What’s the point of the SNP?

Well, golly, Nicola Sturgeon, leader of the SNP and First Minister of Scotland, says this general election has nothing to do with the arguments for or against Scottish independence.  In one sense, this is correct in as much as independence is not the question on the ballot. But in another, deeper, more genuine sense, everyone knows Sturgeon is pulling your leg here. The election is a proxy referendum on the question of whether there should, at some point in the next couple of years, be another independence referendum. Everyone in Scotland, including SNP supporters, knows this.

Even so, as the Tories have noted, this is a familiar SNP argument. In 2011, Alex Salmond observed that a vote for the SNP was not necessarily a vote for independence: ‘People will have all sorts of reasons for voting for you or against you but we wouldn’t decide a constitutional issue on the basis of an election victory.’