Bait And Switch

Tomorrow, and in the days after the election, those of us who want to remain in the UK should not gift Nicola Sturgeon the opposition she wants.

A favourite tactic of the dodgy used car salesmen is the ‘bait and switch’. Customers are lured in by the offer of a cheap deal on a specific car but once they’re at the showroom it turns out that deal was never really available and he just wanted the chance to force a more expensive ride on a reluctant buyer.

We’ve seen a version of this in every election that the SNP has fought under devolution. The votes won on a Thursday by reassuring people that they won’t prioritise leaving the UK are claimed on Friday as a mandate for Scexit.

They’ll try it again in the days ahead. For this reason, this moment in last night’s final BBC leaders debate was significant:

Glen Campbell: “They don’t want another independence referendum during the period of the recovery, so what are they meant to do? If they want you as First Minister but don’t want independence?”

Nicola Sturgeon: “They should vote for me.”

This election campaign began with Nicola Sturgeon talking about another referendum to placate her members and stop any bleeding to Alex Salmond’s new party. Since that threat has receded she has chosen not to put a specific mandate for a referendum on the ballot paper'; decided not to mention a referendum in millions of leaflets going through voters doors; and she has reassured voters in media appearances that she will not prioritise leaving the UK over leading the country into the recovery.

Remember this clip on Friday when she appropriates the votes won through this strategy in support of reopening the constitutional debate. And remember that many voters will be angry if she does pull the bait and switch. As participants in a special focus group carried out by Times Radio put it:

“She’s said she wants to get us through this pandemic and then if that was to be the case I would feel pretty angry and disappointed”.

“I think I would be really angry because that’s not why I’m voting for the SNP just now. I’m voting for SNP to try and help Scotland to recover.”

Fighting With Nationalists or Fighting Nationalism?

This next clip from last night’s debate sets out the strategic choice faced by supporters of remaining in the UK. On the first day of this campaign, I wrote that Douglas Ross was standing on a trapdoor. If Boris Johnson has already guaranteed that a referendum won’t take place, how can this election be about voting conservative to stop that referendum? After a strange tweet from the Scottish Conservatives that seemed to concede another referendum was “guaranteed”, Glen Campbell decided to pull the lever on the trapdoor:

Ross knows that this moment came too late in the campaign to seriously dent his strategy, but it does expose the dance that the Conservatives and the SNP have been doing over the last few weeks/months/years. They fight with each other over a referendum neither party leader believes is going to happen any time soon, crowding out far more urgent and important issues, because they know that is what their core votes want to hear. That fight might make partisans feel better but it does nothing to move Scotland on from nationalism.

Douglas Ross hopes that there’s a big enough constituency for people who want to fight with the SNP, and he had decent moments of this last night. Anas Sarwar’s hope is that at this election, and over the long term, he can start to change the conversation, rather than perpetuate the argument. These two moments from him demonstrate why he is being recognised as the star of this election.

Here is why I believe Anas Sarwar’s Labour is a smarter pro-Union vote than the alternatives. He isn’t trying to exploit a polarised and poisonous argument, he is trying to end it. The SNP, at this election or the next, will only ever be beaten with a strategy that seeks to win over the very voters who Nicola Sturgeon is appealing to in her clip above: the swing voters who will decide whether Scotland’s politics fester for another decade or whether we refresh our stagnant national debate.

Those of us who want to stay in the UK have to want to defeat nationalism more than we want to fight with nationalists. Sarwar has been the positive and hopeful voice in this election. He has hit a reset button. Compare the images of him dancing in the street with women in Glasgow with the appalling treatment Jim Murphy faced in the streets of the same city just 5 years ago.

Ask yourself this honestly. Who would the SNP rather have as the second party in Holyrood? Who do they want as an opponent? There is no doubt in my mind she would rather look over to see Ross rise to ask the first questions at First Minister’s Questions than Sarwar at the head of a resurgent Labour Party.

What Comes Next

If there is an SNP majority after tomorrow it would be legitimate for the UK Government to say no to another referendum. Here are five reasons why.

1. Because the pandemic and its effects will last for years. High streets have been shuttered, jobs have been lost, kids have missed education and opportunities, cancer patients in their thousands don’t even know they have cancer yet.

2. Because Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP promised that the 2014 vote was once in a generation and signed an agreement pledging that the vote would be respected and decisive.

3. Because, as has been made clear again and again and again in this campaign, the SNP have done literally no homework on how a separate Scotland would fund our public services, run an economy without a currency, or operate a new border with our biggest trading partner.

4. Because poll after poll has shown that only a small minority of voters want a referendum in the next few years. Yesterday’s Opinium poll, for example, suggested that just 28% of us support Nicola Sturgeon’s proposed timescale for a re-run of 2014. Half say either there should not be a referendum in this term or ever.

5. Because, as Nicola Sturgeon has repeatedly said in this election, an artificial parliamentary majority, gained through gaming the second votes by parties not seriously contesting the constituency votes, would not reflect a pro-independence majority in the country. There isn’t a shortcut to gaining popular support for leaving the UK.

There has been no decisive shift in opinion among the Scottish people since 2014. Of the last ten opinion polls, Yes was ahead in only one of them. The polls published today paint a picture of an unchanged electorate. The final poll of the campaign from YouGov suggests that opinion is identical to where it was when people voted to remain in the UK: 55 No 45 Yes. The final poll from Comres found 54 No 46 Yes.

Having elevated opinion polls as the test of the legitimacy of their claims, the SNP cannot dismiss them. Referendums, if they are not to divide the people bitterly against each other and poison politics, should seek to confirm an argument already won, not to have another shot at an argument already lost.

Nationalists who want to be outraged should stop reading here.

However, having written all of this, the UK Government, and Scottish opposition parties, should not be the antagonists the SNP want.

Not Never. But Not Now.

Nicola Sturgeon wants the debate to shift to her soundbite of “Scotland’s right to choose.” I’ve written before that this is using reverse psychology on an electorate who are sceptical of the policy of leaving the UK and hostile towards the divisive process of another vote. The SNP want to say to voters: never mind that you don’t want this, aren’t you angry that *they* say you can’t have it?

So what should supporters of Scotland staying in the UK say in response to nationalist claims of a mandate on Friday? I think they should say something like this:

Not never, but not now.

Not now because we have to get over the pandemic, get people back to work, get our NHS back on its feet, and catch our kids up on everything they’ve missed.

Not now because, as Nicola Sturgeon herself admitted during this campaign, she hasn’t done any homework on the big questions: How will we fund the NHS if Scotland gives up our share of UK funds? How many jobs will her new border with England cost and what will it mean for people living along it? What will we do without a central bank and what will the cost be of moving to an unproven new currency?

So, we’re not saying never, but no responsible politician could even think about supporting a referendum until these questions have been answered and until the country is fully back on its feet.

Let’s spend at least the next few years working together for the good of everyoe in Scotland.

This denies the SNP the blanket denial that they so desperately want, and that their strategy depends on.

It also shifts the debate from the claim to a right to hold a referendum to the responsibility to plan properly before they can legitimately demand one. The last thing the SNP want is for this to become a debate about the economics of leaving the UK.

Most importantly, a position like this reflects where two-thirds of Scots are in opinion polls: not saying never to another referendum, but certainly not saying they want one any time soon.

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Thank you to everyone who has shared Notes on Nationalism, you have helped reach a far bigger audience than I expected when I started writing these at the start of the year. Thank you too to everyone who has emailed feedback and suggestions for issues to cover in future issues. I’m working on ways to expand and develop this newsletter after the election. All suggestions for you you would find interesting and useful gratefully received.