The chaos and bedlam of Theresa May’s election campaign might at times have come to resemble Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, but it is still recognisable as a campaign nonetheless.
There are identifiable policies (even those she has since decided to “tweak”) and it is an authentic reflection of the hard-right flavour that characterises the Westminster Conservative party. The same cannot be said of the election operation Ruth Davidson is running for the Scottish Tories north of the border. This is not a campaign at all – it’s a crusade.
It begins, proceeds and ends with a single negative slogan: “There shall be no second referendum on Scottish independence.” The premise that underpins it is flimsy: that the debate over independence is nasty and divisive. This flies in the face of the reality of the first independence campaign, which was hailed by the Electoral Reform Society as setting a gold standard for political and democratic engagement. Throughout what passes for her campaign, Davidson has accused the SNP of being “obsessed” with the independence question; in reality, she is the one who has become obsessed with it.
In the wake of polling suggesting that the hitherto buoyant Scottish Tory campaign was being adversely affected by Theresa May’s shambolic operation in England, Davidson issued a five-point pledge last week. Yet there weren’t five points, only one: “There shall be no second referendum on Scottish independence.” In a statement setting out the pledge, the five points were revealed to be: “Respect Scotland’s decision to stay in the UK; oppose the SNP’s second referendum; deliver for Scotland, so we lead the UK, not leave it; strengthen bonds between Westminster and Holyrood and work for the best Brexit deal for Scotland and the UK.”
Recent polling, together with the results of last month’s council elections, has pointed to a Tory surge in Scotland. It has led to many unionist commentators and newspapers fondly imagining that modern Scotland was beginning to embrace Conservatism for the first time since the late 1950s. It is nothing of the sort. Rather, it is a temporary phenomenon that owes more to Davidson’s recent strategy of trying to turn Scottish political discourse into a rerun of the independence referendum she purports to despise.
When the constitutional question is finally settled one way or another, Conservatism in Scotland will retreat back to the margins. It is a perverse irony of Scottish politics that without the question of Scottish independence the party that hates it so much would remain irrelevant. It dutifully reflects the same hard-right philosophy of the Westminster Tories: defending the “rape clause”; defending a hard Brexit; supporting austerity measures against the poor; defending cuts to public services; stirring fear of immigration and maintaining the poverty gap. It has little to say to the people of Scotland about creating jobs, increasing living standards for the majority of its citizens and stimulating growth in Scotland’s small business sector. What routine lip service that has been paid has been engulfed by an implacable opposition to a democratic vote on Scotland’s constitutional future.
Thus, the Tory brand in Scotland has begun to attract fringe elements in Scottish society, such as the Orange Order and British nationalists. These had long been in decline in modern Scotland but have now had an opportunity to become relevant again on the coat-tails of a Scottish Conservative and Unionist party that, like its Westminster masters, has begun to reflect the values of Ukip as it embraces isolation from Europe and its progressive partnership ideals.
It has also benefited from the suicidal tendencies of the Labour party in Scotland that, fearful of losing what remains of its core support in traditional working-class communities, has also tried to wrap itself in the union jack by crazily pursuing a “no second referendum” line. In this, they are as convincing as a bunch of adolescents swapping tall tales about their sexual experiences in kitchens at parties: no one believes them.
Instead of setting their face against a second referendum, they ought to have adopted a laissez-faire approach and concentrated all their fire on the manifest failures of the SNP in closing the educational attainment gap and managing the NHS. The quicker the constitutional question is settled the quicker they can get back to being the main party of opposition in Scotland and the quicker they can target a return to power in Scotland at the next Holyrood election in 2020. Their foolish aping of the Tory position on independence has left them a distant third force in Scottish politics after a decline of Gerald Ratner proportions.
The SNP will once more be returned as Scotland’s dominant political force in Thursday’s election, although with a total number of seats closer to 40 than the 56 they won in 2015. Before that, they held six seats and were aiming for a total of around 20. That they are set to gain a comfortable victory twice in close succession in a Westminster election renders claims that they are in decline fanciful. They will have won three elections by huge margins, campaigning on a second referendum. In anyone’s language, that is called a mandate.
In another perverse irony, Theresa May’s fateful decision to call a snap general election has done them no harm at all and may even have helped their cause. They are in a win-win situation. If Thursday delivers a hung parliament (now considered merely improbable rather than impossible), then the SNP can hold the balance of power at Westminster and use it to force agreement for an early independence referendum.
If May somehow manages to preserve a working majority, Scotland’s large working-class communities can expect no respite from the Tories one-sided austerity programme. A hard Brexit will also hit Scotland more than the rest of the UK. Scotland’s population is 8.4% of the UK’s, but it receives 17.5% of its EU grants.
The prospect of this being washed away by the Tories’ gunboat negotiations over Brexit and five more years of hard-right government will present the SNP with a classic opportunity to bring about Scottish independence.
