The SNP has spent a lot of time and energy in recent years telling voters in Scotland there’s no difference between the Labour and Conservative parties. Arrant nonsense, of course, but there’s a market for that sort of thing among the nationalists’ more excitable supporters, many of whom happily buy into the idea of Labour as ‘red Tories’.
There is, however, an inconsistency to the SNP’s line of attack. Each time a General Election rumbles into view, the nationalists may be depended upon to recognise differences between its Unionist opponents. Generally, this manifests itself as talk about which party it would be willing to support in the event the election resulted in a hung parliament.
The SNP is consistent on this: there could never be a deal with the Tories (the SNP pretends it didn’t depend on an informal arrangement with the Conservatives to govern as a minority administration in the Scottish Parliament between 2007-2011) but the party would be amenable to an agreement to put Labour in power.
A key SNP argument is that voting for them is the only way to rid Scotland of Tory influence
The price for this theoretical support has, in general elections since 2015, been the right to hold a second independence referendum.
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