Triumph for the SNP, catastrophe for Labour

By ITV Border Political Editor Peter MacMahon

The general election result in Scotland is a triumph for the Scottish National Party and it’s still relatively new leader Nicola Sturgeon.

It is quite simply a catastrophe for Labour in Scotland and, because of that, for Labour in the United Kingdom.

Labour, the party that once dominated Westminster elections north of the Border, has come close to being totally wiped out.

At the time of writing, the omens are not good for the Liberal Democrats or for the Scottish Tories.

The SNP has swept all before them, taking seats in Labour heartlands which they would never have dreamed of taking.

Gordon Brown’s former seat in Kirkcaldy gone. Shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander out. Shadow scottish secretary Margaret Curran defeated.

All of them and many, many more like them have fallen into the SNP’s hands. And by substantial majorities in most cases, with huge swings.

In the south of Scotland Labour has conceded defeat in Dumfries and Galloway which it held with a majority of 7,449 in 2010.

And in Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk the sitting Liberal Democrat MP Michael Moore has effectively admitted he will not be returning to Westminster.

In the early hours of this morning Ms Sturgeon declared that “the tectonic plates of Scottish politics have shifted”.

That is undeniable. The question is why?

First, there is the so-called ‘Sturgeon surge’. Alex Salmond’s successor has proved more popular than the man she took over from.

Polls suggest that she is better liked by women. And she excelled in the UK ITV leaders’ debate, which gave her a platform the SNP had not had before.

It would be fair to say that the SNP leader, and First Minister, found the Scottish debates more challenging. And that takes us to another aspect of the SNP’s triumph.

On a number of issues - full fiscal autonomy, or their promise to “end austerity” for example - independent bodies like the respected Institute for Fiscal Studies cast doubt on their plans.

Now think-tanks like the IFS exposed what they said were flaws in all the parties manifestos, but in the case of the SNP it seems to have made very little difference.

According to several of the SNP’s opponents I have spoken to this is because the Nationalists “captured the narrative” to use the political jargon.

One now ex-Labour MP told me: “We’re fighting a story, not a set of policies and that is very difficult. It’s not like other political contests.”

The SNP dispute that, naturally. They say they have put together a comprehensive set of economic proposals - including ‘ending austerity’ - which the Scottish people have supported.

But the SNP’s extraordinary victory this morning has its roots deeper in the past of Scottish politics.

Labour created the Scottish parliament but there were always senior figures who were sceptical about devolution, and some downright hostile to it.

The home rule wing of the party had campaigned for it for so long, and so vociferously that it became party policy and Holyrood was delivered under Tony Blair.

But once it had been set up many - important to say not all - in the party thought that was it. Box ticked. Move on.

A lot of ‘big hitters’ in Labour decided to go to Westminster, not to the Scottish parliament.

Again one should not generalise, but the quality of Labour MSPs was not, many observers believe, as high as it should have been.

And while they were in government at Westminster the Labour party tended to take the attitude - again with some exceptions - that Holyrood should do what it was told.

When Labour tried to do things differently - for example bringing in free personal care for older people - the reaction by party colleagues in Westminster was generally hostile.

There is another reason though why we are where we are today - Labour underestimated the SNP.

First, they thought that with a proportional election system Labour would always be in power, usually in coalition with the Liberal Democrats.

Second, they thought that under the proportional electoral system no-one, certainly not the SNP, could win an outright majority.

The SNP too has changed. There was a time when it was a small, or much smaller, fractious, divided party.

There were continued disputes between the ‘fundies’ and the ‘gradualists’ - those who wanted independence nothing less and those who saw the benefit of building via devolution.

Alex Salmond in his second period as leader managed to end those divisions, bringing former ‘fundies’ into the fold.

Mr Salmond boldly seized power in Holyrood in 2007 as a minority government with the SNP having just one more seat than Labour.

His party governed competently though critics in other parties said they took very few difficult decisions and concentrated on populist policies like freezing the council tax.

In 2011 they did what Labour thought no-one would do and took an outright majority in a Holyrood election with 69 seats out of 129 and took Scotland to an independence referendum.

They lost that by 45% to 55% but in the aftermath Labour’s leader Johann Lamont resigned saying the party in London treated Scotland like a “branch office”

And the SNP instead of imploding after losing the referendum saw an explosion of membership.

There’s more. A process begun by Mr Salmond has been accelerated by Ms Sturgeon - replacing Labour in the eyes of the electorate as the party of the Left, of social democracy.

Now, their opponents say their policies are nothing of the sort. They claim the SNP has not introduced any progressive policies in eight years.

The SNP dispute that too, of course, but when I interviewed Ms Sturgeon she would not say that the council tax freeze - which I took as an example - was progressive.

It had, she said, helped those at the bottom of the ladder proportionately more.

But without going too much into that detail, the attacks on the SNP over this have not made any impact.

The Scottish people clearly believe that the SNP are the true champions of social justice and will, to use the party slogan, give Scotland a “strong voice” at Westminster.

So what now? Well initially Labour is blaming the SNP for the likely return of David Cameron to Downing Street - though that is not sure as yet.

And the SNP is blaming Labour for not being able to defeat enough Tories south of the Border and making it unlikely the Nationalists can join them in their hoped-for ‘progressive alliance’.

Beyond that, it is hard to see how whoever forms the next UK government can ignore what has happened in Scotland - point Alex Salmond made in his election acceptance speech.

Exactly how they do that, whether it is a promise of yet more powers for Holyrood, or some change of policies, remains to be seen.

What is clear is that Scottish politics has, to coin a phrase from Irish poet W B Yeats much loved of Mr Salmond, has “changed, changed utterly”.

The final question perhaps, to borrow again a phrase from Yeats great work, is what kind of “terrible beauty” has been born?