Sunday 15 March 2015

What is Labour?

Michael Prior writes:

It is obvious that Britain is not Greece or Spain. Those hot-headed Latins can switch parties and entire political systems without a moment’s thought. But we have a calm and sensible system which accepts that what was good enough for our parents is good enough for us. And that means first-past-the-post gets the prize and coming second gets nothing. As Labour may soon find out in Scotland. Just what a Labour wipe-out in Scotland would mean in the rest of the country remains to be seen. But surely one consequence has to be a close examination of the system which has produced the most rigid political structure in Europe, one that has essentially remained unchanged for nearly a hundred years. This involves not just the electoral system which does look increasingly dysfunctional but also the political framework built around this system. The starting point for such an examination has to be the Labour Party and the complex history which has brought it to the current impasse.

A rigid first-past-the post (FPTP) system tends to produce an equally rigid two-party system which, loosely, correspond to progressive and conservative positions. The range of different views within these broad categories are represented by factional groupings within the two parties which jostle for influence in determining the policy of the party in various ways. However, the inexorable electoral logic of FPTP tends to perpetuate the two-party structure despite internal differences. Just how well this system has served Britain (it has never worked in Ireland) can be disputed but one thing is clear, the coming election is one in which it has broken down. There are two, rather distinct reasons for this. First, has been the rise of a specifically regional party whose position on the left/right spectrum tilts to the left but is less important than its regional allegiance. This is not quite a new phenomenon in U.K. terms but the political structure of Northern Ireland, the regional exception, has long since been detached from Britain though it may yet in tight votes come back into prominence. Second has been the rise in importance of issues which simply cannot be contained by factional disputation. EU membership and immigration have seen the rise of UKIP, primarily as an opponent of the Conservatives whilst concern over environmental issues has fuelled the rise of the Greens. (Discussion of the extent to which the Greens can be taken seriously as a political party rather than a pressure group must be deferred.)

These twin issues impact most heavily on Labour as the Conservatives have long vanished from Scotland. Wipe-out in Scotland and major Green inroads into some parts of its English vote could leave it faced with no electoral future at Westminster without a major restructuring of the British political system. None of this is certain. It could yet hang in with 30-something percentage of vote, a deal with the Scot Nats and a continuing grip on its northern citadels. But given the clear possibility of a potentially fatal blow, some assessment has to be made of this rather odd body, odd because its structure differs so sharply from the normal, continental form of a classic social-democratic mass party with a hierarchical structure built up from a national membership.
 
In February 1900, representatives of most of the socialist groups in Britain (the Independent Labour Party (ILP), the Social Democratic Federation and the Fabian Society), met with trade union leaders at the Memorial Hall in Farringdon Street, London. After a debate the 129 delegates decided to pass Hardie’s motion to establish "a distinct Labour group in Parliament, who shall have their own whips, and agree upon their policy, which must embrace a readiness to cooperate with any party which for the time being may be engaged in promoting legislation in the direct interests of labour."  To make this possible the Conference established a Labour Representation Committee (LRC). This committee included two members from the Independent Labour Party, two from the Social Democratic Federation, one member of the Fabian Society, and seven trade unionists, effectively equal representation for the political and labour wings. The wording “any party” is significant; these men were not themselves forming a new party nor is there any indication that they aspired to this.
The name Labour Party was in fact first adopted in 1906 by the group of 29 MPs who had won election under the auspices of the LRC essentially to describe themselves and those who had worked to elect them.  Its ‘object’ in 1910 was to ‘secure the election of Candidates to Parliament and organise and maintain a Parliamentary Labour party with its own whips and policy’ It was a ‘federation of national organizations’, a loose and ill- defined alliance rather than a coherent party with specific aims.

Nationally, the Labour Party only acquired individual membership in 1918, after extension of the national franchise to all adult males and some women, when something like the existing constitution was adopted. It was only after 1918 that the party began to contest nearly all seats and to systematically oppose the Liberals, the party which had been the main representative of the working class before 1914 and with whom the LRC had concluded electoral pacts to gain election. Its success was then meteoric. By 1924, it was able to form a government, albeit as a minority, and by the end of the decade, it had totally eclipsed the Liberals. This complex organisational rather than political process and its sudden rise to power has provided the Labour Party with unusual, though longstanding, features which still define its nature and politics.

