The general election started with the Prime Minister getting soaked in 10 Downing Street. It finished much more traditionally, with millions of people trudging to polling stations, and making it clear that they have had enough of our ruling parties.
For storytellers, the general election brought a pleasingly complete reversal of fortune. With ruthless message management and targeting of its efforts, Labour won a landslide – and the Liberal Democrats had their best performance for a century. The hubris of the Conservatives – especially the lies and casual corruption of Boris Johnson and the incompetent arrogance of Liz Truss – undid them completely.
Many commentators have been trying to show that the Labour Party’s majority is very fragile. But looking back over the last century, when power changes in Britain, the party coming into power has often won more seats at the next election by governing competently and demonstrating clearly how it has new ways of meeting the country’s needs.
In Sir Keir Starmer – knighted because of his public service as Director of Public Prosecutions after beginning his career as a human rights lawyer – we have the first Prime Minister to have entered Parliament after the age of 50. No glad-handing professional politician, he has offered to serve. So, hopefully, he will not be a performer getting high on his own supply. Indeed, reading the text of the speech which he gave on his arrival in Downing Street, I was struck by the extent to which he reduced the soaring poetry of his speechwriters into clipped, workaday prose.
The situation in Scotland after the election
Meanwhile, John Swinney will continue to lead the Scottish Government, while facing the substantial challenge of finding a riposte to a Labour Party which is already planning its offer of ‘change’ in the 2026 Scottish Parliamentary election. How that election turns out could either mark the close of the present chapter in the history of the independence movement or the start of its final one.
With the Conservatives gone from government, there will no longer be any ‘muscular unionism’ offering an obvious focus for independence supporters’ ire. Instead, the Scottish Government’s preparations for the election should concentrate on demonstrating basic competence – formulating and implementing policies, which will make people in Scotland feel better off.
We know that as support for the SNP has fallen, support for independence has remained broadly constant. With his huge majority at Westminster and a small SNP group, there is no reason for the Prime Minister to offer Scotland the chance to choose independence in a referendum.
But we can expect the Labour Party now to claim to be the ‘party of devolution’. It could do much worse than borrow ideas from the National Institute for Economic and Social Research, which has argued that there is a democratic deficit implicit in the devolution settlement. This has given the Scottish Government a range of responsibilities which it cannot meet using the authority granted in the current fiscal framework. Without having substantial borrowing powers to fund public investment, the Scottish Government will be little more than a powerful local authority.
Without the constant opportunities to exploit grievances, the Scottish Government will need to adapt its approach and find ways of cooperating with the UK government to demonstrate recovered purpose and competence. Otherwise, the 2026 election will mark the end of the SNP’s long period of dominance.
A path to Scotland’s independence
Sometimes mocked for doing so, the SNP leadership has been consistent in its determination to adhere to democratic proprieties and secure another independence referendum. The Supreme Court decision on the Lord Advocate’s question of legislative competence, together with the reduction of the SNP’s representation at Westminster, make it necessary to find a new path to independence.
Embracing that change will be very hard for the SNP, which cobbled together a plan at its conference in October 2023. It may even need more electoral setbacks – and possibly another change in leadership – before it admits just how much it is necessary. But, given the situation in which the people of Scotland are close to accepting that Scotland should be an independent country, while lacking the means to express that determination, the independence movement needs a renewed, fully participative strategy. And while the SNP is simply the largest component of that movement, this would be a good time for it to stand back from leadership.
This strategy should start from the decoupling of support for independence from support for the SNP. It would require the independence movement to demonstrate that it is much broader than the SNP, so that it can complement the ongoing work of all independence-supporting political parties, and to plan a new route to achieving Scottish independence.
This will not be easy. In the membership of the independence movement, I have come across rather too many big-hearted, well-meaning people, well beyond the first flush of youth. It consists of tiny organisations in which a few volunteers work flat out with almost no resources, achieving little public impact. It might seem obvious to dismiss these volunteers for being too often pale, male, and stale. But I give you the example of our newly elected 61 year old Prime Minister, insistently asking what must be done to win, and building a team which extends well beyond the Labour Party once in office.
Necessary next steps
Despite the many strengths of the independence movement, I do not see enough of the three essential factors of capital, capabilities, and connections. If it is to succeed, the movement needs to be a dense network reaching into every part of society – even those parts which seem most committed to the continuation of the Union. While there are many people with great talents in it, there has not been enough thought given to the challenge of harnessing those talents. That partly reflects the extent to which there is almost no money to fund serious work.
There is also a lack of understanding of what will be needed to achieve independence. In time, we may look back on the political successes of the last fifteen years as having been a pleasant distraction from the hard work of the next decade.
Writing on behalf of the Scottish Currency Group, I need to say here that the only reason that the Group exists is because we believe that the SNP leadership has been unwilling to prepare the country for independence.
We believe that planning to establish a currency is necessary if the independence movement is to forestall threats of non-cooperation from the UK Government when the people of Scotland prepare to choose independence. More generally, being well-prepared for those negotiations will be essential to ensuring that they take place in a cooperative atmosphere and achieve good outcomes for both Scotland and the rest of the UK.
After independence, the government of Scotland will have to manage borders and security, defence and foreign affairs, trade and cooperation, and, in a way that the Scottish Government simply cannot because of the limits of devolution, the economy.
Much of this work will be dull, and involve finding small changes which make big differences in the long-run, while establishing a stable environment in which everyone can plan confidently. Those preparations can start now. You can expect to hear more on this from the Scottish Currency Group in the next few weeks.
The alternative is straightforward – carry on with the present SNP strategy, and prepare to fail in the 2026 election. That may do much more than delay the start of the conversation and persuade many who are open to the idea of independence to move on.
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