It is the SNP's record that matters in this election - not Keir Starmer's

I wonder if Tony Blair et al, when designing Scottish devolution, ever envisaged a time when a Scottish first minister would be using a Scottish parliamentary election to argue that it was an opportunity to get rid of a British prime minister rather than proudly standing up to defend his own party’s record in government here at home. 

In fact, stop me now, because when I asked that very question of Blair’s former spin meister last week he replied with an emphatic “no”. And I guess he should know.

Of course, this isn’t how devolution was ever meant to work for its Labour architects. But then neither was an SNP majority, an independence referendum, or indeed nearly 20 years of uninterrupted Nationalist rule. And yet here we are, and all those things have come to pass. 
Although the rich irony of bumping into Lord George Robertson, whose own prediction that devolution would kill nationalism stone dead, on the same day that I spoke to Alastair Campbell didn’t pass me by either.

And actually, after a quarter of a century and more, this is evidently how devolution does now work.

We are less than two months away from electing the next tranche of MSPs to sit in the seventh session of the Scottish Parliament and it is being framed by the current party of government as a battle to break away from a “broken” Brexit Britain.

And while the alliteration is hackneyed and doesn’t always bear scrutiny, the politics are understandable from the SNP incumbents whose clever sleight of hand casts them conveniently as radical insurgents. 

This is also an election in which we are bizarrely told that the answer to Westminster’s attempts to destroy devolution [even if we were to believe that to be true] is independence. And that makes no sense at all.

And yet it’s an election the SNP is predicted to win despite even its own supporters judging it poorly on delivery, integrity and trust. An election that no one feels any real appetite or enthusiasm for. A ‘meh’ election in which voters are tactically discussing how to use their vote to prevent a particular party winning rather than putting their faith in one they would like to succeed.

And an election that is being fought along fault lines rather than on a battle of ideas.

An election which the first minister says is all about change despite his party having been in power for nearly 20 years and with him at its heart for almost all that tenure. An election that John Swinney says will deliver independence despite polls consistently showing no majority for that outcome, no priority for it from the Scottish people, and a prime minister unlikely to give way on allowing a second referendum. And finally, and most disingenuously of all, an election that Scotland’s first minister – aka Honest John – says is the opportunity to remove that prime minister from office.

None of the above is true and not what this election should be about but that hasn’t stopped the propaganda war. Remember when Stephen Flynn – an MP who was only voted back to Westminster in 2024 on a clear promise to serve the voters of Aberdeen South before then becoming concurrently a candidate to be an MSP – stood with a billboard showing a picture of the prime minister under the words, “Gone in 100 days”. This was followed by Flynn urging Scottish voters to use this Holyrood election to “sack Starmer”. 

For clarity, the only person out of Starmer and Flynn whose political future at Westminster will be decided at the ballot box in May is Flynn.

Look, of course this is all pre-election politicking but whatever the voters do on 7 May,  they should be reminded every day up to then that what they are helping to build is a government at Holyrood, not dismantle one at Westminster, and it is that, and only that, that should guide how they cast their vote because that determines how Scotland is run. And right now, that is pretty mediocre.

A housing emergency, a drug-death crisis, climate change targets missed and cancelled, hospital scandals, a ferries debacle, overcrowded prisons, rising numbers of sexual assaults, the lowest life expectancy in Western Europe, an ever increasing financial blackhole, and damningly an information commissioner who says this is a government that cannot be trusted. The first minister does not have his troubles to seek so let’s put to bed that this is a vote on 21 months of a UK Government and treat grandiose claims that frame Swinney as the Starmer slayer with the contempt they deserve.

Let’s face it, Starmer is managing his own self-destruction just fine. There is no question that his government has let Scots down – for goodness’ sake, it has let its own Scottish leader down – but the chance to vote them out will come with the electoral cycle and the removal of Stamer will no doubt come from within.

This isn’t about Westminster; it’s about Holyrood. And even putting the government’s performance to one side, this has been one of the most rancorous sessions of the Scottish Parliament that I have known. A session bookended by two contentious pieces of legislation that took up time, emotion, and failed. A parliament overshadowed by the fractious gender recognition reforms that demanded a no-debate approach that should have no place in a grown-up legislature, that made pariahs of its critics and that will cast a shadow over civic Scotland for a long time to come. 

Predicting the outcome of elections is a fool’s game that we all nevertheless indulge in. And while it does look like the SNP will be returned as the largest party, this could be Swinney’s John Major’s 1992 pyrrhic victory. Voted in on a much-reduced vote share; facing a disaffected public; internal party struggles with newly elected former MPs vying for position against a loyal old guard of backbenches; an ever-mounting economic blackhole; unsustainable public services; and all against a backcloth of scandals that will have their day in court. I would safely predict that Swinney won’t stay the term; an independence referendum won’t be delivered; and his party will go through yet another bitter leadership contest.

After almost 20 years in power, and with health, education, and justice all devolved, the SNP should be going into this election having to answer for its record and not just winning a ballot based on the distraction of some nebulous concept that Westminster is broken and that independence will usher in a land of milk and honey. The fact that they are not is something we, as voters, must now consider.