Party lines
The General Election 2010

Tom Gallagher
The SNP's best hope

A You Gov poll recently found that 31% of Scots said they would be more likely to vote for independence if the Conservatives returned to office, resulting in the headline in Monday's Scotsman 'Tory victory SNP's best hope for independence'.
     But is it? At a glance yes. The unappealing nature of the Tory brand and the legacy of a militant class warrior who hastened the downfall of Scottish manufacturing in the 1980s means the Conservatives will only win a handful of Scotland's 59 seats. As soon as David Cameron pockets the keys of No 10, there will be swingeing cuts which will be felt hardest in the post-industrial central belt where reliance on the state for community survival is greatest.
     But a look at the political history of the last 30 years suggests that it is Labour that stands the best chance of profiting from a Tory comeback. Labour is at its best when it is in opposition. It knows how to rally its local government and trade-union base over the defence of jobs and services. This is a small 'c' conservative phalanx of Scots who are not predisposed to high-risk adventures. Indeed, it is, perhaps the biggest segment of the Scottish electorate. It has experienced over a decade of high-spending Labour rule and only a few purists in the Labour voting tribe fuss about whether the money was spent wisely.
     If the Tories return from the cold, it won't be that easy to depict them as the children of Thatcher. George Osborne may incite visceral feelings but the hard-faced capitalists are far less numerous. Arguably, the new intake of candidates for safe Tory seats are far more representative of the country than Labour's parliamentary forces. Women, gays and ethnic minorities are sweeping away the knights of the shires, double-glazing merchants and pillars of the motor trade. Meanwhile, the people's party remains top heavy with trade-unionists, members of Labour's quango state, and the geeky protégés of Labour ministers who know only a world of conspiratorial politics.
     Thanks to UKIP eating into the Tory vote, it is quite possible to envisage Labour emerging with the largest number of MPs even if the Tories have a bigger percentage of the vote. The Queen would then be obliged to invite Gordon Brown to form the next government. A coalition with the Lib Dems would probably be the only arrangement that could produce a government with a working majority. They might be bold enough to hold out for a government led by a more palatable figure than Brown. Anyway, it is likely that a Labour party clinging to office will experience further internal convulsions. It is increasingly made up of careerists who have few organic ties with a constituency or the low-income voters whose welfare is supposed to be Labour's chief reason to exist.
     Some talented figures find life inside a party which sees capturing the state as an end in itself an increasingly unrewarding existence. The retirement of james Purnell shortly before his 40th birthday revealed that Labour has little room nowadays for independent-minded thinkers who have a hinterland beyond politics. The startling end to Steven Purcell's career when he seemed poised to become a heavyweight figure in Scottish Labour politics includes many imponderables but is an indication that figures who could endure the grind in times past now lack the stamina to do so.
     A messy succession battle to lead a party with few organic ties to the working class cannot be far off. The contenders, ranging from the Miliband brothers to Ed Balls and that dark horse Liam Byrne, chief secretary of the Treasury, are hardly nature's charmers.
     Meanwhile, there is the perilous economic situation. The economy at best will bump along at the bottom or else will enter another stage of recession as consumers refrain from spending, ratings agencies downgrade Britain's credit worthiness and city investors head for the hills.
     The structural weaknesses of an economy now burdened by a debt of trillions of pounds are more likely to be cruelly exposed under Labour than the Conservatives. If crises are never far away, then the number of citizens ready to give a hearing to the Nationalists with their message of disengagement from a moribund union, is bound to increase. The thought of constructing our own separate destiny will no longer seem as utopian.
     So if wobbly Labour seats like Ochil, Kilmarnock, and Edinburgh North remain faithful to Brown and Glasgow East returns to the fold, then it is by no means curtains for the SNP. Gains for the party in 2011 when the Holyrood elections come around could be far more valuable than the SNP increasing its Westminster tally to a dozen seats (these probably mainly at the expense of the Lib Dems).
     By 2011, Britain might have a different electoral system if the UK Lib Dems play hard ball and hold out for the abolition of first past the post. Then it might be hard to envisage another majority government and instead years of policies shaped around the lowest common denominator could ensue. If unimpressive and divided leadership fails to maintain authority and living standards at home and Britain's reputation abroad sinks, then the concept of Britain could become meaningless for a new generation of Scots. They are currently disconnected from all the parties, including the SNP. But right now Alex Salmond's party hardly looks like the change party. Many of its policies, especially in response to deep-seated social problems, are hardly different in their essentials than what is coming out of Whitehall.
     The content of Alex Salmond's speech when he was asked to give the Edinburgh lecture on 12 January this year shows the intellectual torpor of the party. This was an opportunity to map out a convincing roadmap for a Scotland which had moved on from the fantasy economics and social divisions of Brown's Britain. During its many decades in the wilderness, the SNP would have cut off its right arm to have enjoyed such an opportunity to articulate its vision of the future. But a speech replete with stories about Calvin Coolidge, Churchill and Keynes was devoid of any new ideas or even soaring rhetoric, it was a lame effort by a leader who seemed deep in winter hibernation.
     A Labour victory seems to offer more chances of a SNP breakthrough because the defects of the party of Brown and Balls now eclipse those of the Tories under Cameron (even with the controversial tax arrangements of its chief financial donor). But even if the British state slides into a crisis of serious dimension, the SNP is likely to remain a sideshow because of its failure to break out of a world of slogans and soundbites and prepare for a post-Union Britain.

Tom Gallagher teaches politics at Bradford University and is the author of 'The Illusion of Freedom: Scotland Under Nationalism' (Hurst and Company, 2009).