The SNP’s rise to power at Holyrood was predicated upon two useful qualities. First, the party has successfully contrived to appeal to different audiences without the contradictions in their doing so becoming either too blatantly apparent or too crippling. The SNP have targetted erstwhile Labour supporters in western Scotland at the same time as they have consolidated their power-base in distinctly non-socialist Aberdeenshire and Perthshire. This has been a good trick, played well.
Secondly, of course, they were not the Scottish Labour party.
Some 90% of SNP supporters profess themselves happy with Alex Salmond’s leadership. In one sense this is unsurprising. He has led them to within sight of the promised land. And, yet, such an approval rating – as measured by the most recent MORI poll – remains startling. Not least because it is increasingly evident that Mr Salmond and his finance minister John Swinney are on the right-wing of the nationalist movement.
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