First, as a federal organisation in which most democratic power is exerted by affiliated bodies whose own individual members have different relationships with their national body, it has only a limited role for individual members of the Party itself. A consequence of this has been a persistent inability of positions which commanded significant, often majority, support within the individual membership to determine party policy as expressed within party manifestos. It is noteworthy that the one affiliated body with specific political ambition controlled by individual membership, the ILP, split from the national LP in 1932 to begin a long decline.

Second, it has remained true to its original LRC roots in being primarily an electoral body dedicated to providing the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP), a separately constituted body with its own rules and policy, with members and to electing local councillors. It has had a minimal role as a campaigning body or one with any ambition to the development of any left political culture outside Parliament. As a result, a wider political body of left campaigns and agencies has always existed outside the LP with overlapping membership and various levels of support but with no official relationship.

It is a provocative but essentially truthful comment that it has always been this loose gathering, a kind of political penumbra, which has provided the LP with the full characteristics of a political party rather than being just an electoral machine. The procedural basis of this has been the way in which affiliated bodies have memberships which contain both LP members (often a minority) and members of other political groups as well as those with no direct political affiliation. The classic example of this is the way in which Communists were always able to play an indirect part in forming Labour policy by their active participation in policy formation inside the unions to which they, as individuals, belonged.

Third, the trade unions have always had a crucial role inside the LP, though one which is now reduced, though not vestigial, usually one that is supportive of the leadership of the PLP and which provides much of the party’s money. Trade unions provide the parliamentary leadership with its compliant majority on the National Executive Committee, which nominally runs the LP, and also helps elect the national and Scottish leaders (thus Ed not David Miliband and Jim Murphy). They also provide substantial though diminishing amounts of dosh.

This historical role defined much of the party’s internal ethos. Supporting the Labour Party meant accepting not socialism or indeed any specific ideology but an intricate network of loyalties. This was essentially a trade-union code of behaviour; so were the political aims of the Labour Party, at least for much of its existence, essentially trade union ones. Within these limited terms the Labour Party has had reasonable success. If it is objected that it has not served the ‘true’ interests of the working-classes the answer is that it was never designed to do so. One of the abiding features of unions is solidarity, an unquestioning support of other members against external forces. This, translated into political terms, is essentially a kind of tribalism in which support for the party rather than support for some external political principle becomes the dominant feature of political calculation. The result is that a large number of LP activists continue to work to elect LP candidates even though they reject a good deal of Party policy and always have done. It is probable that this rigid but essentially fragile shell of support, which can break once a single crack appears in its carapace, is one important reason for the extraordinarily rapid collapse of the Scottish LP.

Fourth, the LP was never a socialist party though initially, it contained elements of support for a socialist political programme in its constitution and even now some of its elected MPs, though certainly not a majority, would define themselves as socialist and probably a majority of its membership still would. Historically, Labour has coped with the wide diversity of political belief in its ranks by a sometimes chaotic and often fractious internal coalition stretching from right to left. The left-wing of the Party, though normally the junior partner, had often been able to exert influence over both policy and leadership though this influence has declined drastically since the mid-1990s. Its last form, the archaically-named Labour Representation Committee, has only a few hundred members, a bare half-dozen affiliated M.P.s and has no influence of any kind. 

This odd, hybrid body might have been expected to undergo various kinds of political development into something like the continental pattern of a hierarchical membership-based party if it were not for its remarkable and, at the time, unexpected transformation into a party of potential government, a transformation which, even after the debacle of the defection of the then Labour Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, in 1931, continued without any serious challenge. Labour won only 7.0% and 6.4% of the votes cast at the two general elections of 1910. In 1923, on an extended franchise, its share was 30.7%, just ahead of the Liberals, who were damaged by the bitter feud between Lloyd George and Asquith, and it was able to form a minority government. It was only in 2010, that its share dipped down to this level, leaving aside the 1983 election when it faced with its first and, so far, only challenge resulting from in internal split. As a result this strange political formation has continued to dominate left politics in Britain down to the present day without significant alteration to its original form despite the contingent features of its first structure.

