SNP, Alex Salmond and Stalinism - from Scotia 19/06/00
[another Scotia list member stated] I think the first thing which we have to do is to widen our view. What is happening in the SNP is not Stalinism. It is far more complicated than that. Perhaps because it is my academic interest, it seems to me that the model which we have to use to understand the present situation is drawn from the Sociology of Religion. No don't delete this. Hear me out.
It is worth bearing in mind that Stalin's original career plan was to be an Orthodox priest. I agree with your basic thesis that political parties and religious sects have a lot in common. What I find Stalinistic about the SNP right now is the inability and unwillingness of party functionaries to even discuss alternative strategies. The mentality appears to be that you must rigidly accept the party line and it is not acceptable for people who are not part of the leadership to do anything other that deliver leaflets and trot out official party policy in a drone like manner. In a healthy political movement people push in the same general direction certainly but there should always be a diversity of subtely different possible approaches that can be argued over intellectually by a reasonably broad portion of the party so that a consesus is reached. Salmond's "Penny for Scotland" and his outburst over Kosovo appear to have been discussed only by a small inner circle (i.e. politburo) of Salmondite cronies. They may have been ratified in a rubber stamp manner by the national council (i.e. party congress / supreme Soviet) but the activists who did so knew fine well that to oppose it would have been potentially damaging in PR media terms so in effect the inner party leadership had presented the broader party with a fait accompli. As my Shetland grandmother used to put it "the blood's in the bucket now". Once you've slaughtered a farm animal you can't undo it. In the same way once Salmond made his Kosovo outburst it couldn't be undone and both Salmond and the broader party knew that and that party loyalty would dictate that everybody would have to rally round the flag at least in the short term.
My personal take on Alex Salmond is that he was used to being part of a very small clique at Westminster that was not under much of a media focus or scrutiny as they were a minor back bench faction. This gave him a freedom of action that would not normally be present for the leader of an opposition party who has to balance the interests of the various factions within a party to keep everybody in the loop and pushing in the same direction. Like Stalin after the party congress in which Kirov oupolled him in the vote for a place in the Politburo, Salmond was probably spooked by the calls for him to possibly resign after the last election due to his perceived major strategic blunders so he is now trying to eliminate all internal dissent and opposition in a manner that would have been unthinkable before the Scottish election when much was made of the Dennis Canavan situation. Is this new rigidly centralist approach healthy for the SNP? I think not. Personally I think both the "Penny for Scotland" and Kosovo outbursts were serious strategic mistakes which could and probably would have been avoided if there had been more people in the decision making loop than was the case in the small Westminster clique SNP backbend decision making process. Some of the stuff that appeared this weekend about the party finances suggests that a similar comment could be made where the SNP's finances are concerned. The whole decision making process needs to be changed and that can only happen with a new leader in place.
One question that has come up is how a party gets rid of a leader that has completely dominated a party intellectually and in personality terms for over a decade but who has started to lose the plot in a big way. The Tories got rid of Maggie so it can be done. The usual strategy is a stalking horse candidate for the party leadership at a national conference. That candidate is normally somebody with no real leadership pretensions themself but if they get a sizeable enough share of the vote then the leader has to go even if they don't actually win. The Westminster election is probably too close for that to happen soon. My guess would be that if that election goes badly for the SNP and the Tories take back some of the 6 seats currently held without there being any advances elsewhere then Salmond's days will be numbered however. After that there will have to be a significant advance at the next Scottish election shortly thereafter or the same comment will apply. It will take an electoral setback though before people will stick the knife in as politicians fear losing their seats more than anything else and the calculation is always whether the process of ousting a leader would be too damaging in the short term to an MP or MSP's employment prospects to be worth the longer term benefit at any given moment in time.