Should the SNP shift slightly to the right away from traditional social-democratic politics? - from Scotia 22/11/00
[another Scotia list member stated] I don't agree that this rightward realignment makes sense or is desirable. I think this denies the reality of political life in Scotland, perhaps based on a misunderstanding of the lie of the political land in Scotland. A person will never be able to accurately assess the political situation here if they continue to look at Scotland only from a UK perspective. It is for this reason that the Conservatives are loathed up and down this country - the same mistake that Thatcher made, and Blair is now making. Scots political aspirations are different from those down south, we still want a left-of-centre Government.
I think what you are providing is a view that many Scots like to have of their own country when seen through rose tinted glasses in which Scotland is more community oriented than England which was more Thatcherite. I'm not saying it is 100% wrong but I'm not sure that it stands up too well to rigid examination either. If you took a 5 million sized chunk of northern England like Tyneside plus it's rural hinterland is Scotland really all that different in terms of social attitudes? I doubt it personally. The last few election results in Scotland were:-
* latest System 3 poll
The total support for the two traditional parties has been fairly static along with the 3rd party vote so what makes Scotland different from England is that a lot of the larger 3rd party block would probably be Tory in an English context but simply can't stand the Conservatives on a national identity basis rather than a socioeconomic one. The SNP has emerged since the 60's at the same time as the Tories have slowly abondoned their old populist Liberal Unionist approach in Scotland that was so popular back in the 50's when they obtained majority support for a more London-centric style of campaign within the TV age. The electoral block that has drifted away from the Tories prefer "Flower of Scotland" to "Rule Brittania" basically but it took them a few years for them to recover from Argentina 78 and the political debacles in 79 such as the referendum and the turkeys voting for an early Christmas. There's no evidence that these people are inately socialist or somehow more left of centre than a similar demographic block of the electorate in England IMO.
In 1983 Labour slumped to 35% as Foot was way too left wing in both a Scottish and UK context. In 1996 the Tories collapsed in terms of representation as Blair moved to the right and was able to scoop up about a quarter of their support base that thought it was time for a change after 18 years of Conservative government. Blair appears to be holding this support in a Westminster context so where is the evidence that Blair is unpopular in Scotland because he is too right wing? It appears to me that having an unusually right wing Labour leader was actually the key to the 1997 complete Tory meltdown not Scotland's mythic left wing character. Alex Salmond opted for the "Penny for Scotland" thinking it would be a big vote winner as he believed the conventional wisdom that you state above was correct. In the event it was a bit of a flop as the SNP had been as high as 40% in the opinion polls leading up to the first Holyrood election and the "penny for Scotland" has since been quietly jettisoned as an SNP priority over the last year or so. Maybe under John Swinney the SNP is dealing with Scotland as it really is not as we tend to like to think of it.