The SNP has a decision to make as the mood for change will not stop at Westminster – Brian Wilson

Is there any Labour manifesto which would satisfy the sanctimony of John Swinney, pre-empt the platitudes of Kate Forbes or silence the sneers of Stephen Flynn?

Well, of course there is. It would be one which made Labour totally unelectable, just like the last time when Jeremy Corbyn led his troops to a highly principled 48-1 defeat in Scotland. From a Nationalist perspective, that was Labour at its finest.

This time, mercifully, the choices are different but the SNP demands are the same. Please, please promise to tax more, make vast spending commitments, re-open the Brexit debate, place no cap on immigration…. Only then, they pretend, would this be a Labour Party worthy of the name.

Similar taunts come from other sources but without quite the same venom and self-interest that the SNP can muster. This is for a straightforward reason. Old Trots and young Greens don’t have 40-odd seats on the green benches to lose, most of them with Labour as challengers.

The only threat to SNP hegemony within Scottish politics comes from an electable Labour Party. An even bigger fear than the emergence of a Labour government is that it might be a successful one, as they have been in the past until – like all governments – they run out of steam.

While a strong Labour contingent from Scotland would be very much in Scottish interests after July 4th, it would also change the dynamic in the run-up to Holyrood elections less than two years from now. That is the greater threat which the SNP sees coming down the road. The mood for change will not stop at Westminster.

After 20 years of history being re-written, the education lesson which Mr Swinney and his colleagues want to keep from a new generation is that governments really can change the quality of society, according to different priorities and principles. But first the electoral pendulum has to swing in a direction to which it now seems set.

The SNP has a bedrock vote which will not melt away even though independence barely features in current campaigning. You certainly won’t find “de facto referendum” anywhere in their literature. That leaves a vacuum and even I am surprised by their failure to fill it with anything more positive than advance denigration of what a potential Labour government might achieve.

The high-minded positions advocated for Labour by the SNP are themselves riddled with hypocrisy. For example, they keep quoting the Institute for Fiscal Studies as the font of all knowledge but neglect to mention the same organisation’s analysis that independence would mean “bigger cuts to public spending or bigger increases to taxes” for at least a decade than anything the UK might endure.

Personally, I don’t think it’s a great idea to rely on think-tank predictions since what is the point of politics if actions in government cannot transform outcomes? Did the Institute for Fiscal Studies predict in 1997 that the incoming Labour government would lift a million children out of poverty? And if Labour had made that promise, how many vultures would have descended to ask: “How are you going to pay for it?”. But it happened.

The Nationalists demand that Labour should commit to re-joining the European Union knowing perfectly well that no such avenue exists either for the UK or Scotland within any foreseeable timescale. Once again, the SNP’s invitation to Labour is to swallow an electoral suicide pill in pursuit of a lost cause when the realistic alternative is to forge a new relationship with the EU, untainted by past history or the Tory right wing.

The immigration stuff is even more fork tongued. Scotland’s complaint, they keep telling us, is that we don’t get enough immigrants but why should this be? In the two years to June 2023, 2.258 million immigrants arrived legally in the UK. If Scotland is such a welcoming place, why are we not getting our fair share of them? What has the Scottish Government done to attract immigrants who actually exist?

No matter how welcoming one might be, it can hardly be disputed that unless planned for, these numbers place strains on public infrastructure and particularly housing. If the Scottish Government is serious about wanting large influxes, why has it cut the social housing budget by 26 per cent? Where is the plan to meet demands that even a proportionate share of existing immigration would create? It does not exist – only the empty rhetoric of pseudo moral superiority.

The television debates aimed at a UK audience give the SNP a platform in which most of their claims and postures go unchallenged (though credit to Fiona Bruce on BBC Question Time for having done enough homework to stop Kate Forbes in her tracks with a few relevant statistics). However, the reactions of Scottish audiences have been interesting when, as is inevitable, subject matter strays from reserved to devolved issues.

No longer do SNP representatives get away with the mantra on which they have relied for so long – that, by definition, every failing is someone else’s fault. After 17 years, they too have a record to defend and nobody really believes that they have been starved of money to an extent that the stark decline in public services has been inevitable. That is a tired script more likely to attract derision than applause.

After July 4th if there is a Labour government, the SNP will have a big decision to make – whether to maintain the campaign of hostility as if nothing has changed while continuing to seek out conflict between Edinburgh and Whitehall. I doubt if that will serve them well. Most Scots who vote for change are also ready to demand more of the Scottish Government than the all too familiar diet of policy failures, blame-shifting and grievances.