Labour has nobody to blame but itself for the extraordinary rise of the SNP
Telegraph View: For 30 years the party sowed the seeds of its own destruction by insidiously implying the Tories had no legitimacy in Scotland
10:00PM BST 29 Apr 2015
67 Comments
In most of the UK, the election campaign seems to have produced stalemate. In Scotland, by contrast, it has proved convulsive. The latest opinion poll suggests an outcome scarcely believable just a few weeks ago: that the Scottish National Party might win all 59 seats north of the border.
It was obvious since the beginning of the year that Labour was set for a drubbing at the polls for which it only had itself to blame. For too long, Scotland was treated like a gigantic rotten borough; Labour relied on its seats there either to put it into government or to super-charge its Westminster majority.
SNP predicted to take EVERY seat in Scotland (Electoral Calculus)
Powered by Factmint
Indeed, there have been few spectacles during this campaign more risible than Labour’s efforts to blame the Conservatives for “talking up” the Nationalists. The seeds of the SNP’s extraordinary rise were sown by Labour’s insidious propaganda over more than 30 years to deny the legitimacy of the Tories to run Scotland’s affairs. Not so long ago, as the Conservatives gradually lost almost all their MPs up there, they were taunted by Labour. Now the polls show the Conservative support almost on a par with Labour’s. An election that should have been a choice between Conservative policies of opportunity and enterprise and Labour’s paternalistic egalitarianism looks destined to be dominated by the future of the Union.
The nearest historical parallel to what is unfolding in Scotland is the general election of 1918, when Sinn Fein won every seat in Ireland outside Ulster, supplanting the non-separatist Irish Parliamentary Party and paving the way for the break-up of the Union, albeit only after considerable violence. The SNP will be hoping a landslide next week will lead to a more peaceful parting of the ways. What remains unclear, however, is the extent to which the swing to the SNP – now forecast to win more than 50 per cent of the vote – presages a majority for independence.
It is only eight months since Scotland voted No in the referendum and a clean sweep for the Nationalists does not necessarily mean that this sentiment has changed. However, if the SNP were in a position to push a Labour minority government around at Westminster, this would be a springboard for another attempt to win power at Holyrood next year, something that was supposed to be impossible under the PR system that underpinned devolution.
There has been much comment on the Left-wing nature of the SNP’s programme and how it is more radical than Labour’s. Nicola Sturgeon, the party’s leader, has even vowed to make Ed Miliband “bolder” in his socialism. Yet the real story of this election will not be economic, but constitutional.
Top News Galleries
