The spectacle of a group of SNP MPs briefly taking over Labour’s seats in the Commons on the grounds that they are now the “real” opposition to the Cameron government will cheer up many people and anger others.
Get used to it. We’ve been here before.
Now that the Tories have an overall majority, albeit just 12 seats, at Westminster, attention-seeking is going to be the best the SNP can manage on most occasions.
That is a legitimate political tactic and those most likely to be annoyed – English Conservative public opinion – should bear that in mind. Outraged splutters and cries of “Let’s be shot of them” is what the Nats want to hear inside the M25.
It would have been very different if Ed Miliband had emerged from the general election in a position to run a Labour minority government with informal SNP support. Then the SNP would have been able to exercise real influence on the government’s actions and legislative programme, as opposed to jolly PR stunts such as Tuesday’s.
For that reason Nicola Sturgeon’s “we will keep Labour honest and radical” pledges proved such a great success for her in Scotland and such a disaster for Miliband among English voters. It gave David Cameron’s Australian strategist, Lynton “ Dog Whistle” Crosby, a crowbar with which to beat Labour into the self-harming defeat about which Patrick Wintour writes.
For the 56-strong SNP contingent to have that kind of power between now and 2020, it will require an alignment of interests between all the opposition parties plus a group of disaffected Tory backbenchers. We have already seen it on foxhunting and may see it on obvious issues like the EU, though Cameron can probably count on Ulster’s DUP votes to offset defections of his own.
There will be others which no one, not even canny tacticians such as Alex Salmond and Sturgeon have yet spotted. Again, we’ll have to get used to it and be patient if we want to sustain the 308-year-old Union between Scotland and the UK in all our interests in a dangerous world. The Nats play a long game and so must the Unionists.
We don’t need to read the crystal ball when (as Nye Bevan remarked) we can read the book, as SNP strategists have clearly done. The book in question is any of the many histories written about Ireland’s 19th-century struggle for what was then called Home Rule. We nowadays avoid that resonant term in favour of “devolution”.
Central to that struggle in a variety of forms was the Irish Parliamentary party (IPP), dominated in its heyday by the charismatic Charles Stewart Parnell – a force in British politics from the 1860s until the 1921 treaty that portioned Ireland between the 26 predominantly Catholic counties and the Unionist six counties of the north.
Here’s a brief outline of the IPP’s history (1882 to 1918), charting the familiar clash of issues and rival personalities, of cunning plans and cockups, militancy in the shape of Fenianism – the forerunners of the IRA tradition – and constitutional moderation.
The influence of up to 80 Irish nationalist MPs (out of 103 if we count the Unionist block) ebbed and flowed with the changing fortunes of Gladstone’s Liberals and Disraeli’s, and later Lord Salisbury’s, Tory party, also altered by internal Irish splits over strategic goals and how best to achieve them. Land reform – easing the grip of absentee owners on Irish tenant farmers – was central, though there were many sub plots like housing, religious education and pensions.
One Irish parliamentary tactic which the SNP has obviously clocked was “obstructionism”, the use of procedure (or lack of it) to cause trouble by putting down motions or amendments, making long speeches, points of order or occupying other people’s seats to make a political point. At times it was chaotic.
Again, it’s worth saying that this is a legitimate device, used the world over, not least in the US Congress where filibuster speeches in causes both good and bad, lasting a day or longer, are both tolerated and admired. Westminster changed its rules in Victorian times to deal with Irish disruption and has done so more recently to restrain backbench power, wrongly in my view.
Perhaps the SNP could help the all-party backbench troublemaker group to revise procedure in their favour again, a counter-trend since 2010. But wait: the SNP in both Holyrood (a single chamber parliament) and at Westminster is famously disciplined, at least so far. In that they again emulate Parnell whose troops were expected to toe the line and had party whips to make sure they did.
It didn’t last, of course. The Parnellites split, not least over Parnell’s disastrous liaison (they had three children) with Mrs Kitty O’Shea, later Mrs P, but also over strategy, policy and priorities. Hard though it is to imagine at this SNP highpoint, similar things are likely to happen to it, too.
But not yet. The new SNP block is still finding its feet at Westminster and is as likely to be influenced by the place as the place is by it. Meanwhile, it enjoys the spotlight, not least when a 20-year-old such as Mhairi Black makes such an impact with her maiden speech as the new MP for Paisley.
Of course, Scotland’s position in 2015 is not like that of 19th-century Ireland, scarred by political exclusion, unreformed land tenure, the religious divide and the potato famine disaster. Given the terms of the 1707 Union – so different from Ireland’s – and Scotland’s major role in Britain’s global empire, it never was.
That said, the IPP used its leverage over Victorian and Edwardian Westminster to achieve major reforms, not least the land tenure question eventually solved by a Tory government’s land purchase reform – George Osborne, please note – in 1903. Home Rule itself was finally achieved when the Asquith government again became dependent on Irish votes after 1910 and pushed it through the Lords.
Only the onset of the first world war in August 1914 derailed it and set in motion new strains, like Irish military conscription (Irish volunteers were not formally honoured by their own country until last year), that engulfed the island in rebellion and civil war.
Whether or not Scotland decides to stay in the Union, the outcome won’t be settled like that. But I’m pretty sure it will not be settled at Westminster either, by the SNP 56 or by the other 594 MPs. It will be settled by what happens at Holyrood and to Scotland in a wider sense.
As with BBC Scotland’s failure to pay enough attention to Black’s spirited maiden speech (the speech was accomplished but so are many others) the SNP has a sophisticated PR machine, keen to turn mistakes and misjudgments into parochial grievances.
But grievance isn’t enough and it cuts both ways. The SNP has wielded power at Holyrood since 2007 and can’t blame all its problems on London. The tragedy of the M9 road deaths has led to criticism of the unified Police Scotland’s operational grip (voters are also worried about its weapons policy), but also about Holyrood-imposed budget cuts.
There is concern over the quality of schools and NHS Scotland as well as controversy over the Sturgeon government’s “named person” policy intended to enhance protection of children, but which is open to civil liberty objections as well as practical ones. Words like “authoritarian” and worse are being deployed.
Irish nationalists in Victorian Westminster lacked such powers, both an opportunity and a responsibility when things go wrong. But Irish history suggests that the nationalist recipe will carry all before it for a while – in next year’s Holyrood elections for a start – before rival Scottish parties rediscover an authentic voice and the inevitable backlash sets in.
Meanwhile, stunts at Westminster could just come to be used as a distraction from tricky issues confronting the Scots’ devolved government at home. Charles Stewart Parnell would have grabbed a Holyrood-style deal from Gladstone if Gladstone could have got one through parliament. But he was sharp enough to grasp the point of a theatrical bit of distraction from knottier problems.
