Energy Secretary Mairi McAllan had announced that the SNP-Green coalition was dumping its “flagship” policy of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 75% by 2030. (This should not have come as a surprise. Holyrood has failed to meet eight of its last twelve annual emissions targets.)

• Peter Murrell – former SNP Chief Executive, a post he had held for 22 years, and husband of former SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon – had been re-arrested and charged with having embezzled funds from the SNP. He has since resigned from the SNP.

• Figures had been released showing that just 3% of poor children in Scotland had been provided with a free bike, despite an SNP pledge that all children who could not afford one would get a free bike (and a free laptop) by 2026.

• Yet another delivery delay had been announced for the CalMac Glen Sannox ferry. (Ferry services are a big issue in Scotland.) The contract had been awarded in 2015 and a date of 2018 set for completion.

As the SNP’s opponents never tire of pointing out, America got a man on the moon – first announced in 1961, and then achieved in 1969 – quicker than the SNP can build a ferry.

The SNP had also come under pressure to clarify its response to the Cass Report on gender services, especially after NHS Scotland had announced its decision to “pause” prescribing puberty blockers to under-18s (unless they had already been prescribed blockers).

Instead, the SNP dithered. According to First Minister Humza Yousaf, “a process of review” was “very much underway” and “an update” would be provided by the Scottish Government “next week or in the coming weeks”.

It had been a particularly bad week for the SNP-Greens. At the same time, it was no more than a continuation of the SNP’s overall record.

Its much vaunted 2021 NHS Recovery Plan has seen waiting lists continue to rise, and only three of the promised ten national treatment centres have been delivered. Plans to create Highly Protected Marine Areas for 10% of Scottish coastal waters were dropped last year. So too was the introduction of a Deposit Return Scheme for drinks containers, now pushed back to 2025 or even later.

Since 2020 homelessness has increased year on year. Teacher numbers have likewise fallen year on year. £38 million, earmarked for better terms and conditions for care workers, has just been cut from the social care budget. And Scotland continues to suffer the highest rate of drug-related deaths in Europe.

Going further back in time, the Named Persons Scheme was abandoned in 2019. The failed 2012 Offensive Behaviour at Football Act was repealed in 2018. And the SNP’s promise of 2007 to scrap the council tax and replace it by a fairer system of local government finance has remained a dead letter for seventeen years.

The abandonment of the target for cutting greenhouse gases and the SNP’s dithering over a response to the Cass Report has triggered the convening of an Emergency General Meeting by the Scottish Greens to decide whether to remain in a coalition with the SNP at Holyrood.

Who cares?

Certainly not the majority of SNP members. In the 2023 SNP leadership contest 52% of members voted for candidates (Kate Forbes and Ash Regan, since departed to Alba) who blamed the Greens for the SNP’s declining popularity and would willingly scrap the Bute House Agreement.

Unsurprisingly, SNP leader Humza Yousaf has ruled out giving SNP members a say on whether the party’s coalition with the Greens should continue.

As divisions within the SNP-Green coalition become more acute – although the Greens have too much to lose by pulling out of it – and the SNP staggers from one debacle to another, Scottish Labour’s response is to mirror Labour’s approach at national level.

As divisions within the SNP-Green coalition become more acute and the SNP staggers from one debacle to another, Scottish Labour’s response is to mirror Labour’s approach at national level.

Just as Starmer relies on discontented Tory voters to put Labour into power, so too Scottish Labour relies on discontented SNP voters (and Tory tactical voters) to unseat SNP MPs in this year’s general election.

At neither Scottish nor national level is Labour offering a positive radical alternative which would enthuse voters and rebuild a solid electoral base.

The ongoing collapse of the SNP has not resulted in a collapse in support for Scottish independence, still running at about 45% in opinion polls. And despite the fiasco of the Believe in Scotland march and rally, demonstrations being organised by All Under One Banner over the summer months are likely to be much larger.

Even so, a large share of the nominal support for independence appears to be essentially passive: A nice idea, but nowhere near the top of voters’ priorities (apart from the 20% hard core of true believers) and certainly not something which the SNP is about to deliver – especially given the ongoing trench warfare within the SNP itself.

At the 20 April rally Humza Yousaf asked the paltry attendance to believe in Scotland. But most SNP members appear not to believe in Humza Yousaf himself. According to the front page headline of the following day’s issue of The Herald:

“’A question of when, not if.’ SNP looks to Yousaf succession. Senior figures confirm the party is now actively discussing the next First Minister.”

This article also appears (under a different headline) in the present issue of Solidarity and on the Workers Liberty website.