Eddie Barnes: Zombie First Minister

Published on Saturday 14 February 2009 18:43

THE first screeches of devolution's biggest ever U-turn were heard late on Tuesday evening. The dust had only just settled on Alex Salmond's first reshuffle, undertaken earlier that day, but the First Minister and Finance Secretary John Swinney had a bigger surprise in store.

The party's policy on a Local Income Tax (LIT) had been causing Swinney headaches for months. The business community, which had praised him for the past two years, was giving him hell. Likewise, councils – which had started doing the maths on how much the LIT scheme would have cost them in its first year – were telling him the same. Salmond, the consummate strategist, was aware that both Labour and the Tories were more than happy for the SNP to persevere with such an unpopular measure. So the pair told the Cabinet that evening that it was time to swing the axe.

Their announcement the following lunchtime, when it was sprung on the party's group of 47 MSPs, was met with astonishment. "There were gasps. Real shock," says one party source. The promise to 'axe the council tax' was not just any SNP policy, it was the foundation of their election victory. "Some of the MSPs won because of it. They based their entire local campaigns around it," said another insider. Party chiefs knew how big the move was and so a major damage limitation exercise began. Ministers told journalists gathered around the parliament's garden lobby that suggestions of a Cabinet split were "bollocks".

The following day, spin doctors frantically circulated the parliament, insisting that Labour leader Iain Gray had failed to take advantage. "Iain Gray must be the Diana Ross of penalty taking," said one special adviser. The clinical SNP internal communications operation swung into action. After being called by this newspaper on Friday, Alasdair MacPherson, an SNP councillor in Bannockburn, declared sheepishly: "I am sorry, but we've got the message from HQ and we are all singing from the same hymn sheet. We have all been given the brief saying this is the party line and I go on the party line on this matter. I fully back my party's stance."

This weekend, the efforts of Salmond's communications team appear to have stemmed the blood. Optimists within the party insist that, with the burden of defending LIT now gone, they can press on re-energised. "We're on the front foot now," says one minister. "We've just had a strong reshuffle and the last thing we want is two years of attrition over local income tax."

Less well-disposed party members fear the veneer of confidence and capability which the SNP displayed in its first year in office is now beginning to wear off. But what is undoubtedly the case, with the SNP's policy plans slowly collapsing into dust, is that more and more attention is now turning to the party's raison d'tre – its pursuit of independence.

So will last week's clear-out allow the SNP to press on to the promised land free of cumbersome baggage? Or has it shown that the First Minister and his plans for independence are destined to go a similar way as LIT? In the US, the newly installed President Obama has been warned that the financial crisis could curtail his scope for action so much it could turn him into 'a zombie President'. Is Salmond also now in danger of joining the political Living Dead?

If nothing else, Alex Salmond has retained his fighting spirit. The Government's official line this weekend is that last week's events have actually made the Government 'stronger'. "It was abundantly clear that Labour and the Tories would have ganged up at Holyrood to vote LIT down. As a decisive Government, we took command of the situation," says Salmond's spokesman.

Half of the party's "headline" manifesto commitments have been met, the spokesman insists. Now the march towards independence and a referendum next year can pick up steam. Salmond's timetable is clear. With a keen eye for symbolism, he plans to table his Referendum Bill on Burns Night next year. Then it will go to parliament. And then, after being passed, the SNP hopes, a vote will take place on St Andrew's Day, in November.

The job of selling all this was given last week to the party's former chief executive Mike Russell, now installed as a Minister with responsibility for the Constitution. The move represented a major rapprochement between the party's two biggest egos, but Salmond knew that in Russell he would be getting the most articulate advocate of the SNP's now dominant 'gradualist' strategy. In a 2007 book Grasping the Thistle, Russell explained how – initially – the party might need to accept "devolution stage two" on the road to independence. He wrote: "Some might call such a staging post a New Union; a constitutional watering station which allows Scots to continue to more forward, works as a means of persuading those who are still reluctant and opens up new opportunities by removing the economic disadvantages of the Old Union."

In practice, this means that Russell and Salmond will suggest that their referendum includes a question on "more powers" – or so-called 'devo max'. The party is hoping keenly that the Calman Commission – the body which is currently reviewing the scope of the Scottish Parliament – will recommend such major increased powers for Holyrood that it necessitates a referendum. Could it be, they hope, that Calman's proposals and the SNP's own plans could be neatly hooked together?