This then is the vessel which will set sail in May into the choppy waters of minority government. Although it still has a full set of sails and is manned by a crew of old salts who largely if reluctantly obey the orders of the captain, this disguises the fact that its sails are threadbare and its hull is worn paper thin.

Media political commentators still see the post-May situation in conventional terms of two, dominant competing parties even if the loss of Scotland wipes out much chance of an overall Labour majority. Labour will, it is blithely assumed, form some kind of alliance with the SNP which will enable it to form a convincing government. A moment’s thought suggests, however, that this is a very unlikely situation even in the short-term. There are a number of key issues which are red-lines both for the SNP and Labour. The most obvious of these is Trident renewal whilst others on austerity, Europe and immigration easily come to mind. The fact is that on most of these, Labour will find it much easier to obtain its majority with Tory votes than by compromising with the SNP. There will never be a formal Labour/Tory coalition but it remains quite possible that on key issues, Labour will continue in government for the statutory five years by relying on reaching compromises with the Conservatives. The logic of a first-past-the-post electoral system has always been that there will be two main parties, each covering the span of right-wing conservatism/left-wing progressiveness and containing internally most of the various emphases that such a broad definition encompasses. When these start to overlap and rely on mutual deals then the system begins to break.

The impact that such a situation will have on the English LP is difficult to predict but there are already some straws in the wind suggesting that in its northern heartlands, alternative structures are being considered. The Yorkshire First Party is standing in several constituencies mainly with ex-Labour members who see the national Labour Party as too centralised and London-based to represent the people of Yorkshire. A similar party has been set up in the north-east. Neither will win any seats but their appearance in previously solid Labour areas is significant.

A quite different but perhaps even more interesting development is that of DevoManc, that is the deal agreed between a consortium of 10 Greater Manchester councils and the Conservative government, to devolve control of large chunks of local expenditure, including most startlingly that on health, to the councils although the actual level of the budgets will remain under central control. Greater Manchester is the most important and powerful Labour machine in England. Manchester is the one major city never seriously threatened by the Liberal Democrats and without a single Tory councillor. The deal, brokered by the twin leaders of this machine, Richard Leese and Howard Bernstein, is remarkable for its breadth and also, given the politics of Manchester, the apparent fact that it was done directly with Cameron and did not involve the central party, who do not seem to like it very much. Certainly, the health service unions are spitting blood over it.

It is doubtful that Leese and Bernstein envisage the breakup of the English Labour Party. The fact is, however, that they are busy setting up a situation in which Greater Manchester will come to resemble Scotland in its power and which, given the bringing together of 10 councils, 8 of which are Labour, will make the regional Labour Party a significant power-broker whatever the complexion of Westminster.

Clearly, if Labour suffer a wipe-out in Scotland they will be vulnerable to challenge in England not to mention Wales. Plaid Cymru is now up to around 20% support there but Labour still remains way out in front. In England, only the Green Party shows any signs of acting as an alternative on the left but would need a massive injection of support to be anything other than an irritant to Labour, mostly acting as a conduit for disaffected Lib Dems. Labour now has an iron-bound constitution preventing any challenge from disaffected members. It would require the emergence of a trade-union leader of real stature rather than jokes like ‘Red’ Leonard McCluskey to provide a genuine challenge rather like that of the Jones/Scanlon leadership of the 1970s. Disaffiliation by unions would not provide any problem except financial. It is one of the oddities of the LP constitution that the number and, indeed, membership of affiliated bodies, trade unions and societies, could drop to single figures and still have the same dominant position in elections of leader and NEC.

It also has no need of any pool of potential candidates now that Westminster politics has now become the province of a self-serving group who have chosen politics as a career and, like Tony Blair, may have chosen Labour as their vehicle largely by chance. It is significant that out the 31 members of the current shadow cabinet, less than half have ever had a proper job outside politics having climbed up the ladder via advisers to M.P.s or in various lobbying groups. And that is counting solicitors as a proper job. The days of stalwarts like Prescott or Blunkett, who learnt their trade in trade unions or local authorities whilst holding down other jobs, are past.



