It’s no easy task to bring a crowd to heel. But Nicola Sturgeon is a politician in her power. As she ended her rousing peroration at the SNP’s manifesto launch, the 1,400-strong invited audience (the largest at any Holyrood manifesto launch ever) did not immediately explode with whoops and cheers.
Instead, the crowd of supporters filling the cavernous Edinburgh conference hall to the point of overheating, stood in restrained ovation, raising aloft their own copies of the manifesto, its front cover a simple image of the first minister, against SNP yellow, headlined with one phrase – “Re-elect”. And as the music swelled, the sea of faces became a sea of Sturgeons.
Of course, Sturgeon herself is not standing for re-election, since she became first minister mid-term, following Alex Salmond’s resignation – although it sometimes just feels easier to believe that she has always been in charge of Scotland. But the messaging – as with everything the SNP does – is crystal clear.
Describing this manifesto as her job application, Sturgeon made a plea for voters to give her a “personal mandate”. With polling consistently putting the SNP at about 50%, that the party will be returned to government for a historic third term in two weeks is in no doubt. But, for all her own stratospheric approval ratings, anyone who underestimates just how important it is to Sturgeon to achieve her own electoral mandate for office does so at their peril.
The bulky manifesto (also available with additional content on the SNP Vision app) is in many ways as sober as the crowd at the end of Sturgeon’s speech: serious-minded and overwhelmingly strategic.
The focus on the SNP’s record in government includes a triumphant storyboard explaining how John Swinney “saw off the Treasury’s cash grab” in final negotiations over the new tax and welfare powers for Scotland, initiated after the no vote to independence in September 2014.
And, as anticipated, it is now – when the SNP is at its strongest – that its Holyrood manifesto offers its weakest commitment on independence for decades. And Sturgeon explicitly placed responsibility on any supporters who might be grumbling at the prospect of cooling their ardour for a second referendum to go out and convince the doubters.
Meanwhile, barely a ripple was caused by the seeming incongruity of insisting on those on higher incomes to shoulder more of the burden, while failing to repeat the pledge from last year’s Westminster manifesto to introduce a 50p top rate of tax. (Sturgeon has already explained that she fears the flight of high-earners, and the manifesto states that the party will reconsider this position from 2018-19.)
Alongside an array of pledges on education, health and infrastructure is the commitment to decentralise public services – perhaps answering those critics who believe that the Scottish government has lately become sclerotically managerial.
Scotland’s first female first minister also offered a clutch of family-friendly policies from across the globe, including US-inspired “returnships” to get women back into work at senior levels after taking time off to raise children, as well as Nordic-style baby boxes – providing newborn essentials in boxes that double as a basic cot.
If this is indeed the SNP’s “manifesto for the next generation”, then baby boxes are the policy that will sign up that generation to the SNP while still in nappies. For the relatively modest price tag of £100 each, and with a serious public health agenda, baby boxes are a crowd-pleaser of such magnitude that one sensed she could have ditched the rest of the manifesto and still come out on top. And just imagine the selfies!