In this way, the SNP hopes that it can cajole either one of Labour, the Tories or the Liberals to get on board so the referendum bill is passed at Holyrood. The support of only one of the three would be enough and, having done so, Salmond would be able to claim he had fulfilled his biggest manifesto pledge. Internal critics within the party have complained that Salmond has not done enough work on campaigning for a referendum up till now, describing how the leadership has been "trotting gently" towards it.

This weekend, however, SNP spin doctors are upping the ante, enthusiastically punting around quotes from opponents who have appeared in the past to suggest support for a vote. Asked about a referendum earlier this year, David Cameron said that he would "be prepared to consider anything". Lib Dem Leader Tavish Scott said on taking over that he was not "intuitively" against a referendum. Perhaps most famously of all, former Labour leader Wendy Alexander last year told the SNP to "bring it on".

Those comments allow SNP strategists to argue that potential support for a referendum is more "fluid" than the outright opposition towards local income tax as expressed by Tories and Labour last week. Thus they aim to keep the issue alive and build up a head of steam.

But in a bid to prevent that momentum building, the Unionist parties are now seizing on the SNP weakness following last week's LIT debacle to try to kill the bill for good. Gray – who had argued upon taking over the job that the referendum ship "had now sailed" – called on Salmond to ditch the referendum. A spokesman for the Scottish Conservatives added: "We do not support his referendum. It is not on the agenda." Meanwhile, Jeremy Purvis of the Lib Dems – thought by many to be Salmond's best chance of a deal – insisted his party would not even countenance a so-called 'multi-option' referendum. "I don't necessarily see why there would need to be a referendum to address further powers to the parliament within the UK. I'm not sure where there is justification for a multi-question referendum – unless they think they could get independence in through the back door," he said.

The argument likely to be made increasingly in the next few months will be that, at a time of recession, Scotland cannot afford to be mucking about in a debate on the constitution. Purvis added: "For most of the remaining two years of this parliament Scotland will be in recession. I don't think the public would look kindly on a party that's spending its time in parliament looking at the constitutional question in perpetuity. The Government and parliament has to be focused on the recession."

That opposition suggests Salmond's plans are dead and buried. Some in the SNP would not appear to mind too much. One supporter, Rob Brown, told the New Statesman recently that party members should be "wary" of Salmond's impatience. Holding a referendum at a time of economic instability would "risk the very future of the self-government cause", he argued. Indeed, Russell himself has argued that the SNP should only really go for a referendum when the timing is right. "A Nationalist Government should therefore honestly say that it will hold a referendum on independence when it believes – and the people believe – our nation is ready to make that step. At that time, and no other," he wrote in 2007.

The trouble for Salmond is that any further delay could fracture the SNP alliance which has held so steady during its first two years in power. The "fundamentalist" members within the party were already grumbling last week that a "gradualist" like Russell had been put in charge of the referendum plans, fearing it would end up being kicked into the longest of long grass. Forget Salmond's patience, how long will fundamentalist MSPs such as former leadership challenger Bill Wilson keep theirs?

Salmond may be banking that he can hold the party together through his own proven leadership skills. Furthermore, the cynics within the party point out that there are plenty of ministers and SNP MSPs who no longer care particularly about the referendum, so long as they keep their salaries and their grip on power. Salmond would also use the opposition's objection to a referendum as a campaigning tool in the next Scottish election.

In other words, it is unlikely that retreat on a referendum will mean a subsequent election defeat. "If Alex doesn't hold his referendum I think people might laugh at him," says independent MSP Margo MacDonald, "but I think they will still vote for him. People will still think they are a better bet than Labour."

So it is an odd situation facing the First Minister. After the events of last week, the referendum which could cement his place in history looks less likely to take place. And yet his time in office looks equally likely to continue. For many within the SNP, the consolation prize of power in devolution may be plenty reward enough. For others it is a Living Death.

And for the view of Zombie First Minister Alex Salmond? Who can tell?

Popping the question

The possible countdown to referendum

&#149 The SNP put forward Referendum Bill on Burns Night, January 25, 2010.

&#149 Parliament debates the bill during the spring.

&#149 If passed in summer 2010, referendum to take place on St Andrew's Day, November 30.

&#149 The SNP's question asks voters whether they agree or disagree that "the Scottish Parliament should negotiate a new settlement with the British Government... so that Scotland becomes a sovereign and independent state".

&#149 However, the SNP has also declared it is willing to table a 'multi-option' question which would ask people whether they supported the status quo, more powers for Holyrood, or independence.