SNP's indyref2 war chest piles pressure on Unionist parties and Westminster

The six-figure spending pledge was set out at a meeting of the party’s ruling National Executive Committee (NEC). The ring-fenced funds will be spent this financial year on “referendum preparations”.

Dr Samuel Power, of the University of Sussex, told the Sunday National that this kind of public declaration is uncommon – and itself is part of a push to put pressure on Westminster to grant the Section 30 order needed to trigger a fresh ballot.

“You don’t often hear political parties saying ‘we are going to spend this money on X outcome’,” he says.

“The SNP’s big selling point is pushing for this referendum. They are signalling that this is a main priority of the party. They are attempting to mobilise and energise support, saying ‘we haven’t forgotten about this during the pandemic’. Now the government in Westminster is a bit anxious about the idea of a referendum.”

The move comes one month after the Sunday National revealed that former Cabinet minister Marco Biagi will join “a dedicated team to focus on delivering a Yes vote”, laying the foundations of an indyref2 push before the upcoming Holyrood elections then leading on strategy in the early phases of the next parliament by authoring policy papers and more.

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Pamela Nash of campaign group Scotland in Union said the plan proves the party is “out of touch”, Jackie Baillie of Labour called the announcement “astounding” and Tory leader Douglas Ross called it “reckless”.

But Power says that while the SNP’s priorities mean it’s motivated to reveal its spending on this area, the conversation is more “awkward” for Unionist organisations.

“They just don’t want to get into that kind of conversation where it sounds like a referendum is inevitable,” he says.

“It’s a more awkward topic for them. It’s more awkward campaigning for a status quo anyway, even if you truly believe in it.

“They just don’t want to talk about it, they don’t want any momentum to be growing.”

The SNP spent around £1 million fighting the last general election.

At “well over” half of that sum, the indyref2 pot could do “a great deal”, Power says – if the party opts for online activities, something that will likely be essential without a significant easing of Covid-19 restrictions.

A video posted by the party on Facebook on Thursday at a cost of less than £300 had been viewed around 45,000 times be late on Friday.

While the Scottish Green Party was the first in the country to begin running Facebook ads, the SNP was the first to create an in-house new media team, also adopting the Nationbuilder.com platform built by members of former US president Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign in a world first.

“Online campaigning is a lot cheaper than campaigning face-to-face and you don’t need to rely as much on volunteer labour”, Power says. “The money does go a long way.”

However, Scottish Independence Foundation (SIF) chief executive Greg McCarra says the priority should be infrastructure and internal support.

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Further appointments are expected to the SNP’s independence taskforce. “If there is going to be an expansion of an independence unit then a head has to be appointed,” McCarra says. “There are costs associated with that. A very large amount of it will be building the internal infrastructure.”

McCarra also advocates the creation of a new app to help identify and persuade potential Yes voters.

But he says not all campaigning can be carried out on digital platforms and hopes to see an escalation of advertising and marketing activity over the summer, including the production of billboards and merchandise to promote the concept of Scotland’s right to choose its own future.

“This isn’t party political, this is pro-independence,” McCarra says.

“Nobody knows if there’s going to be some kind of replacement for Yes Scotland, but we don’t even need to know that just now because we have got a lot of well-run and very effective organisations at the grassroots.

“The way we win the referendum is by a combination of big political parties and the grassroots,” McCarra adds. “We desperately need to win this and win it well.”