And yet. The main result of the May election will be conformation of the growing contempt which much, perhaps most, of the electorate has for Westminster politicians. Under 20% of it, possibly even less, will have voted for the party which will claim the right to form a national government.  If Labour is that party it will do so on the basis of being essentially a regional organisation rather than a national one. It will proceed to act in a way which the majority of its membership will have reservations about. It would be difficult to describe a more unstable political scenario. It would be pleasant to envisage a future in which this was recognised by the leadership of the main parties and there was a consensus to push through the reforms necessary to reduce this instability. But this is not how either Labour of the Tories behave. There will be frenetic back-stairs manoeuvring in May, much making of deals and counting heads. But there exists neither leadership nor will to do anything than ramp up the already dismissive contempt with which most people view Westminster. Could Labour collapse in England as it has seemingly done in Scotland? Could the Green Party strike some kind of political alliance with the Scot Nats, Plaid Cymru and odd fragments of the English left such as Yorkshire First and the Trade Union and Socialist Alliance (aka Militant of yesteryear) to form some kind of emergent democratic left party to take its place?  Even writing such a sentence seems to provide its implicit answer. But something is going to change. 

Friday 13 February 2015


Peter Lawrence writes:

Some 35 years ago, I wrote a book chapter entitled ‘Is the Party Over?’[i] which was an attempt to critique the idea and relevance of the Leninist vanguard party. As the title implies, it argued for the demise of the vanguard party (the model for the then highly influential Communist Party to which I belonged, as well as for its various Trotskyist competitors on the Marxist-Leninist left), in favour of one which would coordinate socialist and other progressive activists involved across a range of struggles.  In so doing, it would provide a home for many who had hitherto felt excluded because of a lack of interest in the issues that concerned them. (One example I gave was the Ecology Party, the earlier name of the Green Party.)  A party which would be inclusive, coordinating and democratic in organisation might also, so I argued, lead to similar developments within the Labour Party which would begin to shed its suspicions of movements it did not dominate and turn it much more into a campaigning organisation to mobilise public support for sustained progressive change.  

Fast forward to 2015, and the Communist Party has morphed into a minor Stalinist sect, while the other ‘vanguard’ groupings such as the SWP, remain small and marginally influential.  The Green Party has grown in membership and influence, gained 1 MP and three MEPs and now threatens Labour.  It is both a campaigning and electoral party now having to come to terms with the diversity of its appeal, which gives it campaign strength, and a set of divergent policies which reflects its diverse appeal. In Scotland, the SNP threatens to wipe out Scottish Labour MPs while the Labour Party, on the other hand, remains an electoral organisation whose performance in government has differed marginally from that of the Tories, still its main competitor, and continues to shy away from becoming a campaigning party which seeks to mobilise popular support for progressive policies. 

Prior to 1966, voting Labour felt like a positive act in the cause of building a democratic socialist society. However timid the Labour governments were, the leadership spoke about planned economies, distribution of income and wealth and the importance of protecting workers against unscrupulous employers. Even when Labour came back to government in 1974, there was a sense such a government was a necessary if not sufficient condition for building democratic socialism. Even more so in 1997, after 18 years of Tory rule, there was no question about where a socialist would put the X on the ballot paper – vote Labour not least to get the Tories out, but also because this was the nearest we could get to a socialist government. In the intervening period socialists have found it increasingly difficult to put that X by the Labour candidate. Holding your nose and voting Labour for fear of something worse was the most positive thing that could be said in favour of such an action.  In 2015, the smell associated with the Labour Party is becoming so strong that holding your nose will not be enough. Labour has become another political career path to high office and then to co-option by the corporate sector with commensurate financial rewards. Yet still we will agonise until the last minute about whether to desert Labour and vote Green (the only realistic alternative) and risk another five years of a government dedicated to advancing the interests of the plutocracy and impoverishing a large proportion of the 99%, or whether to vote Labour to avoid the worst excesses of the Tories.

But will Labour in government, avoid the worst excesses of the Tories? Maybe. Labour, having bought the fiction that austerity is the only way out of the crisis, has already promised to cut public expenditure and eliminate the budget deficit, but not as fast as the Tories. So what would this mean in practice? Maybe the removal of the ‘bedroom tax’, maybe a slower rate of cuts, maybe a marginal reduction in unemployment, maybe some capital expenditure on infrastructure, though even the Tories plan the latter, possibly a higher rate of tax for the rich, possibly a version of the mansion tax that actually hits those who engage in property trading for speculation. Well, better than nothing, and for some people and families, critical, but still not addressing the key problem of British capitalism – its domination by large financial corporates, who effectively determine what governments can do.

