Scottish politics is fragmented on multiple lines but particularly on the left-right and nationalist-unionist dimensions. For some years after the 2014 independence referendum it seemed that old alignments had been replaced by a new nationalist-unionist cleavage. The results of the 2024 General Election suggest that this may have been a simplification.
The most obvious features of the election in Scotland are the comprehensive rout of the SNP, reduced to nine seats, and the triumph of Labour at 37 seats. This is exaggerated by the First Past the Post electoral system, as was the SNP’s triumph since 2015, but the scale of the change is still substantial. Labour doubled its share of the vote while the SNP lost a third of theirs. The result could (and no doubt will) be interpreted as the end of nationalism in Scotland and the death of the independence movement. Yet there is reason to doubt that.
While the size and distribution of Labour’s vote appear to be a reversion to old patterns, there are important differences. In the past, it depended on a working class consciousness; middle class Catholics and public sector professionals; collective and individual patronage in the distribution of jobs and council houses; and standing up for Scotland against Conservative Governments. By the 1990s, with Scotland governed by a party which had sunk to minority status in Scotland, Labour, even more than the SNP, could benefit from the successful promotion of the idea that the Conservatives were ‘anti-Scottish’. Now class and religion are not the factors they were in elections. Patronage opportunities have largely disappeared and there is no Conservative Government presenting an easy target at Westminster.
The SNP were never in a position to build anything like Labour’s old hegemony. Because they needed to capture 50 per cent of the vote in any independence referendum, the SNP had to become a catch-all party, taking in the conservative (and not notably pro-independence) rural North-East, the working class vote in the (post) industrial Lowlands, together with the Highland and Border peripheries. The strains have become more obvious in recent years.
Recent polls have shown support for independence running at almost half the electorate and not declining along with fortunes of the SNP. The demographics of independence support, concentrated on younger voters, suggests that it may even grow in the longer term. The 2024 Labour vote must include a lot of independence supporters, something that was true in the past but in smaller numbers between 2015 and 2024. Recent research by David McCrone and myself divides voters into Scottish sovereigntists and British unionists, with a substantial group in the middle. Our latest analysis (in press) suggests that Labour voters contrast sharply with those of the other main ‘unionist’ party, the Conservatives. A majority of Labour voters believed that Scotland should be self-determining while the number of Conservatives agreeing is small and falling. This was before Labour’s recent strong revival. We hope to explore this further in the 2024 election study, taking in this new cohort of independence-supporting Labour voters.
While the independence question dominated and polarized Scottish politics, the beneficiaries were the SNP and the Conservatives and Labour was disadvantaged. Yet our surveys (and others) have shown that many voters, when pressed, remain in the middle ground and that even many supporters of Scottish sovereignty accept a continuing role for UK (and European) institutions. Labour is the party best placed to benefit from this but it will not reap the rewards for being in this position if it simply parks the issue and declares it dead.
Yet there is little evidence of Labour taking a new line of Scotland. On the contrary, it seems in this respect also to be reverting to past behaviour. There is an assumption that having a Labour Government will itself assuage Scottish grievances or at least that it is the UK Government that will resolve the problems of Scotland. There will likely be an end to the excesses of ‘muscular unionism’ and interfering in devolved competences. The Scottish Government will be treated with greater respect. On the other hand, there are no proposals on devolution and only vague language about strengthening the Sewel Convention (under which the UK Parliament ‘normally’ only legislates on devolved matters with the consent of the Scottish Parliament) through a memorandum of understanding. Labour’s attention, in the meantime, has turned to the English regions and the need to keep the ‘red Wall’ seats which returned to it in 2024 and will expect some return. In Whitehall and Westminster, while Scotland will have more representation in the governing party than before, it is not at the centre of political attention.
Parties will only win by addressing both the left-right and the constitutional dimensions. The Conservatives have failed on both, losing half their vote and surviving only where they represented the unionist alternative to the SNP. The SNP is no longer able to play on both at the same time in spite of its efforts during the election campaign to portray itself as slightly to the left of Labour. Labour does so only with difficulty and risks being outflanked on both dimensions if the Labour Government really sticks to its promised fiscal discipline and does nothing on the constitution. In spite of the massive shift in votes, the SNP are only five points behind Labour, which gives them a chance to recovery by the Scottish elections of 2026. All remains to play for.
Michael Keating is Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of Aberdeen and Honorary Professor at the University of Edinburgh and was the founding director of the Centre on Constitutional Change.