I’m fonder of wacky political hypotheticals than the next fellow but even I draw the line at Sunder Katwala’s assertion that some people can see a path towards a Labour-SNP coalition in Edinburgh. This is splendidly creative but also, alas, untethered to reality.
The party leaders – apart from the Green’s Patrick Harvie who has been excluded, perhaps unfairly – gather for their first debate tonight. You can, my friends, watch the drama here. You will notice that Labour-SNP relations are chilly. There is not the slightest reason to suppose that either party would have any interest in governing in partnership with the other. Who is going to tell Iain Gray that despite being, perhaps, the larger party Labour will have to settle for the Deputy First Minister’s position? Then again, neither Alex Salmond nor Nicola Sturgeon will serve under Mr Gray.
So the idea is a nonsense, not least since it’s akin to a Tory-Labour coalition at Westminster. What would be the point of subsequent elections? True, Labour have been pinching SNP policies recently and true too that the election will be a dispiriting auction to decide which party can best “protect” poor wee Caledonia from the ravages of the Camerlegg Ministry in London.
Sunder says that the differences between Labour and the SNP amount to the narcissism of small differences and, aside from the constitutional question (which is parked anyway) there is, according to their manifestos, something to that. But while the idea of independence drives some SNP voters many other nationalist votes are cast, at Holyrood elections anyway, to thwart Labour, not the irrelevant Tories or the hapless Lib Dems. The SNP is a catch-all party and draws some support from people who, were they in England, would most probably support the Conservatives. The old Labour jibe about “Tartan Tories” had some modest truth to it.
This election, like the 2007 ballot, offers a choice between Labour and non-Labour. The SNP, by definition, lead the non-Labour camp. The two cannot possibly come to any arrangement after the election that doesn’t mock the idea of the election or fail to betray their supporters. Indeed, it’s hard to think of anything that could do more to assist the long-dreamt-of-but-still-unsighted Tory revival in Scotland than a deal between the SNP and Labour. That’s far from the most important factor preventing this from happening but it’s one of many reasons why it can’t and won’t happen.
As I say, entertaining hypotheticals are fine and dandy but this one is off the wall and impossible and never going to happen. Nor, for many good reasons, should it.
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