Massive Support for Scottish Nationalists

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

The Yes side managed to persuade 45 per cent of the Scottish electorate to vote in favour of separation from the rest of the United Kingdom last fall. Though it lost, the Scottish National Party, which advocates a sovereign Scotland, remains stronger than ever.

In the May 7 British general election, the SNP garnered 56 of the 59 Scottish seats in the House of Commons, an incredible increase of 50 from 2010. And much of the credit goes to Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon.

The first person in her family to attend university – she studied law at the University of Glasgow – Sturgeon joined the SNP as a student in 1986. After several failed attempts at winning elections, she became a member of the newly-created Scottish Parliament in 1999, and rose to the position of deputy first minister. The SNP won 64 seats in the 129-member Scottish assembly in 2011.

After Alex Salmond stepped down as SNP leader following last year’s referendum, Sturgeon became Scotland’s first minister.

Sturgeon, called “the most dangerous woman in Britain” by the Daily Mail newspaper, became a Scottish nationalist because, she has explained, you cannot guarantee social justice unless you are in control of the delivery.

“With a big team of SNP MPs holding unprecedented power and influence for Scotland, we can make Scotland stronger at Westminster, lock the Tories out of government, put an end to cuts and ensure we invest in our vital public services,” she said, pointing in particular to the National Health Service.

The main victim of Sturgeon’s success has been Ed Miliband’s Labour Party, which used to consider Scotland one of its heartlands. The party’s Scottish representation in the House of Commons fell from 40 in 2010 to just one.

There were huge swings from Labour to the SNP in dozens of constituencies. The SNP won a 50 per cent share of the popular vote in Scotland, with Labour down to about 24 per cent.

So huge was the SNP victory that Mhairi Black, a third-year politics student at the University of Glasgow defeated the man who planned Labour’s entire election campaign, shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander. Black, who is 20, has become the youngest MP since 1667.

The Liberal Democrats held 11 seats north of the English border, and the Conservatives only one. After the 2015 vote, they have retained one each.

It is significant that the ideological gap between England and Scotland has widened. While the victorious Conservatives increased their numbers in the English south of the country, with Labour and the Liberal Democrats losing dozens of seats, the left-of-centre SNP dominates Scotland like never before.

Scottish voters want radical reform, perhaps even a complete restructuring of the UK along federal lines. At the very least, Scotland’s own legislature will gain new powers.

Salmon, interviewed by the BBC, suggested that “Cameron will have no legitimacy in Scotland.” Politically, Scotland and England now feel like very different countries. The very future of the United Kingdom as a state is increasingly in doubt.