Jim Sillars: The election is a real test for the SNP – I think they will fail

Twenty-five years of breathing room was what Jim Sillars predicted unionists had bought with the new Scottish Parliament in 1999.

Devolution was never something the former SNP depute leader backed – going against the grain of his party – because he felt it would not give Scotland the powers needed nor take it any closer to independence.

But he also specifically recalls a conversation he had at the time with Margo MacDonald, his wife who would go on to become an MSP until her death in 2014, in which he said unionists would “spin out devolution” for around 25 years, giving “just a little bit more at a time to take away pressure”.

Looking back, he seems to have been proven right. The Scotland Act 1998 held for about a decade, until the Calman Commission was established to review it. That led to the 2012 Act, which gave the parliament some flexibility relating to tax. The 2014 Scottish independence referendum and ‘The Vow’ sparked the Smith Commission, resulting in the 2016 Act which handed Holyrood a raft of new powers.

Yet despite these powers, devolution has not – as Labour’s George Robertson infamously foretold – killed nationalism “stone dead”.

Support for Scottish independence has remained high since the 2014 referendum, hovering just under the 50 per cent mark. Though this is not enough for indy evangelists like Sillars, it is a very strong position from which to launch the next push and prepare for the campaign ahead.

Scotland would be in an extremely powerful position in a hung parliament to extract the referendum

That was the thinking behind his new book, The New Case for Optimism, published at the end of last year. It is, he says, his last contribution to the independence debate. At 88, he says he either won’t be around or at least won’t be able to contribute as much in the years ahead. And so he’s tried to set out a path for others in the independence movement to follow.

He argues the next big moment for the independence campaign is not May 2026, as the SNP suggests, but the next Westminster election. Given current polling, he suggests a hung parliament is within the realms of possibility – which then gives any pro-independence MPs a very strong bargaining chip.

“If the independence movement can get itself into the position of amalgamating all the strength of the movement and have a single, agreed candidate in every constituency and we build up the vote beyond what it is just now, Scotland would be in an extremely powerful position in a hung parliament to extract the referendum,” he says.

Despite still being a member of the SNP, he’s wary of the wider independence movement putting all its political eggs into one basket, particularly at a time when the SNP’s polling is well behind support for independence. He’s previously raised the idea that the SNP should not be leading in any fresh push, and he remains of that view now.

“I’ve met scores of people who’ve said to me, ‘I support independence, but not if they [the SNP] are running it’. And that’s a constant that comes from people. They have almost, in a sense, lost confidence in independence if independence means an SNP government. That’s one of the things the movement has to say, that the SNP government does not equal independence.”

I’ve had people say to me that they don’t believe that [the SNP] really believe in independence

Part of his reasoning is because of a deep unhappiness (his own and the wider electorate’s) with the record of the SNP while in government. “The lack of competence is almost unbearable to watch,” he says.

He has been particularly critical in the years since Nicola Sturgeon took over, but that’s not to say he didn’t have his problems before. In fact, he says the “cult of personality” that sprung up around Sturgeon was “started by Alex [Salmond]”. And he says the party has been “intellectually hollowed out”.

Looking to May, that’s meant the “mood among people who want independence is pretty grim”. “I think the election is a real test for [the SNP], which I think they will fail,” Sillars adds.

At its autumn conference last year, the SNP adopted a new strategy on independence. It was agreed the only legitimate way forward was via a referendum, and that the route to that was to win an outright majority in the Scottish Parliament. John Swinney’s reasoning was that the precedent already exists, given it was the 2011 win that paved the way for the last referendum.

“The difficulty is that lots of people don’t actually believe them,” Sillars says.

“Maybe it sounds strange, but I’ve had people say to me that they don’t believe that [the SNP] really believe in independence, and that they put the independence flag up to get votes because people go, ‘well, I want independence, maybe I’ll go with that flag although I’m unhappy with what they do as a government’. And I don’t think that’s working any longer at all.”

He suspects many “potential” supporters will instead stay at home come 7 May and the party will fall well short of winning a majority.

I ask whether he believes it would therefore be more helpful to the independence cause if the SNP stopped talking about independence in the parliament.

