This last week in Scottish politics has been a bit like a binge on Netflix: lots of cliff-hangers one after the other. First, an inquiry said Nicola Sturgeon was not guilty. Then another inquiry said she was guilty after all. Then the First Minister faced a vote of no-confidence. Then a former first minister launched a new party, and two MPs defected to it. Who’s writing this stuff? Jed Mercurio?

As for the look of the whole thing, it wasn’t good for either of the two main players. Alex Salmond, dressed in Palpatine black and apparently addressing us from a secret underground location, said his aim was an independence “super-majority”. But it was all a bit downbeat really, a bit melancholic. It also didn’t help that there were technical issues at the launch and the names of people who’ve signed up for Alba events were exposed for all to see. Even worse, the names included people quite high-up in the SNP. Awkward.

Nicola Sturgeon, on the other hand, seemed to be in a better position. The result of the Hamilton inquiry was a considerable boost; then there were all the election announcements about money for this and money for that, including free laptops for every pupil in Scotland. Even the pictures of Ms Sturgeon being door-stepped at home didn’t seem so bad: somehow, surprised on the steps of her detached new-build with off-street parking, she managed to look more like a Postcode Lottery winner than a First Minister in trouble. The thing is: she handles crises well; she can cope and her ability to cope means the damage can be limited.

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And then: the Alba announcement. The new party raised immediate doubts over the chances of an SNP majority, but it also raises questions over how it might affect the unionist cause, and it could go several ways. Some voters may feel more inclined to vote SNP now the “poison” of the Salmond stushie has been redirected elsewhere. Some may feel less inclined because of the constant reminder of the divisions. And some may think that Sturgeon telling us that Salmond “makes big claims which often don't stand up to scrutiny" is a bit rich coming from someone who stood next to him in 2014 while he made big claims that didn’t stand up to scrutiny.

We have no way of knowing for sure how the voters are going to answer these questions in their own minds, but I do think a look at the opinion polls over the last few weeks might be helpful. YouGov and Panelbase, for example, have shown that there’s around 13-17 per cent of voters who backed the SNP in 2019 who don’t believe Ms Sturgeon has been telling the truth over the Salmond affair. Might some of these voters be open to defecting to Alba? We’re not talking big numbers here, but then we don’t need massive numbers to tip the balance away from the SNP.

The other question is what voters who are still broadly supportive of the SNP will do. There is a fierce campaign out there to encourage nationalists to give both votes to the party, based on the just-in-case scenario that they need top-ups from the list, and I suspect the majority of 2019 SNP voters will heed the call. Polls by Savanta ComRes show 54% of voters who backed the SNP in 2019 say the Salmond affair hasn’t made much difference to their views, and 38% say they now trust the First Minister more as a result of it. These are surely the kind of voters who will do #bothvotesSNP.

Where the Alba party may be on more fertile ground is with nationalists who already buy into the idea of a super-majority for independence but have been lending their votes to the Greens. The chances are quite a number of these voters will switch over from Patrick Harvie to Alex Salmond, but there are questions here too. Might those, like Sturgeon herself, who think there are questions about the appropriateness of Salmond’s return to public office, stick with the Greens? And what will those who feel the SNP has become too “woke” over issues such as trans rights decide to do?

All of this will be answered in May, with only small movements needed to change the fates of the parties, and possibly the country. But here’s where it gets really interesting for unionists because the polls also indicate a shift that probably started last year and may continue until May and beyond, to the benefit of unionism. What they show is that support for independence, which has become more or less synonymous with support for the SNP, was falling well before the widespread coverage of the Salmond inquiry. Put another way: things were already looking bad for Yes before Alex Salmond even gave his evidence.

It is this trend, combined with the possible outcome of the launch of the Alba Party, that offers some grounds for optimism for unionists. For a start, the Scottish Government’s handling of coronavirus may not be giving them the boost it did a few months ago, particularly when Scottish vaccinations began to fall behind. Those high results for Yes we had a few months ago were also right in the middle of the pandemic when Nicola Sturgeon seemed to be handling it well. But now there’s an election coming and there’s nothing like an election – or, in years to come, another referendum – to concentrate minds and make people think: what do I really want?

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However, the possible long-term outcome of the Alba launch could also end up serving the unionist cause. First, Nicola Sturgeon may not get the outright SNP majority that would undoubtedly make it easier to demand a referendum. But even if the SNP and Alba together do achieve Mr Salmond’s “super-majority”, what then? How would a majority led by Sturgeon and Salmond work? How would the First Minister sell it as a mandate when her bitterest enemy was now her bitterest ally?

What seems likely is that the super-majority outcome – dreamed of by Salmond and dreaded by Sturgeon – could make it harder for the First Minister to come up with a coherent and convincing narrative, and to move on from the travails of the last few weeks. And here’s the bigger point, and the one that should give unionists some comfort at least: if the campaign for another referendum is riven by divisions and fighting, the UK Government might find it easier to say no to it.

 

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