Andy Maciver: One unionist swallow doesn’t make a summer

The unionists have long been in pursuit of some happiness, and it is therefore perfectly reasonable that they might engage in some light celebration. It is not unwarranted.

There is little doubt that the SNP – the most proficient electoral machine in the UK for the last 15 years – is in the midst of a major wobble. The most obvious exhibit is the twin inquiries into the Alex Salmond debacle; the Parliamentary one, which reports this morning, and more importantly from First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s perspective, that by independent QC James Hamilton which reported yesterday.

READ MORE ANDY MACIVER: Why Rangers fans like me despair of our club

However there is more. There are policy schisms about the independence strategy and, perhaps even more fracturingly, the transgender rights debate, along with a series of public scandals. The SNP used to make a living out of selling the narrative of Scottish exceptionalism, implying that such things only happened to Tories at Westminster. No more.

However for unionists, and for Tories in particular, one swallow doesn’t make a summer. Indeed, I’d urge them not only to proceed with caution, but to glean the right messages from the polling data they see, rather than simply grabbing the ones most convenient to the arguments they want to make.

I have little doubt that the upturn in unionist fortunes, which more often than not has been accompanied by an uptick in Scottish Tory voting intentions, is in part down to the negative attention around the First Minister and her party.

However the polling data tells us, quite clearly, that although the Holyrood committee inquiry is of enormous interest to almost all voters, its politicisation means it is a motivator to a rather smaller subset of the population.

More importantly, yesterday’s exoneration by Mr Hamilton is likely to carry a far heavier and more enduring weight with persuadable voters, with its impartiality from the political process.

Former First Minister Alex Salmond

Unionists would also do well to remember that the SNP is in the eye of the storm, right now, and yet still amasses around 50% of the vote in most polls, and remains in with a fighting chance of a majority government in a system rigged against it.

Rather curiously, the Tories are actually selling themselves short. Because, it seems clear to me, that at least as much of the polling shift is down to a more positive sentiment towards them rather than a negative sentiment towards their opponents.

UK-wide polling is currently rosy for Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is now regularly skelping his opposite number Sir Keir Starmer in head-to-head polls, with a commensurate healthy lead for his party. This is being reflected not just in England but across the UK.

Why might this be? Let us think; might it be because right now we are living through the covid vaccine rollout, which is simultaneously the best advert for unionism in the history of devolution, and the best argument so far for Brexit?

In Scotland, the Tories are in urgent need of both – a key benefit of the UK and a key benefit of Brexit – and yet when presented with one of the sort that they will never see again, they seem more comfortable focussing on the negatives of nationalism rather than the benefits of the union.

This strategy is proving to be red meat to a growing group of young-ish thinkers in London, who are seeking to exert their influence on Downing Street’s approach towards the future of the UK. These enthusiastic chaps are self-styled ‘devo-sceptics’, whose ultimate aim is to reverse devolution and return the UK to a unitary state model.

I understand the source of their angst. The Scottish Parliament has, largely, not delivered spectacular results for Scots. There are precious few areas, and most of them niche, where someone of an independent mind like me can fairly say Holyrood has transformed our lives.

Nonetheless, the fault of that does not lie with the institution of devolution. There is no clamour, in, say, Canada or Australia, for the closure of provincial legislatures as a result of bad performance. They don’t close the business; they change the management.

And with an excruciatingly small subset of the Scottish population in favour of the closure of the Scottish Parliament, it is critical for the future of Scotland’s Tories that their leader, Douglas Ross, gets a grip on this hysterical unionist underbelly in London and places his hand over their collective mouths. They are people who, in their exuberant but ultimately ill-informed unionism, will in fact be the midwives of independence.

Instead, I’d urge Mr Ross to take the right messages being given to him by the opinion polls. Firstly, he should diagnose the problem of the last decade not as the nationalists doing well (that is the symptom), but as the Scottish people losing their faith in the UK.

That has always been the problem, and the transient drama currently swirling around the SNP will do nothing to reverse that long-term drift.

READ MORE ANDY MACIVER: I simply cannot equate the country the Sussexes describe to the country in which I live

He should restore faith by focussing on the vaccine rollout, right now, and perhaps also comparing England’s Covid unlocking with Scotland’s. And more broadly, by talking about the little ripples of unionist hope that the UK is creating through initiatives such as the levelling-up agenda and direct financial intervention in Scotland – without question the smartest political move the Scotland Office has made in 20 years.

If the Scottish Tories want to encourage lasting movement from Yes to No, rather than simply a knee-jerk reaction to current events, they need to stop selling the negatives of nationalism, and start selling the positives of unionism in this irreversible age of devolution.

Andy Maciver is Director of Message Matters