Labour comes out of Scottish debate on top

There is a truism in British politics that things would be much more civil if there were more women in the room. Tonight’s all-male Scottish leaders’ debate undermined that: the exchanges were far less vehement and aggressive than they had been when Nicola Sturgeon was SNP leader and when she was facing other female leaders.

The real reason for this had nothing to do with the gender of the leaders standing in the STV studio, or indeed much to do with a new era of kinder, more civil politics and everything to do with the fact the wind has gone out of the SNP’s sails. John Swinney reminded the audience that he hadn’t expected to be in this position just five weeks ago, but that he wanted to ‘protect Scotland in these tough times’. It was a shift from the hugely popular ‘stronger voice for Scotland’ pitch that Sturgeon made when the SNP swept away nearly all other parties in Scotland in 2015. And it hadn’t little to do with independence. In fact, when he was asked what was the second line of his party’s as-yet unpublished manifesto after the promise on Scottish independence, Swinney answered that he wanted to address the issues that people were facing, almost as though he acknowledged that a deep desire for independence wasn’t one of them.

He clashed with Douglas Ross over whether the SNP would back new oil and gas licences for the North Sea. The First Minister refused to offer clarity on this point: under Sturgeon, there was a presumption against new drilling but Westminster group leader Stephen Flynn has suggested he has been trying to change the party’s stance (he is an Aberdeen MP). Ross wanted to push this because the Tories have rushed out more licences ahead of a potential Labour government which has pledged to halt the licences, but Scottish Labour has been deeply anxious about the impact on Aberdeen and the wider Scottish economy. ‘That’s a no,’ said Ross, curtly. ‘John Swinney and the SNP are against new oil and gas licences. just say it, be honest, John.’ Anas Sarwar and Swinney clashed over whether to tax oil and gas giants, with the First Minister warning that it would have the same effect as ‘what Mrs Thatcher did when she was in power… she created an industrial wasteland in central Scotland’. 

The most aggression came between Sarwar and Swinney. The SNP are most threatened by Labour in Scotland and devote a considerable portion of their time in Westminster sessions to attacking the official Opposition rather than the Conservative government. Sarwar accused Swinney of being ‘the architect of austerity in Scotland’ and also said that only by voting Labour would Scots see the back of the Tory government in Westminster. Swinney wanted to suggest Sarwar was being complacent, arguing that it was already clear Labour was going to walk it in this election (implying that it is therefore safe to vote SNP in Scotland).

Swinney is a funny combination of courteous in person and energetic as a heckler in the Scottish parliament. This evening, he didn’t appear fully comfortable or confident. He opened by saying that times were too serious for a shouting match. But he ended up vying for least comfortable with Douglas Ross, who had to answer questions from everyone on why he had backed his national party so often. Ross pointed out that he had not supported Boris Johnson, but this allowed Lib Dem Alex Cole-Hamilton to remind everyone that Ross had submitted a letter of no confidence and then withdrawn it. He also struggled to answer the question from Swinney on why, after Liz Truss’s mini-Budget, he had demanded that the SNP follow suit. All Ross could really say was that he’d assumed the people in the Treasury had done the necessary work to ensure it was safe. Cole-Hamilton was the smoothest, but also under the least pressure: he and Sarwar ended up chuckling almost affectionately at one another at one point.

Sarwar is the most impressive of the party leaders and made a passionate attack on the Conservatives, telling Ross he should be ‘begging for forgiveness’ from Scottish voters for the ‘Tory Party damage of the past 14 years’.

All the party leaders got their soundbites in, but none landed a knockout blow on the other. Even though Sarwar was the most impressive, he will also have come away from that session feeling as anxious as Swinney: his party is doing so well in the polls that voters may well think they don’t need to turn out to a polling station at all. Here in Scotland where school holidays will have started by 4 July and many people will have gone on holiday, that risk is even greater than in the rest of the UK.