“I got into trouble with the SNP leadership some time ago because I actually said, ‘stop talking about independence and concentrate on government’. Now, they don’t seem to understand the difference between an SNP government and the SNP party. The issue of building up policy and campaigning for independence should be given to the party.

“The SNP in government should concentrate on good government. And if they perform well in government, that will greatly assist the political wing in its campaign of persuasion.”

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Doing so would also allow other independence groups who aren’t affiliated with the SNP to continue their work without interference. With one eye to the next Westminster election, Sillars reckons the next two years must be dedicated to creating a policy prospectus that has been “tried and tested, and we’ve done devil’s advocate on it”. Then the months after that would be spent campaigning for independence, with the aim of getting support well past 55 per cent before a referendum is even called.

“We actually have time, but the first part is below the radar where you’re doing work on the manifesto. There’s a whole range of groups doing very good work at the moment. The thing is to pull it all together into something that is coherent and credible. That is what people are doing at the present time.

“There’s no point campaigning just now because the SNP material is what people look at and it’s unconvincing.”

Sillars is not concerned that the new prospectus for independence will be difficult to sell in the current climate. “In 2014, Better Together was a brilliant slogan. It implied that we had shelter under the economic power of the UK state, without which we were in trouble. Nobody could argue that now. England’s got nothing to offer us except decay and decline along with them, so this is the chance we’ve got.”

Indeed, the opening chapters of his book go into detail about the decline of the English state. “Canute had a better chance of reversing the tide than the Labour government has of reversing its decline,” he muses, going on to highlight what he sees as a weakening of “England’s institutional foundations”.

“England has a huge amount at stake in Scottish independence,” Sillars tells me. And the changed environment from 2014 – not least that Yes support is now much higher than it was at the start of that campaign – means the UK will fight the referendum differently. Proponents of Yes must therefore be prepared to counter the inevitable offer of “devo-max”, he says.

England... is a poor country pretending to be rich

The definition of devo-max can vary, but broadly it is about the Scottish Parliament having as much power as possible short of independence. Typically, this means at least defence and international affairs remain reserved, though arguments have also been advanced about other policy areas resting at UK level too.

Sillars accepts that at first glance this is a “highly seductive” option, and indeed several polls already find strong support among the public for this third option when asked to choose between the status quo, full independence and devo-max. It benefits, though, from the lack of a strict definition which means it can mean different things to different people.

“My advice to [the independence movement] would be not to ask for a white paper or say ‘what do you mean by devo-max’, rather let’s see it in bill form, at second reading,” Sillars says. “Then we’ve got detail where we can examine that against independence. At the end of the day, devo-max is devolution. There is no transfer of sovereignty.”

Ultimately that means that even with more powers Scotland would remain “locked” to a country he believes is unsalvageable, that is “a poor country pretending to be rich” and is “living on an international credit card”.

Compare that to Scotland, which he describes as “rich in assets”. Come the campaign, he says: “We’ll be able to prove what we can do through the manifesto with those rich assets to change the lives of people in this country and juxtapose that with a continuing political and economic relation with England, which is a poor country pretending to be rich.”

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Sillars’ dislike for devolution is not only rooted in his belief that alone Scotland would be doing much better economically; he also believes devolution has actively left Scottish politics worse off.

“What I think devolution has done is that it has parochialised the Scottish political mind. If you look at the SNP conferences, stuff outside of Scotland hardly registers… I think it’s done enormous damage to the Scottish political mind. And if you have a parliament which in a sense attracts people who are mediocre, then you’re going to end up with a mediocre parliament. And that’s in fact what we’ve got.

“It lacks imagination. It’s stuck in what I would regard actually as minority trivia – that would upset various people, but I regard it as minority trivia.

“A parliament that is able to declare a housing emergency but takes no emergency action on the emergency they have declared is a contemptible organisation, actually, from the people’s point of view… There’s been probably more talk about trans issues than there has been about housing. We’ve got real problems in devolution.”

Independence is a scapegoat-free zone

That’s partly why he thinks the SNP is in such a sorry state as well, because it’s had to concentrate on devolved and domestic issues – “and not doing it very well,” he adds – rather than the wider world. Even Salmond, who Sillars says was “both good at government and good at campaigning”, ended offering up a manifesto in 2011 that focused more on domestic issues than independence despite that being the SNP’s raison d’être.

