The Art of Growing Up
Gerry Hassan
Bella Caledonia, 14 May 2024
Sunday was the 25th anniversary of the Scottish Parliament’s opening day in 1999; and the 30th of the tragic death of Labour leader John Smith – two totemic moments which changed political realities and with implications to this day.
The Scottish Parliament opened with its most senior member, Winnie Ewing, declaring: ‘The Scottish Parliament, adjourned on the 25th day of March in the year 1707, is hereby reconvened’, an expression of a nationalist narrative.
The political void left by John Smith’s death produced the election of Tony Blair and the rise of New Labour. The scale of Labour’s 1997 victory, three election triumphs and its trajectory which crashed and burned in the killing fields of Iraq were the consequences.
Such a perspective puts in context the turbulent last few weeks in Scottish politics. Never has a First Minister sabotaged themselves so comprehensively and left office so quickly with so little impression or achievement than Humza Yousaf. John Swinney has become SNP leader and First Minister in a manner which made the best of bad circumstances.
Understanding the SNP
The SNP are showing signs of wear and tear. They are worn out by the pressures of office, have run out of policy ideas, are responsible for many of the challenges and problems that they face and have no real idea of what to do on independence beyond pretence and rhetoric.
All of this should be obvious. Yet at the same time the modern SNP have never really been subjected to nuanced, informed study and analysis which tries to understand the party, how it sees the world and what motivates its internal universe. Take what the SNP stands for. The SNP is a moderate centre-left party which stands for Scottish self-government and independence. But what is the SNP’s DNA, its inner world, its defining culture and ethos?
Such manifestations define the nature of political parties. These qualities are endlessly discussed about the Conservatives and Labour. Henry Drucker’s Doctrine and Ethos in the Labour Party written 45 years ago remains one of the best studies of Labour’s inner world. Drucker posed that the informal, unwritten ethos of Labour mattered more than formal policy in how it did politics, and that this was defensive, influenced by past labour movement defeats, and was insular and suspicious of others beyond Labour.
Such a study has not been undertaken of the SNP. Commentators propose an SNP caricature with defunct definitions of ‘fundamentalists’ and ‘gradualists’; or present day takes about the need for the party to drop ‘woke crap’ and ‘unwoke’ itself (step forward Iain Macwhirter). A study of party members by James Mitchell and Rob Johns Takeover: Explaining the Extraordinary Rise of the SNP (published 2016) comes the nearest but is a study of party member opinions.
The SNP’s enduring DNA and ethos beyond the idea of Scottish statehood has remained fuzzy down the years – lacking in detail and open to interpretation. Clearly the notion of Scotland as a nation is pivotal and what flows from this, namely that as a nation there is an inalienable set of rights and responsibilities.
This becomes in places an essentialist interpretation of nations – the ‘Scotland Why Not?’ perspective – which says that because Scotland is a nation it should be independent and a state. This misses that the historical development of nation-states has never followed such a tidy, logical pattern globally, and that many nations are not and never have been states. Understanding the worldview of the SNP, its culture, codes and what animates how it sees things is important and essential to having a nuanced take of the party beyond caricature and with relevance beyond the party.
The SNP after the 2014 Indyref
The SNP pre-2014 used to know the Scotland that it spoke for – and was its heartland. Post-2014-15, reaching the mountain top of ‘Peak Nat’ as the party’s nationwide appeal expanded, this became less clear as the party moved its focus to the Central Belt, the West Coast, and Glasgow.
The superficial take of post-2015 and the early Sturgeon era was that the party was more centre-left and Glasgow-focused. This reading turned out to be inadequate on numerous levels. First, the SNP did not become more markedly centre-left, instead being balanced by its catch-all electoral appeal. Second, having prioritised capturing Glasgow electorally, the party (as events have underlined) had no real idea what to do with it politically. Thirdly, more than the first two, the party’s success meant that it lost one idea of its political centre (the North-East) but did not replace it with another (Glasgow and the West Coast). This in a sense decentred its sense of itself.
A party without an innate understanding of its existential centre and heartland is building up trouble for itself, and this has been the SNP’s story post-2014. What Scotland does it see itself as championing? Where is the Scotland of the future emerging? In the past decade it clearly was not in the former heartlands of the North-East and rural Scotland which had little to show from the SNP in office. But nor was it in Glasgow and the West Coast with the SNP offering as little to Scotland’s first city even while Sturgeon was MSP for Glasgow Southside while First Minister.