The current fuss about whether Labour is pro or anti-business is a case in point. The current crisis was, at its root, caused by the Tory financial liberalisation of the 1980s. Financial corporates gambled away huge amounts of depositors’ money and took control over the non-financial sector. So what did the Labour government do but rescue these failed institutions and now they are back gambling with our deposits which if they lose the bets, are anyway guaranteed by the Government!  Miliband has talked about ‘predator capitalism’ which is certainly what it is, but he hasn’t said what he plans to do about it. Meanwhile the very business friendly shadow chancellor Balls has been heard to say at a private business function ‘You might hear anti-City sentiment from Ed Miliband but you’ll never hear it from me.’[ii] Yet it is the City itself that is and has always been the key problem for the UK economy and it is the activities of the banks and finance houses that populate the square mile and that Thatcher liberated with the Big Bang, over 30 years ago that caused the crisis.

So here we have it. The coalition has provided Labour with an open goal which the party constantly misses. Is it because they are afraid to shoot for fear of alienating voters who are unlikely to vote for them anyway? Is it because they don’t want to shoot because they believe in a strong financial sector?  Or is it because they know that they need the financial sector onside because it can bring governments down and they don’t know how to mobilise popular support for a policy that would bring the City under control.  If there is a lesson from the past, it is that appeasing the City simply strengthens it, and getting the City out of trouble, as Labour did in the financial crisis, loses you elections because the City has plenty of opinion formers who can shift the blame onto the Government and get away with it.
Must Labour die or must it change in order to stay alive? If there is a lesson from what is happening in Greece and Spain, it is that it is possible for ‘left wing’ political formations of a new type to emerge from popular activity involving different groups and movements. In the case of Greece, it can win an election, and start to implement its policies, though the forces of financial rectitude opposed to it, led by the ECB, are trying to prevent this. But a governing party that remains a campaigning one can retain its popular support by doing what it said it would do and mobilising the population to ensure it is done. Labour could learn from this and start to do things differently, not be afraid to take sides with the unemployed, the working poor, the inadequately housed and the food bank dependent, and link up with progressive movements which seek systemic change. That would include the Greens. But for that to happen Labour would need to be a different party and I’m not optimistic, after all those years when it missed the chance, that it can become one now.


[i] Peter Lawrence, Is the Party Over? in (ed) Mike Prior, The Popular and the Political: Essays on socialism in the 1980s, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981.
[ii] Patrick Jenkins, Labour steps up charm offensive on City leaders, Financial Times, February 3, 2015
 

Wednesday 11 February 2015

Cutting loose: the only way for Scottish Labour


Cutting Loose: Scottish Labour and the SNP

David Purdy writes:

As recently as last September, a poll for the Scottish Mail on Sunday on Westminster voting intentions gave Scottish Labour a six-point lead over the SNP, with Labour on 39%, the SNP 33%, the Conservatives 18% and the Lib Dems 3%. Since the referendum, Labour has lost one third of its support in Scotland, while the SNP has climbed to 45-47%, a lead of around 20 points. On a uniform national swing, Scottish Labour would be annihilated, losing all but a handful of its 41 Westminster seats. Even if the party were to claw back to 35%, while the SNP slipped to 38%, Labour and the SNP would each win 28 seats, an outcome that could still put paid to Labour’s chances of forming the next UK government.

 So far, despite the best efforts of its newly elected leader, Jim Murphy, Scottish Labour has yet to reach base camp. A seat-by-seat survey of 16,000 Scottish voters conducted by Michael Ashcroft’s polling organisation and reported in the press on 5th February confirmed the bad news for Labour. The poll, covering 16 constituencies – 14 held by Labour, two by the Lib Dems and all areas where there was strong support for Yes in the independence referendum – showed an average 21-point swing from Labour to the SNP. If these results were replicated across Scotland, Labour would lose 35 of its seats. Among voters under 44, support for the SNP is nearly double that of Labour. Indeed, the SNP leads across all age groups, except among those aged 65 and over. Even allowing that the swing against Labour might be lower in areas where the Yes vote was lower, the party’s prospects look bleak.
 

