The Case for tactical use of the List vote
Time to think. Time to talk. Time to put nation before party.
I am not in favour of a separate party fighting the SNP at next year’s Holyrood elections, but I do support the idea of the Alliance for Independence group standing alone on the List in order to boost the number of MSPs committed to independence. That may appear to be, but is not, a contradiction.
This is all about strategy, tactics and a definition of what position the SNP occupies within the independence movement. The strategy is to gain independence. To accomplish that requires a four stage tactical approach. First, gain an overwhelming majority of independence MSPs in the next Scottish parliament, thus making it impossible for the UK government to deny the democratic legitimacy of the demand for another referendum. Second, hold another legal referendum under a Section 30. Third win the referendum. Fourth, negotiate a Scottish-UK treaty.
That first stage is vital, and here we must assess the role of the SNP. From its inception until 2014, it was the only instrument for gaining independence, defining itself as a party rather than a movement. While it had limited success as a party in the Westminster arena, its gain of a large number of MSPs in the first Holyrood election, and then subsequently forming a Scottish administration, enabled its idea of independence to attract support well outside its own party membership, and so a movement developed and became manifest in the 2014 referendum. That is the position today: the SNP as a party which finds itself part of a movement it helped to create, in which it has influence but not control.
Given that post-2014 situation, It is not sensible for the SNP leadership to insist that it and it alone can determine the tactics that will bring the strategy to fruition. There are other voices, other views that need to be listened to, and other tactics than those the SNP wants to adopt to be considered. There is more than a touch of arrogance, and a sense of entitlement, in the way the Alliance for Independence was dismissed by the SNP. In a letter to the Herald, supporting the Alliance idea, I ended by suggesting that the SNP leadership should speak to those involved. I repeat that now.
There is nothing new in seeking to exploit the List system to maximise the number of nationalist MSPs. The SNP did it in 2007, when it headed the List with “Alex Salmond for First Minister,” a tactic that succeeded with the 26 List seats added to 21 constituencies, giving the SNP a majority of one over Labour, and so leading to the first SNP government.
At the last election in 2016 the SNP had 59 constituency seats. On the List the SNP had 41.7% of the vote. Their ballot papers were piled high, but produced only 4 seats because of its success in the constituencies. Is that what the SNP leadership wants to see again, when an Alliance for Independence will convert those votes into many more seats than merely 4, and help provide that overwhelming number of MSPs committed to demanding the independence referendum? It makes no sense to ‘waste’ that List vote.
What does make sense is for the SNP leadership to talk to the Alliance people about how they intend to set up their new group, how they are going to vet and select people to be put on the list, how they are going to decide where people are placed on the list in each region, and what exactly an Alliance group will want from an SNP government by way of an agreed manifesto mandate commitment. Conversations leading to decisions with an SNP input –perhaps even some SNP nominees to the Alliance List — would give the independence movement a huge tactical advantage next May.
The point that SNP must understand is that if the Alliance decides to stand, there is nothing the SNP can do to stop them. If the Alliance backs down, there is nothing to stop others taking their place; and given the number of others I have heard of, that is likely to be the case. We would then have the SNP List votes mostly ‘wasted,’ and the others dividing what was left between them, with no seats for any of them — and no tactical advantage gained when it is there for the taking. Time to think. Time to talk. Time to put nation before party.