Gerry Hassan: What should the SNP’s MPs do at Westminster?

The election of Flynn and Black comes at a point of unease and tension in the Westminster group, with a sense of nervousness about the role of the SNP MPs and what they should be doing.

Some independence supporters believe that too many of the MPs, researchers and staff have grown too comfortable in the Palace of Westminster and some desire dramatic action which underlines the SNP group’s commitment to independence and challenges the “business as usual” attitude of Westminster politics.

One call that is regularly made is for SNP candidates at a UK election to stand on an abstentionist ticket and not take their seats in the House of Commons. This is intended to underline to the UK Government that SNP parliamentarians refuse to recognise the sovereignty and claim of Westminster over Scotland.

Such non-co-operation and refusal to engage, it is said, would undermine Westminster’s legitimacy in Scotland and fast-forward independence.

The precedent invoking this proposed action is that of Sinn Fein. In the 1918 UK election when they won 73 of 105 seats across Ireland and 65% of the vote in the south, they refused to attend Westminster, leading to the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922.

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The only problem with this is Scotland is not Ireland, its experience in the Union is not comparable, and the SNP is not the same as Sinn Fein. Leaving aside that, after the 1918 UK election, there was a brutal Irish War of Independence following Sinn Fein’s victory and abstentionism and there is also the electoral fact of the broad coalition of support which the SNP represents and appeals to.

This “Big Tent” of SNP support is made up nearly entirely of voters who do not believe in revolutionary politics. Rather, many are moderate and middle of the road who pragmatically vote for the SNP at Westminster to protect their own and Scotland’s interests.

They think one of the basic requirements for this is turning up at Westminster, no matter how imperfect it is, to represent their constituencies and argue their case. A significant part of this vote would be threatened if the SNP stood on an abstentionist ticket – and would be a gift to the party’s opponents.

The next General Election will be a critical one for the future of the Union, the UK and Scotland. The latest date it can happen is January 2025 but more than likely it will take place in 2024, with the Tories pushing as far back as possible in the hope their electoral fortunes improve.

A Tory defeat at that election looks highly possible but Labour has an electoral mountain to climb. Needing 140 seats on the new boundaries to win a slender overall majority of one (as well as a 14% swing from Conservative to Labour) there is the distinct possibility Labour will have either a very narrow majority or none at all, governing at least initially as a minority government. And if Labour do not win seats in Scotland, they need huge gains in England.

In the circumstances of a hung parliament and a minority Labour administration, every parliamentary vote would matter. An SNP that decided to boycott such a situation and not defend the interests of Scottish constituents would undermine the SNP’s appeal – and that of independence.

Labour have said officially that they would govern as a minority, undertake no deals and not engage in any kind of compact with the SNP. But this is a hardline pre-election position to try to mitigate Tory attacks on Labour in an election campaign – repeating the David Cameron mantra “coalition of chaos” at the 2015 election.

The SNP need a strategy to deal with this scenario and need to start thinking about it now. How do they advance the independence cause in such circumstances? What are the best ways to progress a referendum? And what other priorities and causes should they champion? What, for example, would be the minimum requirements for a minority Labour government to support it?

LABOUR state at the moment that no such deals are on the table but they, too, need a strategy. They currently say they will, as a minority government, put down their King’s Speech and programme and invite other parties to support or oppose it.

This is meant to call the SNP’s bluff. For if they dared to pull the plug on Labour in office it would invoke shades of 1979, when SNP MPs backed a vote of no confidence in the then Labour government of Jim Callaghan, which was lost by a single vote with Margaret Thatcher winning the resulting election.

Yet in between a formal agreement between parties is a spectrum of different kinds of cooperation – from day-to-day votes to wider agreement on specific areas. There would also be opportunities for the SNP, LibDems and others to promote parliamentary legislation and get Labour support and even government time.

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SNP and Labour need to start thinking about this now and even talk behind the scenes to build mutual understanding to lock out the Tories. But the SNP need to have a wider sense of purpose about their activities at Westminster in the here and now.

One avenue is fully utilising the SNP political community and resources available at Westminster to build the case for independence. A couple of examples will suffice. There has been no public work undertaken for more than 20 years on the worth of UK state assets globally, a share of which would be claimed by an independent Scotland.

Similarly, the Oxford University academic Danny Dorling has assessed that the true scale of the UK economy is much more than measured by GDP and that the offshore hidden economy is seven times the size of UK GDP.

We have no figures for Scotland but he has estimated it could be more than four times the stated GDP. SNP researchers applying themselves seriously could work this out – and more.

Another is to draw from Scotland’s political traditions of self-government and radicalism. The historic Claim of Right of Scotland of 1989 asserts “the sovereign right of the Scottish people” and was unanimously supported by the House of Commons on July 4, 2018, with the UK Government deciding to not oppose it. The Scottish Parliament voted for it on January 26, 2012 by 102 to 14.

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The SNP group could put down a parliamentary motion re-affirming support for A Claim of Right, inviting Labour and LibDem MPs to support it as in 1989 (bar Tam Dalyell). They could then propose legislation supporting Scotland’s right to decide its future and hold a referendum, and when this is voted against by Tories, Labour and LibDems, underline that this was against their supposed support for A Claim of Right.

Doing this repeatedly would draw from the traditions of the “Red Clydeside” Labour MPs who continually tabled home rule bills in the 1920s – while invoking the rich tradition of A Claim of Right which is not owned by one party and is about a broader tradition than independence, namely self-government.

All of the above needs wider discussion and debate but Westminster is a bully pulpit and platform for advocating and agitation, working on independence, and positioning its ideas in the rich tradition of self-government.

But all of the above requires that the SNP as a whole – MPs, MSPs and members – have an agreed strategy for independence – and that what the party’s representatives do at Westminster can be an important part of that.