The behaviour of voters north of the border at the 2024 general election has been treated by many in the Labour Party as a sign of Scotland coming home. It has shaken off its flirtation with independence, they suggest. The SNP has been shown the door, and it’s back where it belongs. This is an understandable perspective for those in their fifties and below with a limited awareness of the country’s history – but if Labour wants to hold onto its prize, it needs to be smarter. If, indeed, anybody can hold onto Scotland at all.
Many people in Scotland were never taught much about their own country’s history at all. Popular conversations about it tend to focus on the medieval period, or on the early days of the Enlightenment when the Jacobite uprisings took place. There’s a lot less focus on the 20th century, and so many people don’t realise that if you go back just 50 years, Scotland wasn’t a left-leaning country at all. For many decades its electorate consistently returned Liberals and Conservatives, with the latter dominating between the 50s and the 70s, especially in rural areas. Although Labour made inroads in the Central Belt, it struggled to expend beyond that. It would take an unprecedented event to make that happen. Her name was Margaret Thatcher.
Thatcherism and the fall of the Conservatives
When older Scots talk about Thatcherism as a betrayal, they’re not just saying that she had policies they didn’t like. They’re talking about the breaking of a longstanding arrangement whereby paternalist Conservatives – now largely extinct due to the rise of the neoliberals – looked after Scotland and its people in exchange for what one might call ‘good behaviour’. The Iron Lady’s predecessors understood that, rather than have to march up and quell rebellious Scots from time to time, it was far easier just to ensure that they had a decent standard of living and keep them sweet. Thatcher, however, didn’t care about Scotland – or even about the North of England. Her power base was in the South and she wanted to concentrate resources where they would make her core voters happy. As a consequence, Scotland suffered in ways that are still visible today.
By taking Scotland for granted, the Conservatives lost its electoral support. They have never fully recovered, achieving decent numbers only through proportional representation in a context where they seem the sensible second choice for many of those committed to keeping the Union. Eighties Scotland settled into a cosy relationship with the Labour Party which grew stronger in the 90s, peaking with that famous 1997 election triumph for Tony Blair but holding on well through the early part of the new millennium. What happened then has often been put down to the growth of the independence movement, but that’s a bit misleading because support for independence wasn’t all that high even in the run-up to the 2014 referendum. What happened is that Labour started taking Scotland for granted too.
Labour and the SNP
When parties in power find themselves under siege, it’s not uncommon for them to withdraw campaigners from what they see as fringe areas in order to concentrate on priority seats. Indeed, that tactic is probably what got Rishi Sunak and James Cleverly through last week’s election intact. But when it comes to day-to-day funding, the effect is different. “They don’t need to do anything about it because they know we’re stupid and we’ll vote for them anyway,” one man told me at the time, with typically Scots self-deprecation. He might have overstressed it, though. Scotland does eventually reject such things. It just tends to run out of patience all at once, and completely.
When Labour fell, the SNP rose; but now, after 17 years in power, it’s falling foul of the same effect. Many independence supporters feel, not unreasonably, that it has failed to deliver – and, slightly less reasonably, that it hasn’t tried. For several years they kept voting for it anyway because they felt it was their only hope, but now they’re all out of patience. Meanwhile, voters who don’t want independence, or don’t feel strongly either way, but who liked its managerial approach to government, have come to focus on the shortfalls rather than the gains, as such voters inevitably do, and are sick of its hegemony.
Nemo me impune lacessit
Much of this has apparently bypassed English commentators, who persist in thinking that it’s all about independence (it’s not – polling suggests that support for that remains just below 50%). The desire for independence does not run contrary to the fall in SNP support – rather, it’s another aspect of the same phenomenon. Nemo me impune lacessit, as the country’s motto goes – don’t mess with me and think that you can get away with it – might be appended to say “Don’t take me for granted either.” Labour will have to keep this in mind, because otherwise, when the scale tips again, Scotland could very well break away from the UK for good. After all, nobody has held onto it for quite as long as the English.
Internationally, one of Scotland’s most widely admired assets is its national animal, the unicorn. This creature is commonly depicted in chains, and many people mistakenly assume that that’s because it’s being depicted in thrall to the English lion (if you’re going to complain about a unicorn being an unrealistic mascot, please note than in order to find wild lions in England you would have to go back to the Ipswichian Interglacial, 115k years ago). In fact, the chains are there to protect everyone, simply because the unicorn is so wild that it cannot be tamed. Short of resorting to force, the only way to wield any influence over it is to show it genuine love.
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