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How the SNP lost itself in hyper-liberalism
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Photo by Colin Fisher / Alamy Live News
A political implosion in Scotland confirms an observation commonly
made in military circles. In the aftermath of war, strategists look
for lessons to be learned. Often lessons are identified, but seldom
learned. Directed by governments, armies go on repeating the same
mistakes until the entire operation fails, as it did after 20 years in
Afghanistan.
The choice of a new SNP leader replicates this pattern. Nicola
Sturgeon secured Humza Yousaf as her successor because he promised to
carry on her policies. Her understudies have now acclaimed the
appointment of her protégé John Swinney, leader of the party from 2000
to 2004 and another continuity candidate. But continuity in the SNP
means continuing decline, the reduction of a once hegemonic party to a
spent and marginal force, and the end of the independence project for
the foreseeable future.
It was not his lack of political skills that made Yousaf's position
fundamentally untenable. While terminating the 2021 Bute House power-
sharing agreement with the Greens so abruptly and brutally was a fatal
mistake, he was compromised from the start by the inheritance
bequeathed by his mentor. Long-standing failings in healthcare,
education and the economy were taking their toll. But it was
Sturgeon's embrace of a hyper-liberal agenda that undid her. Backing
the Gender Recognition Bill in the face of intense public disquiet and
opposition, a streetwise, Machiavellian politician mutated into a
purblind ideologue. The classic deformations of one-party states were
never far from the surface. Events supervened - allegations of misuse
of party funds, hubristic and then inept leadership - and the regime
fell apart.
Sturgeon's most substantial legacy is the collapse of the progressive
regime she attempted to install in the country. If Swinney as leader
unifies the party around her programme, he will lead it to irrelevance
or extinction. If he is a stopgap, appointed to block the accession of
Kate Forbes - who is popular with the electorate but loathed by the
party hierarchy for her conservative religious views - the result will
be the same. Either way, he will own the heavy defeats that lie ahead
for the SNP in the Westminster and Holyrood elections.
In order to understand the present, one must pierce the veil of the
dominant discourse. When Yousaf and his former Green allies talk of
avoiding "toxic culture wars", they mean silencing opposition to the
radical changes in language and behaviour they plan to enforce on
society. The underlying premise is that they are advancing the
inexorable course of history.
In fact, progressivism is in political retreat not only in Scotland
but throughout much of the West. In former social democracies such as
Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands, parties of the right are the
strongest groupings. In Germany, the hard-right AfD has become the
party most favoured by people under 30. Even in the woke Anglosphere,
the tide is turning. Largely ignored by the British media, the New
Zealand coalition government, elected in October 2023 and led by the
conservative National Party, is dismantling the country constructed by
Jacinda Ardern.
The by-election loss of Blackpool South to Labour amid the local
elections of 2 May confirms that Britain is not immune from this
trend. Coming only 117 votes behind the Tories, Reform has
demonstrated a capacity to inflict heavy damage on them. Rwanda - an
exercise in performative right-wing politics staged by a dying
centrist government - will not save Rishi Sunak. Labour's loss of
control in Oldham and the ousting of the Labour deputy leader of
Manchester council by a candidate from George Galloway's Workers Party
testify to a similar disaffection. This is not only Gaza costing
Labour Muslim votes, though that is a mounting risk for Keir Starmer.
As in Rochdale, Galloway's fusion of old-fashioned socialism with
cultural conservatism seems to be resonating with the white working
class too.
In Red- and-Blue Wall constituencies, towns and villages, masses of
voters are seized with loathing and contempt for the Tories. Many are
possessed by a burning desire for revenge for the incompetence, folly
and successive betrayals of the past 14 years. Some are turning to the
Liberal Democrats for a purer version of the progressive faith. Most
are defaulting to Labour as the least bad option under the current
electoral system.
Hyper-liberal ideology is not about to lose its institutional power in
education, the media and the apparatus of government. In practice a
scheme of outdoor poor relief for the distressed middle classes, it
also supplies a belief system that relieves them of the burden of
thought. Not the least of its advantages is that incessant chatter
about race and empire distracts attention from the systemic
dysfunction of Western capitalism.
Yet Scotland shows a hegemonic hyper-liberal regime to be a chimera.
At the peak of Sturgeon's power, practically the entire political
class was fixated on gender deconstruction, imported American "anti-
racism" and net zero cultism. But even within the SNP dissent could
not be suppressed, and much of the public remained unconverted. It is
not only democracy that is fragile. So is the ruling caste that seeks
to manage or circumvent the democratic process. The lessons of
Scotland are not difficult to identify. Whether they will be learned
when the baton of progress passes to Labour is another matter
altogether.
**_[See also: ** _Can John Swinney be more than a caretaker leader?_**
]_**
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This article appears in the 08 May 2024 issue of the New Statesman,
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