In what follows, after tracing the forward march of the SNP from protest to power, I examine the impact of the referendum and its aftermath on Scotland’s political landscape, explore the implications for May’s election and suggest that Scottish Labour’s best – and perhaps only – hope of recovering from defeat is to cut loose from its sister parties south of the border, embrace the cause of Home Rule and challenge the SNP’s lingering attachment to neo-liberal “common sense”.
 

The rise and rise of the SNP



Table 1 UK election results in Scotland 1970-2010


 
                                                            % vote

Con                 Lab                  Liberal/            SNP                 Other

                                                                        Lib Dem

1970                38.0                 44.5                   5.5                 11.4                 0.6

1974 (Feb)       32.9                 36.6                   7.9                 21.9                 0.6

1974 (Oct)       24.7                 36.3                   8.3                 30.4                 0.3

1979                31.4                 41.5                   9.0                 17.3                 0.8

1983                28.4                 35.1                 24.5                 11.8                 0.3

1987                24.0                 42.4                 19.2                 14.0                 0.3

1992                25.6                 39.0                 13.1                 21.5                 0.8

1997                17.5                 45.6                 13.0                 22.1                 1.9

2001                15.6                 43.3                 16.3                 20.1                 4.7

2005                15.8                 38.9                 22.6                 17.7                 5.1

2010                16.7                 42.0                 18.9                 19.9                 2.0

 
The SNP’s initial electoral breakthrough came at the Hamilton by-election in 1967. Thereafter it fielded candidates in more or less every Scottish constituency in UK general elections. The party’s share of the vote peaked at 30% in the October 1974 election, when it pushed the Conservatives into third place, yet it won only 11 (15%) of the 71 Scottish seats then in existence. After a lean spell in the 1980s, the SNP averaged around 20% of the votes, but even its best result, in 1997, yielded only 6 seats.

 This discrepancy between votes and seats is easily explained: the SNP’s support is spread evenly across Scotland, both geographically and socially. Unless a party is in the lead across the piece, an even geographical spread is always a disadvantage under first-past-the-post elections. And the SNP’s vote varies little by occupational class or type of housing tenure, making it difficult to break into Labour’s heartlands in the Central Belt, where most of the population lives.

Thus, prior to devolution, the SNP struggled to make headway in Westminster elections. With the new Scottish parliament, however, came a new electoral system. Under the Additional Member System (AMS), the 72 existing first-past-the-post constituencies (with Orkney and Shetland divided into two) were supplemented by 56 party list seats, allocated within each of eight regions so as to ensure that the overall distribution of seats in each region, both constituency and list, would reflect, as closely as possible, the division of votes among parties. This system, agreed after protracted negotiation between Labour and the Lib Dems, the senior partners within the Scottish Constitutional Convention that campaigned for devolution during the 1990s, offered a compromise between the Lib Dems’ preference for PR and Labour’s need for reassurance that should the SNP start coming first in votes, it would still fail to achieve an overall majority of seats.


As can be seen from Table 2 below, until 2011 the SNP found it difficult to win constituency seats and depended for its heft within the Scottish Parliament on the top-up regional list seats. Even in 2007 when, for the first time, the party won the largest share of the constituency vote, Labour still had a majority of constituency seats (37 out of 73) as against 21 for the SNP. Nevertheless, because the allocation of list seats gave it one more than Labour overall, it won the election and went on to form a minority government, with the support of the Scottish Greens. In 2011, the SNP managed to achieve what AMS was designed to prevent: a single-party majority in the Scottish Parliament, coming first in 53 constituencies and winning 69 seats overall, compared with 15 and 37, respectively, for Labour.

 The referendum and after: how Scotland has changed

 There was now no parliamentary barrier to holding a referendum on independence, but the legal position was still unclear. After nine months of negotiation, in October 2012 a deal was struck: the UK government agreed to a temporary transfer of the requisite legal powers on condition that the referendum was confined to a single question offering a straight Yes-No choice. The Scottish government had been open to the possibility of two questions, offering voters three options – the status quo, “devo max” (or Home Rule within the Union) and full independence – but the pro-Union parties ruled this out, anticipating that a clear majority for remaining in the UK would “settle the issue for a generation.”

