Tom Peterkin: Discontent rising as SNP's election campaign fails to get off ground

Published on Saturday 24 April 2010 20:46

THE backlash from SNP activists is starting already. In the general election campaign the Nationalists have failed to gain traction as the country has been transfixed by the Clegg/Cameron/Brown debates on television. The result is the sound of grumbling from grassroots SNP supporters who are unhappy about the leadership's strategy.

"It is not going very well," admitted one senior SNP member taking a break from campaigning last week. "Activists have been left to their own devices in a lot of areas – including seats that are supposed to be targets."

Perhaps that should come as no surprise, given the number of target seats there are and the paucity of the SNP's resources. Salmond's 20-seat target now looks hopelessly optimistic – a hostage to fortune if ever there was one.

On the doorsteps, activists are growing sick of the refrain from voters that an SNP vote could let the Tories in by the back door.

Worryingly for SNP leader Alex Salmond, there is also disquiet on the ground over his pronouncements during the campaign. His call for English voters to support the Lib Dems in order to secure a hung parliament in which the Nationalists could exert some influence has not gone down well.

"The target strategy is not working," the SNP member said. "There is also real unhappiness about the messages coming from Alex Salmond – this rubbish about voting for the Lib Dems south of the Border. Doesn't he think that there is bound to be some crossover up here?"

Salmond's election slogan "More Nats – Less Cuts" has also irritated some of the faithful, who object to the use of the word "Nats" – a term previously only used disparagingly by the SNP's opponents. Yesterday the party issued videos showing high-profile supporters including Sir Sean Connery declaring: "I'm a Nat."

One activist said last week: "Many members just hate the term 'Nats'. You can see the argument that it is wise to appropriate a pejorative term for your own – but the slogan is not going down well with the grassroots."

Behind that irritation, however, there are more fundamental objections to the tactics encapsulated by the slogan. Salmond may believe that a handful of SNP MPs will be able to protect Scotland from the savage cuts on the way by holding the balance of power at Westminster. But his fundamentalist critics within the party not only believe that his vision of Westminster "dancing to a Scottish tune" is an unrealistic scenario, they also object to the approach for ideological reasons.

Jim Sillars, the former SNP deputy leader and MP for Govan, said: "If you fight a Westminster election in order to control a Westminster parliament then you have endorsed the legitimacy of the British state. If you endorse the legitimacy of the British state, you can hardly argue that the British state should then shelter a geographical part of the British state. It is a logical fallacy."

According to Sillars, it is this strategy that is to blame for the SNP's so-far lacklustre campaign. "I don't see them making themselves really different from anyone else, except in a parochial sense that they keep going, saying: 'We'll shelter Scotland.' And that's not possible," Sillars said.

"I cannot believe the SNP believes that at Westminster the three Unionist parties will bargain with them and thus enhance the credibility and reputation of the SNP in the Holyrood election year. They won't do that. They will marginalise them at Westminster, as they've sought to marginalise them in this campaign."

Independence ought to have been at the heart of the SNP's campaign, says Sillars. "If the SNP had used the last three years in office to build up the case to the general public for independence – had engaged in political education campaigns on independence, had uttered the word more often than they have done – then this election would have been very meaningful north of the Border, because it would be about the break-up of the United Kingdom," he says. "It wouldn't be easy for the other Unionist parties to dismiss the SNP as irrelevant – as in fact they have done."

The political analyst Gerry Hassan says that much of the squeeze on the SNP from the London-based parties was inevitable. "You always get marginalised by Labour and the Tories," he said, adding that it made sense for the SNP to channel its energies into next year's Holyrood election.

The SNP war chest from tycoon donor Brian Souter is closed for the general election and senior figures within the party have conceded that they are mounting an "insurgency" campaign. "It is a quite small-scale SNP campaign in a lot of ways," Hassan said. "I mean, financially, it is a tiny campaign compared with the huge, well-resourced journey into the 2007 Scottish election. That's right and proper in the sense that the party has to choose its opportunities."

While Salmond would argue that the fuss he has made over his non-participation in the leaders' debates has been justified, others believe it has now become counter-productive.

Others believe the First Minister should have stamped his feet even harder.

It seems that no matter what Salmond does on this issue – or this election, for that matter – he cannot win.