Added to this is the importance of personality politics. The SNP’s leadership culture in its years in office has developed in an unhealthy direction. The shift back to John Swinney is the last of a generational cohort of SNP senior figures and a symptom of this. As the Politics Joe website pointed out: ‘Every SNP leader for the last 34 years has either been Alex Salmond, Alex Salmond’s deputy or Alex Salmond’s assistant’; to which Salmond replied sarcastically: ‘And on their report cards I have marked: Must try harder!’
The party is missing a whole generation of politicians – in between elderly grandees and the emerging younger generation such as Stephen Flynn, Kate Forbes and Màiri McAllan – because of the oxygen starved from the party by the Sturgeon era. This has created an unbalanced doughnut party because of a long-term failure to encourage rising talent to take on promotion and leadership roles.
The cohort of SNP rising stars now coming to prominence only know the SNP in power. This brings a certain way of seeing the world – of taking being in office for granted, that then dulls political antennas, and reduces the ability to acutely view the outside world. It is not an accident as the SNP years in office have continued that the party has become more centralised – seeing every policy solution as greater powers to the Scottish Government and ministers (Police Scotland; Scottish Fire and Rescue; the perilous finances of local government). The SNP has thus become a party of the political establishment, the nomenklatura and Unco Guid.
SNP atrophy can be identified by how the party misplayed the government agreement with the Greens. This was seen by Sturgeon as providing ballast for the pro-independence parliamentary majority while emphasising the progressive credentials of the SNP and Greens. However, few voices in the party seemed to have given second thought to the dynamics of coalition administrations and the power that a minority party has.
The period of SNP-Green agreement saw many SNP members grow impatient at what they saw as the latter’s influence. Yet had they studied coalition dynamics and bothered to look at the experience of coalition governments in Scotland they would have been forewarned. The Labour-Lib Dem coalition of 1999-2007 lasted eight years and saw the Lib Dems have a disproportionate influence over policy areas like student tuition fees, care for the elderly and PR for local government. All caused Labour resentment – just as Green influence did for many in the SNP.
Anger, confusion and silence in independence
Large parts of the SNP and independence are in confusion. This is aided by the absence of strategic debates on the direction and agenda of the SNP and independence since 2014 – a stance deliberately enforced by the actions of the Sturgeon leadership.
This has left a mixture of sentiments – anger, resentment and a sense of betrayal – in places beyond the usual suspects of Alba, All Under One Banner (AUOB) and the Albaesque tendencies in some sections of the SNP and independence.
Some are still clinging onto escapist fantasies of Scotland – unilaterally declaring independence, or some kind of UN recognition riding to the rescue. More often, there is a sullen silence and unwillingness to face the harsh truths that post-2014 SNP politics, Sturgeonism and independence in the past decade refused to embrace. This silence does no one any good; scared and unwilling as it is to begin addressing the dead-end post-2014 politics took the SNP and independence.
Similarly the official SNP leadership position of late Sturgeon, Humza Yousaf and apparently John Swinney is that winning a majority of seats at the forthcoming UK election is an effective mandate to open independence negotiations. This is a politics of pretence – saying one thing publicly while believing another – in the hope of preventing a dwindling band of loyal troops and voters from asking difficult questions and in the latter, from switching to Labour.
From the fake posturing of UDI to a general election ‘mandate’ runs a deeply wrong-headed politics encouraged by the SNP leadership post-2014. The idea that Scottish independence could be declared against the democratic wishes of the people of Scotland because one political tradition knows best is anti-self-determination – and anti-democratic.
If some find this too harsh it can be put another way. The 2014 indyref saw over two million Scottish voters vote for the union and reject independence – winning by a margin of 383,937 on a turnout of 84.6% after a three-year campaign. These facts give the No victory a depth and legitimacy which cannot be overturned by some fantasy escape scheme – or by a proxy ‘mandate’ at a UK election (or indeed future Scottish contest) where the pro-independence forces win say one million votes.
The only realistic way of winning independence is via a future indyref where the scale of victory is accepted by both; and (if independence wins) is of a margin to overturn the previous result. And as a counter to those who say ‘what do we do as if the UK continues to say no?’ the first point is that Scottish voters do not want a referendum any time soon, and if and when they do the UK’s stance if they continue to say no will come at the cost of undermining the argument for the union.
Beyond Party: A Campaign for Scottish Self-Determination
Independence cannot go on with the politics of bluster, pretence or magic schemes. It is not around the corner and will not happen after the 2024 and probably 2026 elections. Instead, independence needs a sense of timescale and maturity, not pretending it is always just around the corner and imminently reachable.
A politics of timescales has always been pivotal to any radical change, as the political philosopher Bernard Crick observed, and is as true of Scottish independence as any fundamental challenge to the status quo. The immediate idea of independence posed by Sturgeon when leader and Albaists currently is detrimental to the cause.