Table 2: Scottish Parliament election results in votes and seats, 1999-2011


 
% constituency vote (no of seats)
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
                            1999                2003                2007                2011

 
SNP                 28.7   (  7)        23.8   (  9)        32.9     (21)      45.4   (53)

Lab                  38.8   (53)        34.6   (46)        32.2     (37)      31.7   (15)

Cons                15.6   (  0)        16.6   (  3)        16.6     (  4)      13.9   (  3)

Lib Dem          14.2   (12)        15.4   (13)        16.2     (11)        7.9   (  2)

Greens                                   0.1   (  0)          0.1     (  0)               

SSP                   1.0   (  0)          6.2   (  0)          0.0     (  0)               

Others               1.7   (  1)          3.5   (  2)          2.0     (  0)        1.1   (  0)

 
% regional list vote (no of seats)
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

                            1999                2003                2007                2011

 

SNP                 27.3   (28)        20.9   (18)        31.0   (26)        44.0   (16)

Lab                  33.6   (  3)        29.3   (  4)        29.2   (  9)        26.3   (22)

Cons                15.4   (18)        15.5   (15)        13.9   (13)        12.4   (12)

Lib Dem          12.4   (  5)        11.8   (  4)        11.3   (  5)          5.2   (  3)

Greens               3.6   (  1)          6.9   (  7)          4.0   (  2)          5.2   (  2)

SSP                   2.0   (  1)          6.7   (  6)          0.6   (  0)          0.4   (  0)

Others               5.7   (  0)          8.9   (  2)        10.0   (  1)          6.5   (  1)

 
What they had not reckoned with was the transforming impact of a long referendum campaign. For the next two years, the SNP combined incumbency with insurgency, continuing to govern Scotland while holding out the vision of Scotland as a new self-governing nation. In a bid to quell voters’ anxieties about “separating” from the UK, the party limited its ambition to “independence lite”, offering assurances that in the event of a Yes vote, Scotland would cease to be represented at Westminster, but would retain a shared monarch as ceremonial head of state, along with the pound sterling, the Bank of England, membership of NATO and membership of the EU.
 
In the event, this attempt to secure the repeal the 1707 Act of Union, while preserving a common currency, crown and geo-political alignment, came to grief. Yet despite losing the referendum by a wider margin than polls taken in the last six weeks of the campaign had suggested, Yes Scotland did well to secure 45% of the vote (on a remarkable 85% turnout). 1.6 million Scots had voted to leave the UK, the highest level of support for independence ever recorded at the ballot box. According to polls conducted at the outset of the campaign, in a three-way choice between the status quo, more devolved powers and full independence, 35-36% of the Scottish public favoured more powers, while 32-33% supported each of the other options. With the referendum reduced to a binary choice, the rival camps had to win over the middle ground, now reclassified as undecided voters. On this reckoning, support for independence grew by 12-13 percentage points over the course of the campaign, though by the same arithmetic, two thirds of those who wanted more devolution short of independence ended up voting No.

What no one expected was the sequence of events that unfolded after the referendum. Within minutes of the result being announced, a relieved David Cameron issued a “Counter-Vow”: if returned to office at the next election, he declared, the Conservatives proposed to tackle the West Lothian question by amending the procedures of the House of Commons so as to secure “English Votes for English Laws”. In the weeks and months that followed, Scotland’s political landscape was transformed as supporters of other parties who had voted Yes in the referendum, together with some who had voted No, defected in droves to the SNP.

Hitherto, as a comparison of Tables 1 and 2 shows, the SNP had won a higher share of the constituency vote in elections to the Scottish Parliament than it achieved in the preceding Westminster election. Indeed, the gap widened from 4 percentage points in 2003 to 15 in 2007 and to 25 in 2011. In part, this pattern can be explained as a mid-term protest vote. But surveys suggest that, regardless of the state of the Westminster election cycle, voters were more willing back the SNP in elections to the Scottish Parliament than in elections to the UK House of Commons. In the former, people focus on who is best fitted to govern Scotland; in the latter, on who will provide good government for the UK as a whole. The SNP does not aspire to govern the UK, but it is a serious contender in Scotland, offering an attractive alternative to a dysfunctional Scottish Labour Party, which those who vote Labour or Lib Dem in Westminster elections can safely back for Holyrood.
 
