Barrow Simon - A nation changed?: the SNP and Scotland ten years on

A Nation Changed?

In Memory of Roanne Dods

First published 2017

ISBN: 978-1-912147-16-8

The paper used in this book is recyclable. It is made from low chlorine pulps produced in a low energy, low emission manner from renewable forests.

Printed and bound by Bell & Bain Ltd., Glasgow

Typeset in 11 point Sabon by Lapiz

The authors right to be identified as author of this work under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 has been asserted.

the contributors

Contents

GERRY HASSAN AND SIMON BARROW

JOHN CURTICE

RICHARD PARRY

PAUL CAIRNEY

KATE DEVLIN

NEIL MCGARVEY

JIM AND MARGARET CUTHBERT

DOUGLAS FRASER

MIKE DANSON

KIRSTEIN RUMMERY

JAMES MCENANEY

SUZANNE ZEEDYK

LUCY HUNTER BLACKBURN

TONY ROBERTSON, SARA MARSDEN AND ANUJ KAPILASHRAMI

DANI GARAVELLI

SARAH ARMSTRONG AND MARY MUNRO

LESLEY MCARA

JOHN CARNOCHAN

MARTIN SIME

BEN WRAY

ANDREW TICKELL

WILLIAM HENDERSON

LESLEY ORR

DAVID JAMIESON AND JEN STOUT

LESLEY RIDDOCH

KATIE GALLOGY-SWAN

SARAH BEATTIE-SMITH

GERRY HASSAN

KEN NEIL

VRNE NICOLAS

SUE LAUGHLIN

ALISON ELLIOT

PETER GEOGHEGAN

CHRISTOPHER SILVER

MARK FISHER

ELEANOR YULE

STEPHEN REICHER AND NICK HOPKINS

JOHN MACDONALD

WILLIAM WALKER

JAMES MITCHELL

MICHAEL KEATING

BEN JACKSON

JOYCE MCMILLAN

SIMON BARROW

ANDREW CONWAY

SIMON BARROW AND GERRY HASSAN

GERRY HASSAN

Acknowledgements

A book project like this is by necessity a collective effort and the product of many suggestions and ideas. First and foremost, we would like to thank the stellar range of contributors who gave their time, insights and ideas. We often asked the impossible in terms of briefs, and in each and every case were met with assistance and encouragement.

Indeed, many of our contributors made helpful suggestions for the direction and content of the book, and even more, made us feel that we were taking part in a genuinely politically and intellectually engaged exercise. We would like to humbly thank each and every one of our contributors and trust they found it as worthwhile and stimulating as we did.

Second, the original brief was to produce a book that marked the anniversary of the SNPs ten years in office, assessing its record, the terrain it operates on, and its future prospects. Its genesis as an idea was as a companion to an earlier volume, The Modern SNP: From Protest to Power , published by Edinburgh University Press in 2009. It has by dint of the scale and ambition of the project become a much more authoritative and far-reaching study covering most aspects of the SNP in office and public life. The inspiration for this has ended up coming closer to the volumes of analysis which contemporary historian Anthony Seldon has produced studying the Thatcher, Major, Blair and Cameron administrations. We do hope this volume will be seen as both about politics now, and as a serious contribution to contemporary Scottish history.

Our sincere thanks are due to the numerous people who gave time and advice in shaping this book, its contents and contributors, including Alan Sinclair, Jim McCormick, Libby Brooks, Philip Schlesinger, Iain Macwhirter, Angela Haggerty, Willie Sullivan, Isabel Fraser, Douglas Fraser, Madeleine Bunting, Mike Small, Nigel Smith, Katherine Trebeck, Robin McAlpine, Joe Lafferty, Lesley Thomson, Gordon Guthrie, Beth Bate, Kenny MacAskill, Kirsty Hughes, Ian Dommett, Gehan Macleod, Jordan Tchilingirian, Bob Thomas, Michael Marten and Carla J Roth. A big thanks to Andrew Conway for the graphs and tables at the back of the book, and to Allistair Burt for working with us to come up with a cover which didnt invoke the usual images of just the Scottish Parliament and politicians.

We would also like to acknowledge our debt of gratitude to Luath Press and to Gavin MacDougall and all his staff. They have been passionate about this book from the outset and we would like to celebrate the wider contribution that Gavin and Luath have made to the political and intellectual life of this country. Their contribution in the last few years to ideas, politics and current affairs, has made Scotland and our debates richer and more fully informed, and we thank Gavin and everyone at Luath for this.

A project such as this has many eyes and supporters who make it possible, and this book could not have happened without the insights and abilities of Rosie Ilett who assisted in the latter stages of production.

Finally, in the period producing this book one of Scotlands most inspiring cultural practitioners Roanne Dods died after a short illness. Roanne was a force for good, an inspiration to everyone who met her, and mixed intellectual curiosity with practical action. In bringing this book together we can think of no finer model of the kind of Scotland, its politics, culture and ideas, than the one Roanne represented in everything she did.

Gerry Hassan Simon Barrow

gerry@gerryhassan.com simon.barrow@ekklesia.co.uk

The SNP, Modern Scotland and Power in Transition

Gerry Hassan and Simon Barrow

THE SNP HAS shaped and dominated Scottish politics over the past ten years. Besides that, it has emerged as a powerful force in parliamentary terms as the third force in British politics.

It hasnt been all plain sailing. There have been many bumpy moments, reverses and defeats. Initially the SNP did not experience devolution as hospitable or friendly territory, finding it difficult to adjust to the new environment in the early years. But then this was true for Labour, too. Eventually, when Alex Salmond came back as leader in 2004, the party discovered a voice and strategy which contributed to its narrow victory in May 2007. This was an election that turned out to be a watershed, beginning the process of the SNP establishing itself as the dominant party of Scottish politics.

From todays vantage point it looks as if the current state of affairs was always meant to be. But there was nothing inevitable about the impressive position the SNP found itself in at the beginning of 2017, and this needs to be remembered. Politics is made up of numerous unpredictable variables. Equally, the SNPs seemingly impregnable position is not as unassailable and hegemonic as some seem to assume (something now more obvious after the 2017 local and UK elections). Further powerful challenges are coming to Scotland, the UK and the global order. This is an age of disruption, involving inevitable surprises and populist revolts, from which no nation, Scotland included, is immune.

The SNPs recent rise was aided by a number of contingent factors, as well as long-term shifts, including elements of those regular, critical ingredients for success: luck and timing. Long-term factors aided the SNP, such as the hollowing out and implosion of both Scottish Labour and Labour Scotland, alongside the decline of the Scottish Conservatives over the last 50 years and, in recent decades, their portrayal as a pariah party which may have just come to an end with the 2017 UK election result in Scotland. In the short-term, the SNPs victory in 2007 was assisted by the demise of Tommy Sheridans Scottish Socialist Party, which polled respectably in 2003 and collapsed by 2007. Then, following the election, the decision of the Liberal Democrats not even to consider coalition discussions with the SNP created the conditions for minority, single party government.