First, this means the serious heavy lifting of independence needs to reshape its offer and win majority support is postponed due to the misbelief that we are supposedly ‘very nearly there’. Second, the continual mantra of imminent independence plays into the hands of the SNP’s opponents and independence who pose the former as a ‘one trick pony’. Douglas Ross poses that the SNP are not really interested in government but have an ‘obsession with independence’. Why cling to a politics which falls into your opponent’s caricature of you?
Rather independence needs to reorganise, regroup and rethink. This requires various actions. The SNP must rebuild party democracy and governance and treat party members with respect. The Sturgeon years saw the emergence of a dysfunctional party which concentrated power in few hands and took party members for granted and even contempt, it will thus not be an easy ask to rebalance and rebuild the party.
One long-term senior SNP activist put it to me: ‘It is hard to imagine the party becoming a democratic decision-making process just by internal efforts.’ They continued: ‘Party leaderships which have eroded and corroded party democracy rarely reinstate those processes voluntarily. They will more than likely have to be forced to change by external factors and the pressure of electoral defeat.’
Independence is not the same as the SNP. Infrastructure building and movement building is required – ten years after it should have started and deliberately discouraged by Sturgeon. This is beyond the scope of one article and voice and requires a wider debate about what should be done and what can be done.
Generally, there needs to be an ecology of think-tanks and research agencies created which go beyond the pop-up models of Common Weal, Nordic Horizons and others. Independence is a mainstream idea and part of the fabric of Scotland; it has to develop a strand of activities and institutions which reflect this.
Related to this we require cross-party, cross-political spectrum initiatives which reflect wider issues of power and self-determination. Previously I made the case last year for a Campaign for Scottish Self-Determination which draws upon the model of the Campaign for a Scottish Assembly/Parliament set up in 1979. Self-determination is a wider, more challenging idea than independence, addressing who has power, authority and voice in society and could have reach way beyond formal politics.
Connected to this such a campaign could draw up a new Claim of Right asserting Scotland’s right to self-determination and drawing inspiration from the 1988 Claim of Right which declared that ‘the English constitution’ that we lived under (to quote Walter Bagehot) was an affront to Scottish constitutional traditions. Such practical interventions could draw together a wide array of independence, radical, labour movement and green voices and create a new prospectus for change for self-government.
Such political projects must be about more than political parties. The point is amplified by the fact we have done this before. In the period 1979-97 Scottish centre-left opinion came together and established majority support and a consensus for a powerful home rule Parliament. This was not owned or dominated by any one party or tradition whatever Labour or SNP claim today.
A final observation. The language of independence and self-government needs to change. It cannot be just about transferring political power from Westminster to Holyrood. As critically too many independence supporters assume the merits of their case are obvious. John Swinney fell into this trap last week when he talked of winning over ‘those we are yet to convince’ which one Labour activist called ‘offensive’. SNP activist and ex-councillor Mhairi Hunter commented on the above: ‘We are never given a case for the union’ – a denial of the case put forward by your opponents which undermines your own case.
No doubt some will think the above heresy or unhelpful. But independence has shown it can only make limited progress by clinging to half-truths, deceptions and escapist fantasies. That is the ultimate legacy of the Sturgeon near-decade: telling people what you think they want to hear to avoid difficult discussions and choices.
Ultimately the politics and mindset of self-government and independence should be about a growing maturity and embracing of difficult choices and debates, and showing in our collective actions that we are embodying a culture of independence.
This is what has been called ‘the art of growing up’ and while our society and politics has made much progress in the 25 years of the Scottish Parliament, too many cannot face up to some of these hard choices and take responsibility. This includes, in the past decade, that part of independence sentiment that wants to cling to the easy choices and delusions peddled by the Sturgeon leadership.
It was never going to be easy, nor should it be. We can all do Scotland a favour by foregoing supposedly easy options, escapism and delusions. Ditching the diversion of blaming all our shortcomings on Westminster and the British state, when some of them are a product of our own elites and collective decisions, which we should challenge and scrutinise.
Scottish democracy has to start by holding our own institutions and agencies to account, recognising their limits and shortcomings and doing something about it. This requires breaking through the anger, bewilderment and silences which define too much of Scotland and independence.
This necessitates challenging falsehoods, escapist fantasies and recognising the end of the fairy tales of the Sturgeon era the start of a new chapter, an opening and opportunity. It presents the chance of a politics of liberation and light which although disorientating for many offers the potential of a new road – where we take collective responsibility and ownership, respect our fellow Scots and affirm our common humanity. We need to recognise our power and act upon it, emphasise in these dark times the power of light and optimism, and beware of the darkness around us and which increasingly defines the British state under Tories and Labour.
