A Changed Scotland?

Where does the election leave us and what next for this newsletter?

So that was something.

Nearly ten years after I saw my closest friend in politics lose the area I call home in an SNP landslide I won the same community in a Labour landslide. I can now say the term Prime Minister without a pejorative edge. Grown-ups are in charge again. The SNP’s crisis has become a catastrophe for them.

I’m only now getting time to assess what just happened.

When you’re the winning candidate there’s a theatrical tradition that you should be the last person to arrive at your count. So you miss all the tension as the ballots are tipped out of the boxes, sorted into piles, separated and then counted. It’s just as well: the tension of the competing bundled votes being laid out in a horizontal bar chart is unbearable when you’re an activist, let alone a competitor.

The result of that convention is that you arrive, say a few thank yous to your team, and then are ushered into a room to be told the numbers. When the declaration is made you spend the whole time wondering what the correct facial expression for the moment is. Stoic statesman or Stephen Twigg gosh-face?

After your speech, the Returning Officer hands you an envelope marked “Member of Parliament” which, disappointingly, doesn’t contain missile codes but instead points you towards the House of Commons HR department. It’s a reminder amid the drama that this whole process has been, after all, a job interview.

In truth, I haven’t yet enjoyed it on a personal level. When I went to wake up my kids to tell them they now had to refer to me as “Daddy MP”, I felt a wave of emotion bubbling up that I felt was better corked for now. When friends living under dictatorships from my old role called and texted to say how happy they were for my new job, I had to fight hard to hold it together.

Stiff-upper-lip intact, a few hours later I gathered together on a platform on the banks of the Clyde along with the rest of the new Scottish Parliamentary Labour Party. It was only as some of my new colleagues arrived for the photo opp that I realised they had won.

Stephen Daisley has a good piece today on some of the new talent in our group:

“Whatever other problems the new government might have, it appears to have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to Scottish MPs.”

He’s right. One of the consequences of Scottish Labour having had our arse handed to us for a decade is that people who might have otherwise been pulled into parliamentary life earlier have years of experience in other fields now.

I wrote today in the Sunday Times about what this election means for the future of Scottish politics.

“Labour lost heavily in 2015 because the election was all about the constitution and not enough about choosing a government. This week the SNP lost because the election had absolutely nothing to do with the constitution and everything to do with voters expressing unhappiness with two rotten governments.

Independence hasn’t slipped away over a distant horizon because of any muscular unionist strategy: it is because the SNP are organisationally, intellectually and financially bankrupt.”

Regular readers will remember my previous appeals for readers to internalise the difference between wanting to fight the SNP and wanting to beat the SNP. This wasn’t an independence election, claiming it as such risks undermining what is so damaging for the nationalists: the constitution was utterly absent over the last few months of debate. Without it, the SNP are now naked, unable to conceal the utter failure of their governing project.

Whether real politics has returned to Scotland isn’t up to me or any other politician to say, it will be for the people to decide. I do know this though: the framing of Scottish politics won’t change if those of us who do want to reunite Scotland around the meaningful work of political change cannot move on then Scotland won’t. We need to find new ways of discussing politics that move on from the past. Anas Sarwar has excelled at this over the last few months and we can all learn from him.

Quite apart from anything else, it is the SNP’s leaders that are communicating the new political reality. Sturgeon says the break up of the UK “is off immediate agenda.” John Swinney says the failure of his cause is his party’s fault. When your opponents communicate the outcome you want, there is no need to dwell on the obvious.

If Thursday’s vote was about a desire to get rid of two poorly performing governments, then the job was only half done when Keir Starmer walked into Downing Street. It will only be complete when Anas Sarwar walks into Bute House.

What now for NoN?

I enjoy political analysis and, given you and thousands of others subscribe to this newsletter, it seems you do too. However, the pundit has now become a player. My new responsibility is to shape events rather than comment on them.

I am so excited to tell you that this newsletter will now be edited and written by the brilliant Andrew Liddle. Many of you will know him from his insightful journalism. Others will have read his brilliant book on Winston Churchill. He is far smarter and a far better writer than I am.

I will still write occasional pieces on here, so I won’t be a stranger, but this will be his project from here on out. I cannot wait to read how he assesses the new Scottish political landscape, the lead-up to the 2026 Scottish Parliament elections, and the deepening crisis of nationalism.

Watch this space for his first edition…

Culture Corner

What else? It’s certainly been a long time coming.