The SNP is basking in opinion polls that suggest the party could hold the balance of power at Westminster after the general election. It cannot last.
The SNP’s non-victory celebrations go on and on. At their annual gathering in Perth, outgoing leader and first minister Alex Salmond was hailed like a conquering hero, not a loser. Membership has more than tripled to 85,000 since it lost the independence referendum in September, making it the third largest UK party – larger than the Liberal Democrats and Ukip combined. Scaled up by population, the SNP’s membership is now equivalent to a UK party with nearly one million members.
The opinion polls are equally surreal. The SNP is now more popular than when it won a landslide victory in the 2011 Scottish parliamentary elections. One recent YouGov poll put the nationalists on 52% for next year’s UK general election, 29 points ahead of Labour. That would give the SNP 54 of Scotland’s 59 Westminster seats.
If numbers anything like these last until May, the SNP could return a substantial bloc of MPs and might even hold the balance of power. That really would be the supreme irony of referendum year.
So, what exactly is going on? It was the Better Together coalition of Labour, Liberal Democrats and Conservatives that won the referendum, and by a substantial margin of 55% to 45%. That should have ended the matter for a generation. Unionists are furious that the winners seem to be forgotten while the losers are running victory laps.
Nationalists say their popularity is because their forecasts about life after a no vote have come true. There is great scepticism about the Smith Commission, which is supposed to be agreeing the new devolved powers promised in the ‘vow’ signed by all three main UK party leaders. The unionist parties have already rejected ‘devolution max’ and federalism as ‘independence under another name’.
But many Scots believed that in voting no they were going to get a new constitutional settlement with an entrenched Scottish parliament getting substantial tax and welfare powers, while macroeconomic policy, defence and foreign affairs remained in Westminster.
Instead, on the morning after the vote, David Cameron announced that English votes for English laws had to go ‘in tandem’ with any legislation on new powers for the Scottish Parliament.
Most Scots agree that Scottish MPs should not vote on exclusively English bills on matters like education when there is no reciprocal voting right. However, there had been no mention of this before the referendum and it looked like a wrecking clause designed to undermine the whole process.
Then there’s Europe. David Cameron’s attempts to end free movement in the European Union, abolish the Human Rights Act and generally distance the UK from Europe, have not gone down well in Scotland. The SNP’s new leader, Nicola Sturgeon, wants another independence referendum if the UK votes to leave the EU in an in/out referendum in 2017.
However, I am not entirely sure these are adequate explanations for what has been happening in Scotland. It is not simply a question of buyer’s remorse. Somehow, during the referendum campaign, Scotland changed. There was a sense of national self-discovery.
Also, many Scots voted no essentially because the UK government had refused to allow Scotland to use the pound. The economic risk of going it alone without a currency union was simply too great. But that has left a residue of resentment and a feeling that Scotland, even in the Union, needs a party that will unhesitatingly promote Scotland’s interests.
That’s certainly one reason why the nationalists are doing so well. They are an insurance policy against Scotland being forgotten in Westminster.
It won’t last, of course. The SNP won’t return 50 seats in May. But they’re enjoying it while it lasts.
Iain Macwhirter is political commentator on the Sunday Herald
