All through the years when there was a Labour Liberal
coalition running Scotland, I was never remotely tempted to write about it. I
had opposed devolution, but it didn’t matter very much to me that there was
Scottish Executive that was in charge of some things. I paid it no attention
whatsoever.
What made me start writing was Alex Salmond gaining a
majority in 2011 and it becoming clear soon afterwards that there was going to
be an independence referendum. This is what got me started.
Since then, I have written over 850 articles. At the
beginning I was hardly read by anyone, but gradually and very slowly I built an
audience. Occasionally I had messages of support from politicians or people in
the media and I frequently have my work shared by some kind publishers.
I make a very little from some adverts, which is nice.
But really, I’m just grateful to people who take the time to read. This is why
I have never asked for donations or considered going down the paywall route.
The peak was during the pandemic. I had more time to write
and everyone else had more time to read. My audience reached heights that I had
never dreamed of before and then as we went back to work it gradually declined.
Lately it has picked up again.
But I have been fortunate to have been writing about
the most interesting period of Scottish politics perhaps for centuries. Take
any ten- or fifteen-year period from 1746 onwards and it cannot remotely compare
politically with what we have just gone through.
Of course, there have been wars and other great events,
but they were not specifically Scottish events even if we played our full part.
But at no other point was the very existence of Scotland
as part of the UK under threat as it has been since 2011.
David Cameron was very foolish indeed and very arrogant
too to offer Salmond a referendum. It showed Cameron’s ignorance. Just as Leave
won two years later the SNP could well have won in 2014. No country should risk
its existence on a 5% swing.
Since then, the SNP has been able with 45% of the vote
to destroy Labour as the party of natural power in Scotland. But it has never
quite had suffient to turn that 45% support into enough to force a second
referendum.
I’ve always thought that the Pro UK side of the argument
would have had a good chance if there had been a second referendum. Our
arguments are very good. Scotland would certainly be worse off after independence,
and this is particularly the case after Brexit. Joining the EU could never
compensate for leaving the UK economically unless the former UK allowed
Scotland to keep its existing British trade relations and allowed free movement
of people as well as goods. But that would be an extraordinarily generous
response to Scotland’s leaving and with it the destruction of the UK.
But I also realised that if the SNP could leap from
30% to 45% in one campaign it could certainly leap beyond 50% in another. The
campaign would be at best a coin toss. I think every Prime Minister knew this,
which is why the SNP will never get permission to hold a legal referendum when
there is a chance that it might win one.
There have been ups and downs for the SNP too. Its
support fell considerably at the General Election of 2017 only to recover again
in 2019. It has had majority support for independence in the Scottish Parliament,
but the Supreme Court has now told us that majority support in a devolved
parliament on a reserved matter does not give you the right to hold a
referendum. Why would it? A majority in Holyrood does not allow Scotland to
annex Berwick either.
Now my expectation is that Scottish politics will
become boring again. This is why I begin to wonder what I am going to write
about. I am not interested in ferries, nor in attempts to improve Scottish education
and healthcare. I pay little or no attention to the Scottish Parliament and won’t
start now.
What will it take to make Scottish politics boring. It
will have to be that independence becomes a long-term issue rather than a short
term one. I think both Kate Forbes and Humza Yousaf accept, though not quite publicly,
that there will not be a referendum any time soon. Ash Regan’s attempt to turn
every election into a plebiscite would I believe damage support for the SNP
even more than I expect it to be damaged.
Many Scots want independence in theory, but in
practice they look to the UK as the guarantor of our standard of living. Most
Scots like that we have a British Army, British pensions and all the things
that go with being part of the British state except Tories. Many Scots dream of
independence, but they never quite want the dream to come true, not next year
anyway. As soon as it becomes clear that your mortgage might end up in Scottish
pounds or Euros or there would be no Bank of England to bail us out if things
went wrong, like Credit Suisse a week ago, then the adults in the room always think
independence can be delayed and we never quite get to the point when we want it
now.
It looks from polling that support for the SNP at
Westminster is going to fall between 5 and 10%. The loss of Sturgeon is going
to hit them hard. If Yousaf wins it may fall still further. Forbes is bright
and decent, but she is not Salmond, nor is she Sturgeon.
Labour’s support has increased by around 10% to 29%
and it is now may be able to compete with the SNP in much of the Central Belt.
The Conservatives have fallen slightly to 22% since 2019, but it will still be
able to compete in some rural areas as will the Lib Dems in the seats they already
hold.
But this is the prize for us. If support for the SNP
falls to 35% and it loses a chunk of seats and if this continues at the next
Holyrood election so that there is no longer an independence supporting majority,
then we are essentially back to where we were when Labour and the Lib Dems ran
Holyrood.
Once independence ceases to be a short-term issue then
people begin to care more about drug deaths, schools, hospitals and ferries
floating. But then it’s going to be a battle of competence rather than ideology
and unless the SNP start running Scotland much better Scottish voters will
eventually give someone else, probably Labour a chance. At this point the ten
or twelve years we have been worrying about independence will look like an aberration
and I will wonder what to write about.
I don’t intend to ever give up writing. I love
writing. It gives me more pleasure and fulfilment than anything else I do. I
just passed the 6 million mark for readers, which is more than the population
of Scotland. I hope to reach 10 million and then 20 million. I would be delighted
if Scottish politics becomes boring. It will mean that we have won. But at that
point I will have to find something else to write about.
