In Scotland in this era-defining general election campaign, the proceedings have often been characterised by something approaching mutual respect and civility. It was as if the main party leaders have all tacitly acknowledged that a profound change has occurred in Scotland in what the electorate expects of those seeking their support.
This shift in the way politics is delivered and encountered in Scotland could be said to have begun its gestation period during the two-year independence referendum. Contrary to the view often propagated by many English-based commentators, the referendum campaign was largely conducted in good humour and in an atmosphere where tens of thousands of people who had previously been political non-combatants came to the thrilling realisation that their vote could make a difference.
And then there were the women. Nothing came to define the independence referendum campaign more than the enfranchising of smart and articulate women. And now, in Scotland, they are helping to define this Westminster election. Nicola Sturgeon has passed beyond mere politics in her appeal to Scottish and UK voters – she has become a role model for all women in this country. Her message – “If I can do it, so can you” – is inspiring women from all social and political backgrounds. Her political opponents ought to be wary of dismissing people such as these as members of a cult.
Ruth Davidson, another young woman from a non-privileged background, has singlehandedly detoxified the Tory brand in Scotland. The Ruth effect, as senior Scots Tories are calling it, has allowed their activists to venture out in daylight again on Scotland’s streets without wearing bulletproof vests. Davidson is eloquent, honest and possesses the happy knack for a Tory of treating all people as her equals. She is a serious asset to the UK party and to Scotland. Along with Sturgeon, she is making professional politics a viable career option for a generation of women who would previously rather have body-swerved it. Indeed, the way that these two and Kezia Dugdale, Labour’s deputy Scottish leader, all behave with each other, even in the crucible of political cut and thrust, is changing the dynamics of politics in Scotland in subtle but significant ways.
This, I think has had a positive effect on the two male Scottish political leaders in this election, Jim Murphy and Willie Rennie.(By the way, does anyone know what’s happened to Patrick Harvie?) The opprobrium Murphy receives from those who reside in nationalism’s edgier reservations can often be unedifying and unpleasant but he has campaigned vigorously and with great good humour even in the knowledge that his party will have to rise from the ashes after Thursday. Anyone who attempts to execute the hokey cokey with senior citizens well-schooled in the art and with television cameras present will do for me.
Even within the stretch of this election, it has been possible to observe a softening in Murphy’s approach and in his tonal delivery, even if you take into consideration a couple of vein-bulging lunges during the leaders’ debates. Perhaps though, he might want to reassess the value of some members of his inner circle if he is properly to begin the task of winning back the hearts and minds of Labour’s lost tribes. Yet a chat with some Labour activists revealed to me one of the core reasons why the party in Scotland is facing a reckoning at the polls on Thursday. It seems that they have yet to awaken to the new set of political dynamics at work north of the border. Their body language betrayed their sullen acceptance that the game is up and that they will attend the final reckonings early on Friday morning in the manner of inconstant sisters wondering if they might yet be left anything in dear Papa’s will. They were at a loss to explain why, despite bombarding them with presentiments of economic Armageddon and the empty threat that a vote for the SNP is a vote for David Cameron, multitudes of their former supporters are migrating to the nationalists.
And so, having failed to produce a sound political reason for such unequivocal rejection, they instead fell to disparaging their former supporters. Thus the new nationalists were unthinking dolts who had lost all sense of reasoning under the spell of Nicola Sturgeon. “No matter how many facts you put before them they refuse to listen,” said one. “It’s like a cult, all that waving and clapping,” added another.
The words “waving” and “clapping” were uttered as if by André Previn on discovering that someone was playing a kazoo in his orchestra. They must all surely be as thick as mince. Nothing we could have done about it; the voters have all lost their minds. This from a party of which it has always been said that, in some parts of Glasgow and Lanarkshire, you could pin a red rosette on a monkey and it would still get elected.
The contrast in how the election has been fought in Scotland and how it has unfolded in England has been vast. To observe the conduct of David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg these last couple of months and to listen to their campaign rhetoric has been to take a step back in time… to the stone age, in particular, the English Conservatives’ lip-curling disdain for Scotland.
Miliband meanwhile still looks like a man who consults focus groups before visiting the gents. His declaration last Thursday night that he would rather inflict five more years of a cuts-driven Tory administration than do any deals with the SNP was a cynical and dishonest piece of political posturing.
More than any other factor, the behaviour of these two has made a second referendum on Scottish independence occurring within five years a certainty rather than a distinct possibility.
