There is no such thing as a good election to lose. It is always better to be in power than opposition and only cheap cynics think otherwise. Leadership elections follow the same rules: strike now, for you may never get the chance to do so again. The future is infinite and resists plotting.
Even so, these are scarcely ideal circumstances to take over as captain of the ship. The political weather is foul and the crew mutinous. The new prime minister, whomever he or she may be, will not be in want of challenges. The short-term economic outlook is bleak and that of the medium-term scarcely much better. Fixing Brexit, which means smoothing relations with the EU, is as necessary as it will prove unpopular and difficult. Restoring probity and trust to public office will be no easy task either.
Still, these are matters of day-to-day political management. The biggest question in British politics is, typically, one almost nobody at Westminster dares talk about: the survival of the United Kingdom itself. Nicola Sturgeon almost certainly will not get the referendum she craves next year but, however tiresome Conservative MPs and English voters more generally may find it, the question of Scottish independence has not disappeared. The best that may be said is that it is moving to a new phase. The post-Brexit phoney war is coming to an end, replaced by a decisive moment that cannot be avoided for ever.
Few of the candidates to succeed Boris Johnson have said anything about this. Penny Mordaunt and Tom Tugendhat have at least acknowledged the Scottish Question’s existence; Rishi Sunak appears all but oblivious to it. Rather too many Tory MPs appear to think this a problem confined to a small country, far away, about which they know little.
With regard to Scotland, the new Tory leader will at least begin with the great advantage of not being Boris Johnson. The outgoing prime minister was disgraced in Scotland long before this became the fashionable view elsewhere. His most recent approval rating north of the border was minus 71. Being better, or at least less unpopular, than him is a necessary start but hardly a sufficient one.
The next general election is the first half of a two-stage battle which may yet determine the UK’s future viability. In place of a referendum next year, Sturgeon will fight the next Westminster election on the single question of independence. If the SNP win 50 per cent of the vote, she will consider this a mandate for independence or, at the very least, a fresh referendum. This is a move born of desperation, not strength, but also one which requires careful handling by the UK parties.
Sir Keir Starmer has correctly ruled out any deals with the SNP. There will be no coalition and no confidence-and-supply arrangement either. If the SNP wishes to bring down a minority Labour government and risk returning the Tories to power, that will be its choice. Even the SNP might find it difficult to complain about a Tory government it helped to create.
Sturgeon’s desire for the election to be a “de facto referendum” reflects the SNP’s anxiety that Labour might form the next government. It is a means by which the SNP hopes to squeeze Labour’s support. Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party gained six seats from the nationalists in 2017 and the SNP is concerned that a Labour Party with a real chance of gaining power could do even better.
Depressingly, the SNP can probably count on the Conservatives to help them. The Tories will be tempted to reprise their 2015 campaign. Then, the threat of a “coalition of chaos” between Labour and the nationalists played well in England, while also boosting the SNP in Scotland. This was ill-advised then; it would be reprehensible now. It is exactly what the SNP wants. I expect it to happen.
In the shorter term it is easy for Tory leadership candidates to say they won’t agree an independence referendum next year. The bigger question is what they would do if they were in power and the next Holyrood elections, due in 2026, produce yet another pro-independence parliament. “Now is not the time” — Theresa May’s stalling play for time on the Scottish Question — is a strategy of steadily diminishing returns. It cannot hold for ever.
The SNP worries that a Labour government might reduce the salience — the fierce urgency — of the independence question. No wonder they see the Tories as their best chance of increasing Scottish alienation. From which it follows that another Conservative victory at the next election dramatically increases the likelihood of another pro-independence majority at Holyrood in 2026. At that point, it is hard to see how a referendum could be avoided.
Unionists know the way to win is not to play. The best chance of preventing a referendum later this decade is a Labour government at Westminster that takes some of the heat out of the Scottish Question. Starmer would be better placed to argue that Sturgeon had enjoyed her “de facto referendum” and lost it. Time, then, to focus on other matters.
