A series of grassroots campaigns on tactical voting are being launched across Scotland with the aim of galvanising pro-union votes in the face of a surge in popularity for the Scottish National party.
Activists believe that they are reflecting widespread concern among those who voted no in last September’s referendum about the threat posed to the union by the predicted nationalist landslide in Scotland in May’s general election.
Scotland in Union, which launches on Friday, is aiming to provide opinion polling and research to help people to vote tactically against the SNP in key constituencies. Describing the campaign as cross-party, and funded by individual donations, co-founder Felicity Kane, a marketing company director, said she hoped to provide “a rallying-point for the moderate majority”.
She said: “These are people who want to get on with normal life, in a prosperous UK, but who understand the current nationalist threat to this aspiration.”
Forward Together, launched last weekend, was formed by a core of former Better Together campaigners in Perthshire. It says it will advise voters about tactical choices for Scottish constituencies in Westminster, one of which – Perth and North Perthshire) is held by the SNP’s Peter Wishart.
Victor Clements, one of Forward Together’s six board members, said: “It became obvious that [the independence question] was not going to go away. A lot of people have been asking who they should vote for in the general election to stop the SNP and we are putting the essential information in front of them.”
Clements claimed that the demand was not coming from political parties or activists, but from ordinary people. Likewise, the anonymous campaigner behind the Tactical Voter Twitter campaign, said: “This is not unprincipled tactical voting but about looking at the long-term future of Scotland. It’s not about pushing Labour or the Tories.”
Although Labour and Conservative candidates in Perthshire have distanced themselves from the tactical voting campaign, privately many unionists are hopeful that drives such as this will offset what recent polling suggests is the inexorable.
Adam Tomkins, professor of public law at the University of Glasgow and one of the Tory representatives to the Smith commission, said organised tactical voting was inevitable if the SNP remained as buoyant in the polls up to the election.
“People who voted no [to Scottish independence] are really scared,” he said. “There is a real anxiety amongst people who may not like the current direction of government but don’t want to see the country broken up and don’t know what to do about it. The referendum was supposed to be decisive and yet the current mood is that nothing is settled.”
Scotland’s Big Voice, another online campaign formed soon after the referendum by pro-union activists, will publish its final tactical guidance next week, using a coloured wheel which has already been much-shared across social media. The group cautions against a split unionist vote in May undoing the hard work of the referendum campaign.
“It is difficult for some people to remain positive when so many of the mainstream parties are ignoring no voters to try and regain yes voters,” said a spokesperson, referring to Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy’s recent attempts to woo independence supporters.
Other senior Labour figures are keen to differentiate the party from the nationalists, with reports that Scottish Labour MPs have demanded Ed Miliband categorically rule out a post-election pact with the SNP before his speech to the party’s spring conference in Edinburgh this weekend.