Since the referendum, however, Holyrood voting intentions have been translated into Westminster voting intentions. According to the Ashcroft polls cited earlier, 35% of Scots who voted Labour in 2010 and almost half Scots who voted Lib Dem intend to back the SNP this time.  And two thirds of Labour voters who have switched to the SNP say they do not intend to switch back. Fear of letting the Tories back in has been overridden by the intense focus on Scottish politics that built up during the referendum and will almost certainly persist up to and beyond the next Holyrood election in May 2016 until a new constitutional settlement is reached, whether this involves some form of Home Rule or, indeed, another referendum on independence.

 Parliamentary arithmetic, constitutional reform and political renewal
 
“Red Nats” sense the prospect of a landslide victory that leaves the SNP holding the balance of power at Westminster, possibly as the third-largest party. This, they hope, will enable it to conclude a parliamentary pact with a minority Labour government whereby in return for confidence and supply support, the SNP secures concessions ranging from Home Rule with full fiscal autonomy to the cancellation of Trident and the removal of nuclear weapons from the Clyde.

The trouble is that in a situation where neither Labour nor the Tories are likely to achieve an overall majority, every seat that Labour loses in Scotland makes it more likely that the Tories will end up as the largest party at Westminster. At the very least, that would give the Tories first shot at forming a government, though of course, whether they succeed depends on the parliamentary arithmetic, and more specifically on the number of seats won by the DUP, UKIP and, perhaps, the Lib Dems. If the numbers stack up, the Tories will move heaven and earth to stay in office. And even if they fail, there is no guarantee that the numbers will stack up for Labour or that if they do, Labour will accede to the demands of the SNP, whether acting alone or in concert with Plaid Cymru and the Greens. Other outcomes are possible: there could, for example, be a second election and if that failed to resolve the deadlock, Labour and the Conservatives could form a grand coalition to take charge of constitutional reform, starting with a reform of the voting system.
 
At present it looks as if, whatever happens, the SNP cannot lose. If it routs Labour in Scotland without letting the Tories back in, a minority Labour government at Westminster would have to pay a price to win its backing. If the Tories form a minority government and, with Lib Dem support, proceed to give English and – on matters not devolved to Cardiff – Welsh MPs a veto over legislation that does not apply to Scotland, pressure would mount north of the border for a second referendum, especially if the Tories simultaneously refuse to countenance a “Celtic” veto in any referendum on UK membership of the EU. And even the hint of a grand coalition between Labour and the Tories would make Labour even more unpopular in Scotland than it already is, confirming the nationalist argument that the two establishment parties are essentially interchangeable and will do anything to preserve the Union.

If Scottish Labour suffers a heavy defeat in May, its condition, already critical, could become terminal. If it is to avoid internal strife, stop haemorrhaging support, mount a credible electoral challenge to the SNP in 2016 and, in the longer term, prevent its old rival from becoming Scotland’s Fianna Fail, its best hope is to sever organisational ties with its sister parties in England and Wales, rename itself the Independent Scottish Labour Party and embrace the cause of Home Rule, an aspiration shared by both Labour and the Liberals in the early twentieth century before two world wars, the Great Depression and the post-war Labour Government turned the UK into one of the most centralised states in Europe.
 
Undoubtedly, cutting loose would be painful. But by splitting along the line of the border rather than along a left-right axis, as happened when the ILP broke away in 1932 and the SDP was formed in 1981, Labour would be better placed to adapt to an era of multi-party politics that takes different forms in different parts of the UK. In Scotland, the SNP needs to be challenged from the left. For far too long it has been allowed to get away with advocating Scandinavian social policies on the basis of US tax levels. With a fresh lease of life and a new sense of purpose, an Independent Scottish Labour Party could put the SNP under pressure to jettison its neo-liberal baggage and sign up to the project of working towards a new social settlement and a better kind of capitalism within the framework of a federal state.