Albert Sorel divided politicians into two groups, those “who seek to change the world to suit their ideas” and those “who seek to modify their actions to suit the world”. He was thinking of Montesquieu, but Alex Salmond certainly belongs in the latter group. Sorel’s aphorism, meanwhile, is particularly apt when it comes to the SNP leader’s interpretation of ‘independence’.
Gerry Hassan has called this ‘post-nationalism’, whereby the SNP has embraced “a politics of nationhood shaped by shared sovereignty, alliances and flexibility and fluidity”. Some SNP advisers have long believed that as referendum day draws closer, tensions and inconsistencies associated with ‘post-nationalism’ would emerge. Indeed, since May’s election, several have done so surprisingly quickly.
The first related to the monarchy. In July the First Minister told Queen Elizabeth that whatever constitutional path Scotland decided to take, “we will aspire to be, in your words, ‘firm friends and equal partners’.” The First Minister’s eloquent speech maintained the impression that SNP policy is to retain the Queen following independence, when in fact it is – or rather was – to hold another referendum on who ought to be head of state.
When journalists started sniffing around on this front, the SNP issued a statement saying the independence referendum now included “the long-standing policy for the Queen and her successors to be head of state”, a policy that apparently dated “back to the founding of the SNP in 1934”. Salmond had simply jettisoned a party position – agreed at the 1997 SNP conference – he had never been comfortable with. When I teased Nationalists on Twitter about this, they simply told me it “wasn’t important” who the head of state in an independent Scotland was, a curious position for a party so interested in every other aspect of British rule.
Defence has also emerged as a relatively weak policy area for the SNP. Pathologically incapable of being seen to sanction any ‘cuts’, the party has got itself into a position of simultaneously arguing for some kind of Scottish defence force, pooling resources with the UK Ministry of Defence (without actually asking it) while refusing to commit Scottish troops to any ‘illegal wars’. Former SNP MSP Chris Harvie called this “military unionism”, and indeed it smacks of having “both the cake and the eating” as Ian Jack put it, “no to Trident and ludicrous post-imperial pretension, yes please, to aircraft carriers and RAF fighter bases on the east coast”.
The SNP has always seen scrapping Trident as a ‘red-letter’ issue, a point of principle that could not possibly be compromised. But even here there has been movement, with the Scottish Government recently welcoming a UK Government decision to base more nuclear submarines at Faslane. Veteran Nationalist Stephen Maxwell said this was “clearly inconsistent” with the SNP’s “declared policy of making Scotland nuclear-free”.
A Eurosceptic like Maxwell would at least be reassured by his party’s equally confused position on the European Union and single currency. Having rejected federalist thinking that advocates harmonising taxes across Europe, the SNP now rules out both a separate Scottish currency and immediate membership of the euro, instead making it clear that keeping sterling is the most “stable” option, although this begs obvious questions about just how independent a state can be if its currency is administered from London (or indeed Brussels).
What would stop London demanding absolute harmonisation of Edinburgh’s fiscal policy to avoid destabilisation of sterling?
These currency, defence and pro-monarchy stances are, of course, about closing down potentially tricky ‘unionist’ attacks in the run-up to the referendum. Professor Robert Hazell of the Constitution Unit has highlighted the “potential fuzziness” in such a position.
“Defence, macroeconomic policy and foreign affairs are key features of statehood,” he points out. “Does the SNP want Scotland to be independent or not?” But by stressing such continuity, Salmond is attempting to guide moderate Scottish opinion towards viewing independence as no big deal.
His concept of a ‘social union’, which is little more than a statement of the obvious, does likewise, although SNP strategists are conscious that this strategy could be a double-edged sword: if the party keeps stressing how consistent the new Scotland will be with the old, then there is a risk voters will shrug and ask “well, what’s the point?” On the constitution, the SNP is also surprisingly hazy, having not yet adequately explained where devolution ends and independence begins. Even John Swinney’s former adviser Ewan Crawford thinks it is “one area where work needs to be done”. Similarly, the former MSP Duncan Hamilton says the “SNP will, and must, define and explain independence”, a task that will keep the party “fully occupied”. Herbert Morrison once said socialism was whatever the Labour Party did, and indeed by 2011 ‘independence’ seems to be whatever the SNP – or more accurately what Alex Salmond – says it is.
In ideological terms, the modern SNP is just as contrived. Although the party has for long staked a claim to be centre-left or social democratic, in reality it is a bit of everything, taking its cue from Salmond’s determination to situate the party within the ‘mainstream’ of Scottish opinion. “The SNP is not a policyheavy party,” one adviser recently told me, “but they think they represent some sort of core Scottishness. It has a canny mix of small ‘c’ Conservatism, reaching out to the Liberal vote, and also ‘we are the people’ Labourism. It’s a fascinating dichotomy: we cover all the bases of Scottish politics.” The unifying factor is, as ever, a belief in (varying degrees of) independence, but many leading proponents of that ‘big idea’ hold different hopes and aspirations for an independent Scotland. Paul Henderson Scott, for example, wants it to be pacifist (not a view shared by the SNP’s defence spokesman Angus Robertson); Michael Fry to unleash neoliberalism; Joyce Macmillan to salvage social democracy; Gerry Hassan to think big and positive, and so on. The point, as the party frequently insists, is that “Scots will decide” what the New Scotland looks like, although it seems unlikely all of them will be happy with the end result.
There is also trouble on the economic front, Salmond having sought to combine the social democratic and neoliberal models in terms of taxation, something the academic Michael Keating dismisses as “voodoo economics”.
Keating has also reminded the SNP that there is little evidence following Ireland’s lead on corporation tax that it will work in Scotland, where “such a cut would provide a windfall benefit for existing businesses without attracting much more”. Although Salmond has previously suggested halving the levy in Scotland, since the election he has refused to be drawn.
Curiously for a centre-left party, the SNP also has little to say on its preferred employment model for Scotland, appearing to think, in the opinion of trade union expert Professor Gregor Gall, “that all new jobs are necessarily ‘good’ jobs, no matter their purpose, conditions, prospects or security”. Amazon is a case in point, providing just the sort of low skilled, poorly paid jobs that Salmond would have been critical of as a ‘radical’ young activist.
That leads me nicely to welfare, in which the SNP displays no apparent interest despite its prevalence in certain parts of Scotland. The Scottish Government document Your Scotland, Your Voice (now repeatedly referenced by Salmond et al) blandly assures readers that in an independent Scotland, “pension and benefits [will continue] to be paid at a similar level as now”, but instead of articulating the SNP’s alternative vision for unemployment black spots like Glasgow, Salmond says nothing, preferring to attack the UK Government’s reforms, which at least have the merit of trying to tackle a longstanding problem.
Several commentators, many sympathetic to the SNP, have opined that since winning the 2007 election, the party has been cautious and managerial.
Christopher Harvie wondered if the past four years had not just been “part of a contest between two versions of Scottish social democracy, partial and flawed, struggling to survive on an unstable British stage”. And as Gerry Hassan argued in The Scotsman, “it has not been a transformational government”, rather “one of caution and timidity”.
Indeed, the record of the first Nationalist Scottish Government contained few hints as to what the party might attempt in an independent or maximally devolved Scotland. Rather the SNP’s guiding philosophy appears to be, as it was for Stanley Baldwin in the 1920s, ‘Safety First’. But then why not? Playing it safe is often good politics and besides, it could be that none of the above really matters. Perhaps all voters will notice come the referendum will be a good campaign; lavishly funded, beautifully choreographed by the usual talented team, and ably led by the movement’s star turn, Alex Salmond.
