If ever an election could make the ground rumble and shake the very earth, then the 2015 general election would have been the one to do it. It was a jaw-dropping spectacle that still carries tremendous weight, even to this day. A ballot box revolution against both the Labour Party and the United Kingdom. Who would have thought that the Scottish National Party (SNP) would sweep an entire nation, uproot two political parties, and reduce the big three unionist players to a mere one seat each? Who would have thought that in one night, the tables would turn quite so dramatically?
A revolt against the norm
Alex Salmond declared in his victory speech in Gordon on 7 May 2015, that, “the Scottish lion has roared across the country this morning.” He was right, it had. In one fell swoop, and with a swing of 23.9% from Labour, the SNP had taken 40 seats from Labour and 10 seats from the Liberal Democrats − unseating several coalition government ministers and big names, like former Liberal Democrat leader, Charles Kennedy, and Scottish Labour leader, Jim Murphy. In one election, the SNP went from six seats to 56 seats. However, it wasn’t so much a revolt against the UK Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition of the past five years. This will have, of course, played a role in the rise of the SNP in Westminster, but Scotland was a Labour country for decades before, having last voted Conservative in 1959. The revolt against the norm in Scotland was a clear revolt against Labour.
Many voters on the Left saw Scottish Labour as having betrayed both them and Scotland. One bone of contention was the cross-party ‘Better Together’ campaign, set up during the Scottish independence referendum, which campaigned for Scotland to stay in the United Kingdom. Many voters, predominantly in the ‘yes’ campaign, looked at Johann Lamont, Ruth Davidson and Willie Rennie – then leaders of Scottish Labour, the Scottish Conservatives and the Scottish Liberal Democrats respectively − and began to see them as no different from each other and “talking Scotland down”. Many left-wing, working-class voters, who were opposed to the Conservatives, saw the alliance between them and Labour as treachery, and began to look elsewhere for a political home. Enter Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP.
Scottish independence
Of course, Scottish independence played its part. The 2015 general election may not have been an independence-related election, but the issue was still fresh on everyone’s minds. The independence referendum of 2014 was a mass political awakening for scores of people, and despite the vote to stay part of the UK, the masses were not going to slink into the shadows. The immediate aftermath of the referendum saw the SNP’s website crash countless times as ‘yes’ voters flocked to join the party and carry on their fight. An independent Scotland may not have been on the agenda for the 2015 election, but much of the vote happened in accordance with how people had voted in 2014; however, not completely it should be noted.
A new message
“The question for us here in Scotland isn’t which Westminster party will become the next UK Government; the question is: who’s really going to stand up for Scotland?” That was the question posed by the SNP to the people of Scotland in 2015, by way of political broadcast. It sent a new message, that if the SNP was successful, it would fight hard for Scottish interests in Westminster, regardless of who was in government. No independence: the MPs would fight for the promised powers to the Scottish Parliament made in the dying days of the referendum campaign, lock the Conservatives out of Downing Street if they could, and stand up for Scotland.
It was a message that resonated, as the party took both ‘yes’ and ‘no’ voters in the election. It was no surprise that the SNP won in the regions that voted for independence. The surprise came when the SNP won in areas that voted strongly against independence, including the Scottish Borders which recorded the second highest ‘no’ vote in the referendum.
Mass activism
I was on the ground in the Scottish Borders in 2014 and 2015, and saw a remarkable feat unfold. Foreshadowed by swathes of people joining the SNP after the referendum, and events with Nicola Sturgeon in the Hydro completely selling out, voters in Scotland were energised like nothing I’d ever seen before. The doors were alive, the street stalls were alive, and young people were getting involved in droves. Where once a party meeting might have held a handful of people, crowds had begun attending. The energised independence vote hadn’t gone away, it had simply moved and remained strong.
Ten years on, you could be forgiven for thinking that Scotland had returned to the politics of old. Labour once again dominates the political map, as the SNP suffered a loss of 39 seats in the 2024 general election, and recorded their worst seat share since 2010. Never forget to scratch the surface, however, and see what lies beneath. The political pendulum may have swung back to Labour by 15.9%, but the SNP still holds 30% of the vote and over 700,000 votes. Voters can be volatile, as we’ve seen with the seismic shifts in the 2024 general election, but the core independence sentiment remains. With those two aspects alive and kicking, and the rise of Reform UK, even in Scotland, no-one can truly know what will happen next.
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