MP's defection exposes SNP trick of radical rhetoric and Tory-friendly policies – Brian Wilson

The SNP's lengthy council tax freeze contributed to cuts in services on which the poor disproportionately depended

Dream on, but it would be hilarious – this of all weekends – if Dr Lisa Cameron MP, her conscience moved by the righteous indignation of Humza Yousaf and Michael Russell, declared: “You’re right. I will resign and force a by-election.” Even funnier if my own elected tribune, Angus Brendan MacNeil MP, another recent SNP ship-jumper, was struck by the same bolt of democratic lightning, and decided, “Mise cuideachd” or “Me too. It is the only decent thing to do”.

Then this virus of virtue might spread to the two elected on SNP tickets who now sit at Westminster in the cause of Alba. Imagine! We could have four Rutherglens on one day and the shock would turn Messrs Yousaf and Russell into pillars of stone. It's all ritualistic nonsense of course.

Defectors don’t resign, no matter where they’re coming from or going to. The usual defence is that they haven’t left the party, the party has left them. I’m sure the SNP’s four lost sheep would say exactly that. One does not wish to be vulgar but there is also the small question of money. MPs who stand again and lose under any banner receive a handsome payout while voluntary departees get hee-haw. It is not a system designed to incentivise high principle.

Apart from being pointless, the call from the SNP’s high command is also deeply hypocritical. I don’t recall anyone other than SNP members endorsing Mr Yousaf as First Minister while nobody at all voted in a Holyrood election for the coalition with his Green buddies so they could pursue their fringe enthusiasms.

If our two high priests of democratic accountability have a problem with people or parties amending the terms on which they were elected, without asking permission from voters, then they should fix the motes in their own eyes rather than grandstand about the treachery of the latest departed colleague.

Incidentally, it was surely unnecessarily patronising, even by his own formidable standards, for Mr Russell, the SNP president, to accuse Dr Cameron on the radio of “a tantrum”. Whatever the rights or wrongs, she has been saying the same thing about the Patrick Brady case and the SNP’s Westminster group for many months, which scarcely constitutes a “tantrum”. She has also spoken of mental health issues that affected her as a result. Mr Russell should mind his manners.

The feigned astonishment that anyone might move from the nationalists to the Tories should also be called out for its disconnection with reality, historic and current. When it has suited each other’s purpose they have been more than willing to work together – and will again if opportunism demands it. You only need to listen to the current anti-Labour rhetoric to understand where the greater antagonism lies.

In some parts of Scotland, Tories have been voting SNP for decades on tactical grounds, so long as it was not interpreted as a vote for independence. That is one of many reasons why the designation of a general election as a “de facto referendum” was, and remains, nonsensical, whatever bloated claims are made in Aberdeen this weekend.

I doubt if anyone knows what Mr Yousaf’s latest definition is of a referendum “mandate”. Better still, hardly anyone cares. So long as any further decision about independence remains a remote hypothetical, which can comfortably be sidelined, the SNP will continue to seek and receive tactical votes from both right and left depending on local circumstances. I don’t complain about that but denying it as a Scottish political reality is juvenile.

And let us not forget Brexit, supposedly the other great dividing line which puts a hex on any crossover between SNP and Tories. In reality, fully one-third of SNP voters wanted to pull out of the EU as well as the UK. Are they too to be airbrushed out of history in order to sustain the false narrative of progressivism?

Since devolution, the SNP’s trick was to deal in radical rhetoric while pursuing policies which mainly benefited the better off and certainly gave natural Tories nothing to fear. For example, more than a decade of council tax freeze brought no benefit to low-income households but contributed to cuts in services on which the poor disproportionately depended.

Given the current state of local government funding, I am pretty sure councils are worse treated now, in both capital and revenue allocations, than they were under Mrs Thatcher. And to be fair, most Scottish Tories would now agree that the SNP has gone too far in its shameful treatment of local government. So no problem for Dr Cameron there.

Policies like “free university tuition” were dressed up in the feel-good term “universalism” which has led to minimal improvement in access for the less well-off and the almost total exclusion of many Scots from some Scottish university courses. Concentrating finite resources on those who actually needed them would have made a real difference and Scottish universities would not now be at the mercy of a never-ending supply chain of Chinese students.

So all in all, at least until recently, natural Tory voters did relatively well under the SNP. Admittedly, that might be changing. Giving them the levers on income tax has led to higher rates than the rest of the UK for anyone earning over £28,000 a year. This should help concentrate minds on what the rates would be if everything spent in Scotland had to be paid for from Scottish taxation, rather than us being sheltered by the benign Barnett formula.

If Dr Cameron can now help to point this out to those who previously voted for her, she will perform a useful service in her brief sojourn as a Tory MP. I wish her well personally and hope she is better treated by her new colleagues than by her former ones.