Andrew Whitaker: SNP needs more than momentum

THE SNP’s 2015 general election prospects are already being talked up, with the party tipped to make sweeping gains from Labour in what some commentators have suggested could be the biggest ever breakthrough by the nationalists at Westminster.

It is hard to believe that the SNP is a party that has just lost the battle for independence. Picture: John devlin

To look at the SNP, with a new and popular leader designate in Nicola Sturgeon as well as healthy opinion poll leads over Labour, it is hard to believe this is a party that has just lost the battle for independence by a margin bigger than many had imagined.

With Scottish Labour more beleaguered than at any time in living memory, SNP strategists clearly believe the 2015 general election presents the party with a golden opportunity to win its most ever seats in the Commons.

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The party’s previous high watermark at Westminster was in the second of two general elections in 1974, which resulted in 11 SNP MPs, who went on to exert influence over the Labour government with its wafer-thin Commons majority.

Despite the referendum defeat, some commentators believe the SNP could be well placed to make similar electoral gains in 2015, giving the party similar political muscle in the Commons to the late 1970s, when the party controversially voted to eject James Callaghan’s Labour government from office and precipitate the 1979 election.

But given the SNP’s ultra confidence over its Westminster prospects, it is worth bearing in mind that the party has yet to select a single candidate in any seat for the 2015 election.

With the majority of the electorate in Glasgow voting Yes, the SNP will be keen to get solid candidates in place in Labour-held constituencies in the city that it considers winnable.

Nationalist strategists will be aware that the party will have to do more than simply rely on momentum to be sure of making the predicted gains.

Probably one of the most misjudged predictions of Alex Salmond in his tenure as First Minister was the bold claim in 2008 – less than a year after the SNP came to power – that the nationalists would win 20 Commons seats and make Westminster “dance to a Scottish jig”. Just six SNP MPs were returned in 2010, and the party failed to take Glasgow City Council from Labour in 2012, despite the momentum of its historic Holyrood landslide in 2011.

But in Ms Sturgeon, the SNP has a politician who has managed to speak to Labour-minded voters in a way that arguably no other nationalist has on issues such as free NHS prescriptions.

Whether that and the SNP’s likely election message of the need for a strong nationalist presence at Westminster will be enough to give the party a historic advance at Westminster, remains to be seen.