The SNP conference opened today with Stephen Flynn (primary interest: the career of Stephen Flynn), Karen Adam (primary interest: any shiny or jangly object) and Susan Aitken (primary interest: MOAR PIES), which ought to be more than enough by itself to convincingly illustrate that these are not serious people.
But if you somehow still weren’t certain, there’s this:
That, readers – from Flynn, supposedly the party’s sharpest talent – is political strategising on the level of a football manager wearing his lucky underpants for a cup tie. David Cameron didn’t grant the 2014 referendum because he HAD to, he did it because he saw a political opportunity to kill off independence for decades by delivering a strong victory for the Union.
In the end he got away with the gamble, much more narrowly than he expected to, and no UK Prime Minister will make that mistake again. (Especially as Cameron foolishly DID follow it up with a repeat performance, over Brexit, and this time lost the vote and ended his political career.)
What’s embarrassing is not that Swinney and Flynn are publicly endorsing such an absolute joke of a “strategy”, but that they know it’ll be enough to see the SNP returned to government, where the strategy will fail (whether by not securing the majority or by doing so and having Keir Starmer briskly tell them to sod off), and they can safely trouser fat Holyrood salaries for another half-decade with all the pressure off.
But what if conference delivers a surprise defeat for the leadership during this afternoon’s debate? We don’t expect it to – conference is stuffed with the payroll vote these days, and holding it in Aberdeen yet again has made it as hard as possible for rebels to turn up en masse, short of booking a leaky bothy near Dounreay – but let’s allow it as a possibility just for the sake of argument.
What happens then?
Well, as things stand, not much. Anyone with even a shred of honour and dignity would resign as leader if their policy on the party’s core aim was thrown out by conference, but the chances of Swinney doing so and triggering a leadership contest seven months from a general election are close to nil.
(Not that it’d be much of a contest anyway – with Kate Forbes out of the picture, Flynn would likely be the only candidate who could secure enough nominations under the demanding new rules. But since he’s fully backing the Swinney policy it’d be a farcical and pointless replacement.)
So the SNP would limp into the election with an indy policy that its leader didn’t believe in (whether that was Swinney or Flynn), which is a pretty fatally non-credible stance. Every debate and interview would see them challenged, quite justifiably with “But you don’t even believe in this policy yourself, do you?”
And in the highly optimistic event that that didn’t damage them, how likely is that 50%+1 target to be achieved next May?
The combined SNP+Green+Alba vote across the last 10 polls averages to 42.4% – miles short of the mark, and with absolutely no sign of notable growth. If you go all the way back to the death of Alex Salmond – a year tomorrow – the average is 42.1%. If you project that forward seven months, we’re on course for… 42.6%.
In the long term, the underlying basis of the rebel amendment is the only remotely credible way forward, and has been since Wings proposed it almost exactly five years ago. But neither outcome of today’s debate will do anything to help next year.
Stupidly, the amendment they’ve actually lodged only specifies next year’s election as a “de-facto referendum”, when it should be EVERY election from now on. Otherwise if pro-indy parties fail to break 50% (as they almost certainly will), Unionists can say “Okay, well you said it was just this year, so you’ve had your second indyref and you’re DEFINITELY not getting another one for 30 years”.
It’s also phrased incredibly weakly, proposing only that “consideration should be given” to adopting the plan, when the SNP constitution still officially dictates that conference DECIDES policy. It’s a meek request when it should have been a flat-out coup.
Swinney will therefore have an excuse to cling on if defeated, and the rebels will have blown their best chance to capitalise on the widespread discontent within the party at current strategy. But in truth with no figurehead to coalesce around they’re in no position to take advantage of a victory even if they achieved one.
This afternoon’s debate, then, will be a pantomime. Either outcome will damage the SNP’s credibility, which is already at rock bottom. And no amount of lucky underpants are going to get them, or the wider indy movement, out of it.
