Scottish election: Now we know the SNP's strategy. It won’t work

Here's what he said: the election in Scotland will be a straight fight between the SNP and the Tories because most seats across Scotland are a straight fight between the SNP and the Tories. The election, he said, is an opportunity to ensure Scotland is Tory-free but there’s only one way to achieve that, which is to vote SNP. He also said that if we are to truly make Scotland Tory-free, we need to reject not just Tory politicians, but Tory policies, ideas and values “whether they’re delivered by someone in a blue rosette or a red one”. I make that 91 words in total so not far off.

But let’s look at what the First Minister is trying to do here and the context that’s causing it. There’s been a steady decline in support for the SNP. Mr Yousaf is nowhere near as popular as Nicola Sturgeon was. He’s been left with a whole lot of political trouble fly-tipped on his driveway (the police probe, the record in government, the campervan, vroom-vroom). And most importantly Scottish Labour is resurgent and is closing the gap with the SNP and, in some polls, taking the lead. That’s the context.

Mr Yousaf’s response, seen in the speech, is interesting. Logically, you’d think that, with Labour snapping at their heels, the SNP would concentrate most of the fire on them. But the idea that Labour is resurgent and the choice in Scotland is between Labour and the SNP doesn’t suit the nationalists and for good reason: the softest part of their support is prone to defection not to the Tories but to Labour. In other words, the SNP want to play down Labour’s chances to prevent nationalists being tempted to vote for them.

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This is why Mr Yousaf said what he said in his speech. In recent elections, Scottish Labour pretty much wasn’t in the race because the threat of another referendum divided the electorate along constitutional lines and the Conservatives were seen as the best bet for voters focused on defeating the SNP: SNP versus Tory, nationalist versus unionist. It meant left-leaning Scottish voters, to whom the idea of voting Tory remains anathema, pretty much stayed with the SNP.

Mr Yousaf would very much like this year’s election to be fought the same way so he’s pretending it will be. The problem is it’s not true, leaving an obvious dissonance between what Mr Yousaf is saying (“straight fight between SNP and the Tories”) and what is happening (straight fight between SNP and Labour). In particular, Mr Yousaf’s claim that most seats are a fight between the SNP and the Tories isn’t supported by the evidence.

Check out how Scotland’s constituencies broke down at the last general election and you’ll see what I mean. In 24 of them, the SNP and the Tories were indeed in first and second place but that’s not as many as the seats in which it was the SNP and Labour who were in first and second – there are 29 seats in which that was the case. So more seats are Labour v SNP than Tories v SNP.

The idea of a straight fight between the Tories and the SNP is also undermined by what’s happened in recent months: the Tory vote has fallen down a hole and Scottish voters have swung to Labour, in the case of the Rutherglen by-election by over 20%. What this means is that even in seats where the Tories and the SNP were in first and second place, there is every chance Labour could come from third to win, provided they can repeat the Rutherglen swing. It’s another reason why the real fight is between the SNP and Labour, not the SNP and the Tories.

The strategy for the election Mr Yousaf was trying out in Saturday’s speech is that the SNP will distract voters from this reality, pretend the real fight is with the Tories and keep voters in the SNP fold. And maybe it will work a bit (the T word still wields great negative power for many Scots). But most voters can see that the Tories are nowhere in the election, which means they’ll mull over the real choice: SNP or Labour. They’ll also see how odd it is that the First Minister, with practised wrath, is concentrating on a fight that doesn’t exist anymore in any real electoral sense. What I’m saying is the SNP strategy will not work.

You can see the extent to which the party is clinging to the idea regardless in how Mr Yousaf chose to attack Labour in his speech. Let me remind you: “we need to reject not just Tory politicians, but Tory policies, Tory ideas and Tory values and that’s whether they’re delivered by someone in a blue rosette or a red one.” In other words, the SNP is telling us that even if we reject the idea that the election is a straight fight between the SNP and the Tories and are thinking about voting Labour – don’t do it because Labour are Tories too! It’s an echo, from long ago, of the ‘redtory’ hashtag that no one believed (Corbyn a Tory? Dear God).

Looked at in one way, I have some sympathy for the SNP behaving like this (but only some). They cannot really attack Labour in any effective way because, despite their chuntering about secret Tories, Labour’s broadly centrist policies are similar to the broadly centrist policies of the SNP. Anas Sarwar is also coming across well as a reasonable, thoughtful, non-extreme kind of guy, so much so that, according to one recent poll, he’s now overtaken Mr Yousaf as the public’s preferred choice for first minister.

This is significant, and a big conundrum for the SNP, hence the stuff in Mr Yousaf’s speech about the real fight being with the Tories. But we all know there isn’t really a fight with the Tories this time: they’re on the way out, so long, farewell, auf weidersehen, goodbye, which leaves the SNP with only three options in a year that’s starting to look like 1997. Number one: attack an enemy that’s inevitably going to lose (the Tories). Number two: attack an enemy that’s inevitably going to win (Labour). Or number three (and the most likely by far): wait things out and hope for better times.