{"id":72235,"date":"2023-10-06T07:03:33","date_gmt":"2023-10-06T06:03:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=72235"},"modified":"2023-10-06T07:03:33","modified_gmt":"2023-10-06T06:03:33","slug":"its-time-for-the-snp-to-smell-the-coffee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2023\/10\/06\/its-time-for-the-snp-to-smell-the-coffee\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s time for the SNP to smell the coffee"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Guardian email<\/a> this morning has the headline:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The associated article notes:<\/p>\n

Scottish Labour\u2019s Michael Shanks has won the Rutherglen and Hamilton West byelection in an overwhelming victory over the SNP that the party leadership declared \u201cseismic\u201d, and a clear demonstration that Scotland could lead the way in delivering a Labour government at Westminster at the coming general election.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So let\u2019s get some facts right.<\/p>\n

First, this was a LibDem style victory on a swing of 20%.<\/p>\n

Second, the \u00a0literal crimes of the outgoing former SNP MP always made a swing of that sort likely.<\/p>\n

Third, this was hardly an SNP safe seat. As Lesley Riddoch has noted\u00a0in The National<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Rutherglen and Hamilton West is the fifth most Labour-supporting seat in Scotland and the 36th most SNP-supporting seat. It had Scotland\u2019s third-highest Labour vote in 2015 and fifth-highest in 2019. If Labour can\u2019t win there \u2013 with local issues to grind like the cost of entering SNP-run Glasgow because of its pollution-busting LEZ \u2013 they won\u2019t win anywhere.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Fourth, as Lesley also notes:<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also worth pointing out that few by-election victories survive the following General Election. Indeed, Winnie Ewing\u2019s historic 1967 victory over Labour in Hamilton was reversed in 1970.<\/p>\n

Recent analysis by Electoral Calculus suggests seats gained in by-elections over the last 40 years are more likely to flip back to their \u201coriginal\u201d holders than to be held by challengers.<\/p>\n

And in Rutherglen and Hamilton West, the \u201coriginal\u201d holders have pretty much been Labour since the party was formed.<\/p>\n

So, the SNP may be set to lose a seat they were always lucky to hold \u2013 just like every other governing party.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, this is not quite the result it seems.<\/p>\n

And, fifth, part of the win is down to the collapse in the Tory vote:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But, having said all that, the optics for the SNP are not good. It has lost one of its more marginal seats whilst looking like a tired government in Scotland.<\/p>\n

But that, maybe, us unsurprising. For a party supposedly of the left, its economic policies have been remarkably neoliberal.<\/p>\n

It has also been strongly pro-Union with its leadership being dedicated to using the UK pound, even though its membership has strongly rejected that policy.<\/p>\n

And it has failed to deliver a convincing strategy for achieving independence against the combined Unionist hegemony of the Tory and Labour parties, both of whom still \u00a0have a profoundly colonial mindset whilst being indifferent to the interests of \u00a0Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, even though Labour rules in the last of these.<\/p>\n

The SNP did in that case need this loss, in my opinion. Maybe it might just be shocked out if its comfortable indifference to its membership, independence and even governing as a result. If so that would be very good. The last thing the UK needs is a Labour landslide given how far to the right it has also drifted.<\/p>\n

In summary, I don\u2019t think this a big deal. I don\u2019t think Scotland has suddenly found a massive new enthusiasm for Labour, because it already had it in this seat. But I do think the SNP might have to wake up and actually reflect the interests of its membership and Scotland again, and not those of a small coterie around its leader\u2019s office. And that would be a good thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Guardian email this morning has the headline: The associated article notes: Scottish Labour\u2019s Michael Shanks has won the Rutherglen and Hamilton West byelection in
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,106,140],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-politics","category-scotland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72235"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72242,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72235\/revisions\/72242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}