Webchat: Join Alex Massie at 11am to discuss his column on Alex Salmond’s ‘Hampden’ and ‘Murrayfield’ tactics
ALEX Massie’s column in today’s Scotland on Sunday addresses two parallel strategies used by Alex Salmond to appeal to two different electoral camps in Scotland - the ‘Hampden’ strategy and the ‘Murrayfield’ strategy.
Of the SNP’s willingness to court these two disparate groups, Massie writes: “To adapt Benjamin Disraeli’s famous aphorism, the Scottish National Party is nothing if not a national party. There are many Scotlands and the SNP must play to win in all of them. If this means the party must, on occasion, contradict itself then Alex Salmond, like Walt Whitman, responds “Very well then, I contradict myself; I am large – I contain multitudes”.
On the two stadium strategies, Massie adds: “The Hampden strategy appeals to working-class and lower-to-middle-class voters. It is populist, Saltire-wrapped and keenly, proudly Scottish. The Murrayfield tranch
of the electorate is older, wealthier and more likely to consider itself Scottish and British.”