So if the question is, as perhaps it should be, “Which person running to be prime minister is most likely to solve, or at least park, Britain’s existential problem?” then the answer is very clear: Sir Keir Starmer. Deep down, there are Scottish Tories who know this and can live with a minority, or even majority, Labour government. The national interest, in the broadest possible sense, requires the Tories to lose the next election.
Agreed. A Labour win under a unionist like Starmer will kill the purpose of the Indy movement in Scotland which is solely built on an anti-Tory sentiment.
When Labour wins government we can expect Indy to crash down drastically.
I thought Starmer was opposed to anything to do with unions? Ba-boom-shhhh… 🙂
The Thalmor Embassy will revolutionize the UK
Or more likely, just another Cameron-esque weasel who’ll make empty promises then disregard them all when No scrapes a win by the skin of its teeth.
I don’t dispute Keir would be better than any Tory, but that’s hardly high praise, and talking of this grey, uninspired, ideologically sterile suit like he’s the great saviour of our times seems at best wildly optimistic to me. Especially given he’s already betrayed the reformist elements who propelled him into the leadership in the first place.
He’s as establishmentarian as Labour leaders come, and if that were good enough for Scotland, why isn’t it still a Labour heartland? And the Scots know this, they’re no fools. I don’t see any reason to think he’ll be any more successful in Scotland than any other Labour leader lately.
Scotland do not want Labour either, there is literally no reason for Scotland to stay part of the UK. It pays more into the treasury than it receives back why would it want to.
Richard D James has let himself go
By becoming a brexit supporter and not engaging with the SNP.
Thats so not going to work
“the man for devolution” was happy to stick with it when the Torries began their assault but when it came time to show he stood with it he ordered labour to abstain from voting against the internal market bill and simultaneously undermined the labour government in Cardiff. Thing is Welsh labour is too timid to kick off about it
Massie’s written his one article again.
What an utterly delusional take. The Union is dead either way; talk to the SNP and they leave or don’t and they leave.
One way is just messier and shitty; Keith seems to have chosen that one.
12 comments
There is no such thing as a good election to lose. It is always better to be in power than opposition and only cheap cynics think otherwise. Leadership elections follow the same rules: strike now, for you may never get the chance to do so again. The future is infinite and resists plotting.
Even so, these are scarcely ideal circumstances to take over as captain of the ship. The political weather is foul and the crew mutinous. The new prime minister, whomever he or she may be, will not be in want of challenges. The short-term economic outlook is bleak and that of the medium-term scarcely much better. Fixing Brexit, which means smoothing relations with the EU, is as necessary as it will prove unpopular and difficult. Restoring probity and trust to public office will be no easy task either.
Still, these are matters of day-to-day political management. The biggest question in British politics is, typically, one almost nobody at Westminster dares talk about: the survival of the United Kingdom itself. Nicola Sturgeon almost certainly will not get the referendum she craves next year but, however tiresome Conservative MPs and English voters more generally may find it, the question of Scottish independence has not disappeared. The best that may be said is that it is moving to a new phase. The post-Brexit phoney war is coming to an end, replaced by a decisive moment that cannot be avoided for ever.
Few of the candidates to succeed Boris Johnson have said anything about this. Penny Mordaunt and Tom Tugendhat have at least acknowledged the Scottish Question’s existence; Rishi Sunak appears all but oblivious to it. Rather too many Tory MPs appear to think this a problem confined to a small country, far away, about which they know little.
With regard to Scotland, the new Tory leader will at least begin with the great advantage of not being Boris Johnson. The outgoing prime minister was disgraced in Scotland long before this became the fashionable view elsewhere. His most recent approval rating north of the border was minus 71. Being better, or at least less unpopular, than him is a necessary start but hardly a sufficient one.
The next general election is the first half of a two-stage battle which may yet determine the UK’s future viability. In place of a referendum next year, Sturgeon will fight the next Westminster election on the single question of independence. If the SNP win 50 per cent of the vote, she will consider this a mandate for independence or, at the very least, a fresh referendum. This is a move born of desperation, not strength, but also one which requires careful handling by the UK parties.
