Salmond the man was an astute politician and an excellent strategist. But let’s not forget the history. He was wholly unpopular with the party in his first decade as leader, and only managed to increase the number of SNP MPs from 4 to 6. His success in increasing the profile came after Devolution and it is arguable that, this would have happened regardless of who was the leader. They were the de-facto opposition in the Scottish Parliament only because of Scotland’s history with Conservative Party and that was bound to increase their standing. They took power in Scotland at a time when the UK Labour government was fighting over who would be the new leader and had high unfavourable ratings. They were the only left wing alternative to Labour and picked up votes from people who had no other real alternative at the time. The results of that election have been questioned as they won by a small number of seats, and over 4% of the ballots were disqualified due to the newly introduced electronic counting system. These ballots disproportionately affected the traditional Labour heartlands in the Central Belt, who had become more disenfranchised due to a re-drawing of election boundaries prior to the election.
The SNP Government under Salmond sowed the seeds of the disaster it is today. Populist policies we can’t afford, expansion of the state sector, the ramping up of the “Westminster bad” rhetoric. By every metric the SNP decline has led to failures in Scotland. Health, Education, Poverty have all suffered under the SNP and this decline started with Salmond. In many ways Sturgeon had a poisoned chalice, trying to turn the tide against a series of policies which had not been delivered or successful. She lost half of the SNPs seats after her first 3 years as first minister and never really recovered from that. From there she became ever more populist. She was an excellent communicator, and during Covid this really boosted her popularity, but nothing could detract from the fact that the country was really performing little better than the rest of the U.K. Her only saving grace was that numbers showed we were “best” in the UK. That’s a hard sell when you are talking about the difference in A&E waiting times being 9 hours v 12 hours. If the SNP had focussed on finding solutions to problems instead of just blaming Westminster and gunning for Independence, we might be in a better position. Frankly, if they had done that, I’d be far more likely to vote Yes.
We have seen the cost of the divorce (Brexit). It isn’t pretty. Those who are suffering the most are low income, who were also most likely to have voted for it. This will be the same in Scexit. We have also seen the problems with starting a new Nation. The Scotland Act in 2016 gave more power to ScotGov to administer 6 existing social security benefits and deliver 5 new ones. It was 2021 before they rolled out the first of those being switched from the U.K. system to payments from ScotGov. The estimated one off cost of setting these up has more than doubled to £651m. SNP defended this increase by saying the costs were unknowable when they were calculated in 2017. This is despite them claiming that a £200m estimate to set up and independent Scotland was credible in 2014. The truth is, no-one knows how much it would cost, but it’s safe to say it will be more than we’ve spent on delivering these benefits, and will not happen in the 18 months SNP claim it will.
There is probably no right time for Scotland to separate, it will always be messy and people will suffer in the short to medium term. But there is definitely a wrong time. To do it when the Nation is already on its knees will mean generations of people will be in a much worse position. The problem is, it’s only when people are really facing hardship that the “unicorns for all” campaign promises will be successful.