The SNP’s catastrophic defeat is an opportunity for Scotland

Like the wider UK result, the SNP getting a hammering in yesterday’s general election was largely predicted by the polls. But this has not lessened the impact of seeing the many well-kent faces of high-profile former SNP MPs being given their marching orders by the Scottish electorate. One after another they fell, and with them the hubris that has defined the party since 2014 melted away. 

Popularity in democracies tends to be cyclical, but the SNP has defined itself not as a mere political party but as the beating heart of a national liberation movement and, as such, able to transcend political gravity. It also has a particular emotional pull for many of its members, many of whom have an unfortunate tendency to conflate party and nation. For them, yesterday’s seat losses must have come as a body blow. 

For Scotland, it is a different story. This is an opportunity for a reset. This morning’s result leads to obvious practical consequences for the SNP. It loses its position as the third party at Westminster, and with it a large amount of short money as well as talent. That dramatically reins in its ability to campaign for independence. If John Swinney, or his successor, has the gall to demand a second referendum from the new UK government on the spurious grounds his administration has a ‘mandate’ from the 2021 Holyrood election, then Keir Starmer need not take it seriously for the simple reason the people of Scotland will not take it seriously. 

More importantly, perhaps, is the chance to end the poisonous national identity culture war the SNP has inflicted on Scotland these past ten years. Most Scots will have a sense of this. The SNP has worked hard to split Scots into two distinct cultural tribes: nationalist (which equates with being Scottish, noble and good) and unionist (which equates with being British and therefore unsavoury and bad).

To catalyse this national identity culture war, the symbols and cultural touchstones of Scottish identity were appropriated for the cause. The message was that if you truly wish to identify as Scottish then you must embrace the SNP’s nationalism. As with all culture wars, the aim was to frame those on the other side as culturally toxic, such that no right-minded person would want to be part of their group. Over time, in-group versus out-group psychology would ultimately ensure victory for the culturally dominant side.

The SNP has continuously stoked this national identity culture war to maintain its support. This goes some way to explaining why their dominance of Scottish politics has been so toxic. With that dominance now on the wane, Scotland has a chance to reclaim national identity as a secular phenomenon; to stop it being politicised and indeed weaponised for party-political gain.

The new Labour administration in London will obviously have a pivotal role to play in progressing Scotland’s political culture beyond the toxicity of the past decade. At a basic level, improving prosperity in Scotland will help lock in the trend of falling SNP support. Less obviously, the Labour government will have to ensure that Scotland’s national identity culture war is no longer a driver of its politics. 

In the past, Labour has been guilty of stoking nationalism in Scotland because it served its immediate electoral needs. It framed Conservatism as a foreign presence in a fundamentally non-Conservative country, and in doing so established myths of national exceptionalism that the SNP later turbo-charged to its advantage. The Labour government of the 2020s needs to be smarter than that. 

Its approach to the constitutional question should be pragmatic and utilitarian. It needs to reinforce the Scottish electorate’s move back to the left-right spectrum, with abstract ideals about sovereignty and identity relegated to lesser issues. If national identity comes into the equation at all then it should be in terms of celebrating our multiple, overlapping identities, where there is no contradiction between being Scottish and British. 

The Labour party has some smart new Scottish MPs who understand the importance of framing and not falling into nationalist traps. They should be listened to.

As for the SNP, they should, for once, be humble in response to the strength of the signal the Scottish electorate has sent them. They have had every opportunity since the independence referendum to move the dial in support of secession – but have failed to do so. They never accepted the will of the Scottish people in 2014. They must do so now. And in doing so they might also diminish the pernicious national identity culture war they created, to the detriment of Scotland.