Sir Keir Starmer has correctly ruled out any deals with the SNP. There will be no coalition and no confidence-and-supply arrangement either. If the SNP wishes to bring down a minority Labour government and risk returning the Tories to power, that will be its choice. Even the SNP might find it difficult to complain about a Tory government it helped to create.
Sturgeon’s desire for the election to be a “de facto referendum” reflects the SNP’s anxiety that Labour might form the next government. It is a means by which the SNP hopes to squeeze Labour’s support. Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party gained six seats from the nationalists in 2017 and the SNP is concerned that a Labour Party with a real chance of gaining power could do even better.
Depressingly, the SNP can probably count on the Conservatives to help them. The Tories will be tempted to reprise their 2015 campaign. Then, the threat of a “coalition of chaos” between Labour and the nationalists played well in England, while also boosting the SNP in Scotland. This was ill-advised then; it would be reprehensible now. It is exactly what the SNP wants. I expect it to happen.
In the shorter term it is easy for Tory leadership candidates to say they won’t agree an independence referendum next year. The bigger question is what they would do if they were in power and the next Holyrood elections, due in 2026, produce yet another pro-independence parliament. “Now is not the time” — Theresa May’s stalling play for time on the Scottish Question — is a strategy of steadily diminishing returns. It cannot hold for ever.
The SNP worries that a Labour government might reduce the salience — the fierce urgency — of the independence question. No wonder they see the Tories as their best chance of increasing Scottish alienation. From which it follows that another Conservative victory at the next election dramatically increases the likelihood of another pro-independence majority at Holyrood in 2026. At that point, it is hard to see how a referendum could be avoided.
Unionists know the way to win is not to play. The best chance of preventing a referendum later this decade is a Labour government at Westminster that takes some of the heat out of the Scottish Question. Starmer would be better placed to argue that Sturgeon had enjoyed her “de facto referendum” and lost it. Time, then, to focus on other matters.
So if the question is, as perhaps it should be, “Which person running to be prime minister is most likely to solve, or at least park, Britain’s existential problem?” then the answer is very clear: Sir Keir Starmer. Deep down, there are Scottish Tories who know this and can live with a minority, or even majority, Labour government. The national interest, in the broadest possible sense, requires the Tories to lose the next election.
Agreed. A Labour win under a unionist like Starmer will kill the purpose of the Indy movement in Scotland which is solely built on an anti-Tory sentiment.
When Labour wins government we can expect Indy to crash down drastically.
I thought Starmer was opposed to anything to do with unions? Ba-boom-shhhh… 🙂
The Thalmor Embassy will revolutionize the UK
Or more likely, just another Cameron-esque weasel who’ll make empty promises then disregard them all when No scrapes a win by the skin of its teeth.
I don’t dispute Keir would be better than any Tory, but that’s hardly high praise, and talking of this grey, uninspired, ideologically sterile suit like he’s the great saviour of our times seems at best wildly optimistic to me. Especially given he’s already betrayed the reformist elements who propelled him into the leadership in the first place.
He’s as establishmentarian as Labour leaders come, and if that were good enough for Scotland, why isn’t it still a Labour heartland? And the Scots know this, they’re no fools. I don’t see any reason to think he’ll be any more successful in Scotland than any other Labour leader lately.
Scotland do not want Labour either, there is literally no reason for Scotland to stay part of the UK. It pays more into the treasury than it receives back why would it want to.
Richard D James has let himself go
By becoming a brexit supporter and not engaging with the SNP.
Thats so not going to work
“the man for devolution” was happy to stick with it when the Torries began their assault but when it came time to show he stood with it he ordered labour to abstain from voting against the internal market bill and simultaneously undermined the labour government in Cardiff. Thing is Welsh labour is too timid to kick off about it
Massie’s written his one article again.
What an utterly delusional take. The Union is dead either way; talk to the SNP and they leave or don’t and they leave.
One way is just messier and shitty; Keith seems to have chosen that one.
The Union is dead