Analysis: SNP eye Labour rout in forthcoming UK election

Thousands travelled to the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre in Glasgow on the banks of the Clyde at the weekend.

Some came for Scotland's biggest golfing show. Thousands more came with daughters in tow clad in princess outfits, complete with fairy-wands, for the sold-out "Disney on Ice"; while 3,000 came for the Scottish National Party's final conference before the UK general election.

It was more than a conference, however. In fact it was a rally, bordering upon the evangelical, one where a man asked former Scottish first minister Alex Salmond: "Can I start by thanking Alex on behalf of my wife and family for your serivce."

With just six weeks to go, the SNP's ranks are bouyant; believing that a transformational chapter in British politics is at hand, one where the Labour Party is destroyed in Scotland.

"The only thing to match this in the history of British politics is the death of the Irish Parliamentary Party at the hands of Sinn Fein in 1918," one delegate told The Irish Times.

Confidence, indeed, is so high that first minister Nicola Sturgeon felt the need to remind delegates that anything more than 11 Commons seats on May 7th would mark a victory.

Expectation management is now increasingly an issue. Labour is in despair, unable to respond to the SNP’s pledge that they will “keep the Tories out, and put backbone into Labour in Westminster”.

Labour heartland

Scotland has 59 MPs in the House of Commons; Labour holds 41 of them. The Liberal Democrats have 11. Following May 7th, the SNP could have between 30 to 50. A succession of council byelection victories copperfastens confidence. In Glenrothes in Fife last week, Craig Walker won with 55.3 per cent of the vote in an area once considered a Labour heartland, up 12 points in two years.

In Buckie, Moray, Sonya Warren was elected with nearly 60 per cent of the vote – a 23.5 per cent increase in the party's vote share since the last byelection in the ward in January 2014.

The party’s membership has grown five-fold since September’s independence referendum defeat. Nearly 700 joined in the hours after Sturgeon’s speech to delegates on Saturday afternoon.

The speech was a master class in political strategy. Scots had laboured under Conservative rule in the Thatcher years. They were told to grin and bear it. Now, the boot is on other foot.

Intriguingly, she conflated the party’s interests with national interests: “Our voice, as a country, will be louder if it is united. That’s why my message today reaches far beyond the ranks of our party.

“Let us come together . . . as one country. Let us seize this historic moment to shift the balance of power from the corridors of Westminster to the streets and communities of Scotland,” she said.

During last year's referendum campaign, the SNP spoke frequently about the rainbow coalition that lay behind the Yes campaign – the Greens, Radical Independence Campaign and others.

Today, it has to make no such arguments. The British Election Study found that 86 per cent of voters who have switched to the SNP since 2010 are “certain” they will stick with them.

For now, the SNP is offering dearly-bought, conditional support to Labour leader Ed Miliband, believing that he will pay any price to secure his one chance of winning No 10.

The prospect is creating apoplexy in parts of the English establishment, provoking cries – bizarre though they be – that Scots are threatening to “subvert” democracy by voting against the Conservatives.

Anti-austerity

Such outrage is gleefully fed back into Scotland, magnifying the very sentiments that led to such support in the first place – though, now, it suits the Conservatives ambitions also.

Seeking to place the SNP at the head of the UK's anti-austerity argument, Sturgeon told voters in England, Wales and Northern Ireland that they should not fear greater SNP Westminster influence.

“Cuts that tear at the very fabric of our society, penalise the poor, threaten our public services and stifle economic growth, let me make it crystal clear – those will not be in our name,” she said.

However, the SNP is far less clear about its position on replacement plans for the UK’s Trident nuclear missile force. Delegates delivered impassioned cries against missiles, talking of “bairns, not bombs”.

Once evicted from the Faslane base on the Clyde, "there'll be no place else to put it", said SNP Holyrood member Bill Kidd who said SNP MPs would hold Labour's "feet to the fire".

However rhetoric is one thing, political manoeurving another. A decision on replacing Trident is due next year. The SNP’s support for a Labour minority government is not conditional on scrapping its replacement.

Faced with that, a decision about the replacement would be taken by Labour, with the support of the Conservatives. For the SNP, this is the ideal outcome, leaving Faslane as a continuing sore.