While he accepts good governance now would help the Yes campaign, Sillars has always been unconvinced of the gradualist argument that devolution paves the road to independence.

“If devolution was a spur to independence, why were we only at 29 per cent in February 2014? It was the campaign for independence that took us from there to 45, and people became convinced and have not been unconvinced,” he adds.

He argues in his book that devolution has directly impacted the quality of MSPs, that “virtue signalling” is a “perk” of it, and that it has allowed Scottish ministers to use Westminster as a scapegoat even when they themselves are to blame. So does he believe independence offers a cure to all that?

“Independence is a paradigm shift for everybody. You go to an entirely different level of personal and collective responsibility if you’re independent because you’re on your own. You have no scapegoats left. Independence is a scapegoat-free zone… Suddenly people would be required to look on what happens in a Scottish Parliament entirely different from what they do now.

“Independence is both a political and an intellectual elevation of a nation. And so you then begin to measure the parties and the candidates that they put forward in an entirely different way.”

The funny thing is that when speaking to MSPs, both unionists and pro-independence folk, many agree with the problems Sillars highlights. There is a feeling that the parliament is unfit for purpose, that it struggles to hold government to account, and that there are not enough free-thinkers elected to serve.

Sillars has had those same conversations too. “When I talk to MSPs, they know it’s not working – but they’re in a rut and don’t seem to know how to get out of it.”

He argues the parliament should be a “forum for debate”, but time limits on speeches and the fact it only sits three days in a week means there is none. “Imagine a Scottish Enoch Powell... or Tony Benn [being limited to] four minutes – you must be joking.” He continues: “I just don’t have any regard for it whatsoever.”

To go around denouncing Reform as racist... is the height of stupidity

I’m intrigued as to what impact he thinks the arrival of Reform as a serious contender on the Scottish political scene will have in the coming months. Sillars believes no party has yet got to grips with how to handle this new party.

“Unless you understand the people and why the people are going for Reform, then Reform will march on. And the alarm bells should be ringing right now,” he says.

Sillars suggests that it’s “perfectly possible” that issues where Reform has a strong message – immigration being the main one – will be “central” to May’s election campaign. And he’s unimpressed by how other politicians have handled this so far. “To go around denouncing Reform as racist, and by implication those who vote for it must be racist, I think, is the height of stupidity.”

The head of steam that has built up across the country about illegal migration, Sillars say, is precisely because no politicians has been willing to properly engage with the issue. “For years when people have been anxious about illegal immigration, you told them to shut their trap because they were bigoted and racist and that they had no right to speak out on this issue.

“And then along comes a man who says, ‘I’m saying what you thought’. You’ve suppressed their opinions and not listened to those opinions – and then bang, out they come, and you’re surprised?”

What I think devolution has done is that it has parochialised the Scottish political mind

He continues: “I was up in the north-east and independence activists were telling me their second vote’s going to Reform. The answer to Reform is not to call them racist at all. That’s the mistake that John Swinney is making, and no doubt the Labour Party and the Liberals will join in as well.

“I think the key issue of 2026 is how you tackle Reform. You do that by listening to people, not by brushing them aside the way Gordon Brown did with that old lady who was concerned about immigration way back in 2010. If you do that, you’re cutting yourself off from a whole range of people who say, ‘you won’t listen to us’.”

Going into listening mode is how independence will be won, Sillars says. He’s long believed that support must be over 55 per cent, ideally at 60 per cent, when the referendum votes are counted for independence to be successful.

He points to Brexit, arguing the reason it has not been a success was in part because the vote was so close, and a significant portion of the country wanted it to fail. That cannot happen with independence, he says. And that all means making supporters out of current unionists.

“One of the things I’ve tried to do is persuade people in the independence movement to respect others who may be right-wing unionists. Going up to someone and saying ‘Tory scum! By the way I’d like to talk to you about independence’ seems to be a massive contradiction in attitude. If you respect people, they’ll listen.

“Now, you might not change their mind, or they might not change your mind, but you’ve got a dialogue going. And in a small country like ours, that dialogue is very important.”