{"id":943157,"date":"2026-05-07T05:48:21","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T05:48:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/943157\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T05:48:21","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T05:48:21","slug":"a-win-for-the-scottish-national-party-does-not-mean-the-uk-is-cracking-at-the-seams-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/943157\/","title":{"rendered":"A win for the Scottish National Party does not mean the UK is \u2018cracking at the seams\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scotland<\/a> is going to the polls on Thursday for the seventh time since 1999 to elect 129 members to the devolved Scottish parliament. In these troubled times, filled with discontent, there are precious few havens of political stability around the world, but Scotland is one such place. <\/p>\n

The Scottish National Party<\/a> (SNP), despite a vote share predicted to drop by 10 per cent or more, is poised to be returned to power in Edinburgh where it has governed since 2007. Its dilemma, one it shares with Sinn F\u00e9in<\/a>, is that it has enjoyed two decades of outstanding success in a political environment to which it does not want to belong. <\/p>\n

Its dream of independence is stymied by its inability to get agreement to a second independence referendum, having lost the first one in 2014. It will view an overall majority in Thursday\u2019s election as a mandate for a fresh poll, but London will beg to differ. <\/p>\n

Scottish First Minister John Swinney<\/a> caused a stir during the campaign when he expressed a willingness to co-operate with Sinn F\u00e9in and Wales\u2019s<\/a> Plaid Cymru. He suggested the UK would be \u201cchanged irreversibly\u201d if all three devolved administrations were to be led by parties committed to fundamental constitutional change. <\/p>\n

That assertion ignores the real differences between the politics of Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast. It is not clear what Swinney has in mind. Does he plan to build an informal alliance on the back of a shared constitutional narrative? And would such an alliance budge things in London? <\/p>\n

After all, Scottish independence is not analogous to Irish unity. If Sinn F\u00e9in were to become a government party in Dublin, could it continue to back Scottish independence? Considering the referendum provision in the Belfast Agreement<\/a>, is there any role for the SNP in advocating a border poll? <\/p>\n

The SNP has traditionally been wary of comparisons with Sinn F\u00e9in given their very different histories. Swinney\u2019s willingness to risk allying with Sinn F\u00e9in shows how eager he is to find a credible route to a second independence vote, which he hopes can be held in 2028. At the Sinn F\u00e9in Ardfheis, Michelle O\u2019Neill<\/a> welcomed the prospect of nationalist parties winning the Scottish and Welsh elections which she saw as evidence that the UK was \u201ccracking at the seams\u201d. <\/p>\n

Even if the SNP retains its stranglehold on the Scottish government, its continued ascendancy in Edinburgh, the door to a fresh referendum will remain firmly shut at Westminster. It is impossible to imagine the current Labour<\/a> government or any successor willingly conceding the SNP\u2019s demand. <\/p>\n

It goes to show that, even for the SNP, Scottish politics continues to be a subset of the wider British system. Sinn F\u00e9in\u2019s demand for a Border poll also requires British government compliance, albeit that one is provided for in the Belfast Agreement. <\/p>\n

Scottish devolution has now been in place for almost three decades. Following the passage of Westminster legislation for devolution in 1998, the Labour Party won the first Scottish election fairly comfortably. At that time, an SNP government in Edinburgh seemed a remote prospect as they were up against the combined ranks of Labour, the Conservatives<\/a> and the Liberal Democrats<\/a>, all opposed to the SNP\u2019s core demand for independence. <\/p>\n

During the past two decades, the SNP enjoyed a spectacular rise, supplanting Labour as Scotland\u2019s leading party with notable triumphs in Scottish and Westminster elections. The party had a subsequent crash landing with the resignation since the 2021 election of two First Ministers, Nicola Sturgeon<\/a> and Humza Yousaf<\/a>; the latter lasted little more than a year in the top role after taking over from Sturgeon. <\/p>\n

With incumbents vulnerable everywhere, how is it that the SNP remains competitive when the party\u2019s former chief executive, Peter Murrell \u2013 ex-husband of Nicola Sturgeon \u2013 is currently facing charges of embezzlement? <\/p>\n

In a six-horse race \u2013 the SNP, Labour, Lib-Dems, Conservatives, Reform UK<\/a> and the Greens \u2013 the SNP\u2019s core vote of around 30 per cent puts it in pole position to be the Holyrood parliament\u2019s largest party. On Thursday, barring last-minute implosions, the SNP is set to pick up the bulk of the 73 constituency seats. The other parties will gain most of their seats from PR-generated lists. <\/p>\n

The SNP profits from being an exclusively Scottish party that is not at risk of being dragged down by the actions of their counterparts at Westminster. Labour\u2019s poor record in government in London has badly dented Scottish Labour despite its leader, Anas Sarwar, publicly distancing himself from Keir Starmer<\/a>, going so far as to call for his resignation as prime minister. That ploy has clearly not cut it with Scottish voters and Labour is now languishing at between 15 per cent and 20 per cent in the opinion polls, trailing well behind the SNP.<\/p>\n

One might not expect Reform UK, with its English nationalist image, to have much appeal in Scotland, but it is challenging Labour for second place and is set to pick up a significant number of seats. Reform\u2019s rise has helped the SNP by eating into traditional support bases for Labour and the Conservatives. The Greens, who also back independence, are on the rise and have taken some support away from the SNP. <\/p>\n

Getting agreement to a fresh referendum would probably require the SNP to hold the balance of power in London and to use that position as leverage, just as the Irish Party did after the 1910 British election to secure the 1914 Home Rule Act. That\u2019s not out of the question given the febrile, incoherent state of British politics at present, but it is not something an abstentionist Sinn F\u00e9in could help the SNP with. Or could it? <\/p>\n

Daniel Mulhall is a retired diplomat who was Ireland\u2019s first consul general in Scotland (1998-2001) and subsequently ambassador in London. He now divides his time between Scotland and Ireland<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scotland is going to the polls on Thursday for the seventh time since 1999 to elect 129 members…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":943158,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[748,13515,191060,393,4884,7852,38002,11518,20584,1144,386,712,8545,11528,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-943157","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-common-ground","11":"tag-conservative-and-unionist-party","12":"tag-england","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-john-swinney","15":"tag-labour-party-uk","16":"tag-liberal-democrats","17":"tag-michelle-o-neill","18":"tag-northern-ireland","19":"tag-reform-uk","20":"tag-scotland","21":"tag-scottish-national-party","22":"tag-sinn-fein","23":"tag-uk","24":"tag-united-kingdom","25":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116531724391897343","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=943157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/943158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=943157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=943157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=943157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}