Wrecking Scotland #1: how the creed of nationalism represents the original UK populist insurgency
Scottish nationalism represents the original British populist insurgency, insisting on a divisive and nonsensical 'us' versus 'them' paradigm.
Abstract:
This is the first part of a series of essays in which I will - when adding them all eventually together - provide a book length piece of work. I aim to forensically over a sustained period of time produce comprehensive evidence that the ruling SNP is a populist movement. One which has cynically sought to exploit opportunities of the moment to further a mission of separation, but worse they demonstrate many of the key calling cards of the contemporary populist. In many respects the SNP and the wider lower case ‘n’ nationalist movement represents the first successful populist insurgency in the United Kingdom in the aftermath of the Iraq war and the failures of the unipolar moment.
Sharing with Nigel Farage and the politics of Brexit concepts of sovereignty antithetical to Europeanism, both Brexiteers & SNP engage in ‘us’ versus ‘them’ politics. Farage’s ‘us’ was a curiously Anglo-centric conceptualisation being pitted against a ‘them’ defined by Brussels. Whereas for the SNP, the ‘virtuous people’ are the Scottish revelling in an imaginary exceptionalism, oppressed by a ‘them’ as defined by the ‘distant Westminster elite’ [read English]
At their core both represent crude majoritarianism, rejecting any Europeanist understanding of pulling and sharing sovereignty above the national level. However, underpinning Scottish nationalism more generally is an Anglophobic Scottish nationalist literary tradition which ought to repulse the thinking left of centre mind.
17 years of Scottish nationalist populism has left Scottish cultural, civic and economic life gravely weakened. The SNP and the wider nationalist movement they unleashed upon Scotland has wrecked our nation.
The Scottish political left can only be salvaged by a return to sense and a rejection of the creed of Scottish nationalism. Only by rediscovering the primacy of class-based solidarities and rejecting the divisiveness of national identity can our Scottish political and cultural left renew itself. Ultimately this can only be accomplished by a return home to Scottish Labour and the narratives of British socialism on the Scottish political left.
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i] Introduction
What is it about the Scottish National Party (SNP), both as a force in Scottish politics and as a government which evokes strong feelings of antipathy against it by opponents? I am occasionally startled by the profundity of my rejectionism of it. Examining myself in the mirror, it would not be a lie to suggest I am emotionally repulsed by the SNP. Realising that this is far from a healthy feeling, nor a particularly helpful one, I set out to examine ‘why?’ I knew how I felt, but I needed to understand and articulate concisely why I felt it.
As a Scottish Labour Party member, I considered the fault dear Brutus might not in the stars but in myself. Was it that I resented how the SNP had so successfully challenged my own political tribe on the left since 2007? No, that was not it. Not least since it would be a mistake to define the SNP as a ‘leftwing party’.
To do so implies they have an underpinning philosophy or ideological concept of governance upon which their politics is constructed. They do not, they are merely a rag-tag conglomeration of radically diverse political values united temporarily in a struggle against the British union.
There is no edifice, that is to say no complex systems of political beliefs, which defines the SNP. It is more accurate to define it more as a movement than a political party. A movement which retains the presence of a social reactionary Kate Forbes, who decries sex outside marriage, frowns on abortions and thinks gay people like myself really ought not be in the marrying business1.
Yet at the same time, it’s the political home to Nicola Sturgeon, who insists all transwomen are women. Naturally even the dimmest amongst us can readily appreciate the incongruity made manifest.
In any ordinary political party, united by a common philosophical thread, such a state of incompatibility would not be sustainable. There are broad political tents, then there is a loose confederation of mutually incompatible positions. The SNP is home to the socially conservative who believes marital equality is immoral and also home to the most fervent LGBTQ+ postmodernist identity politics peddler. It is a movement which has proved contented to wax lyrical under Alex Salmond about a low tax, deregulated ‘Celtic tiger economy’2 but later pivot to peddling the diametrically opposing view under Humza Yousaf’s ‘wellbeing economy’ shtick.
Some of us are old enough to recall the SNP in 2007 insisted their vision was one which “emphasised the opportunities for cutting corporation tax, to emulate Ireland's Celtic Tiger”3 Yet fast forward to 2023 and the same government was dismissing the need for economies of scale and decrying GDP as an “anachronism”4 Such inconsistency is only possible in a movement with no core guiding philosophical architecture. Beyond independence they have nothing of principle. To aid their separationist movement, they will pledge and support anything. In short, primitively populist.
Whether it’s social, cultural or economic outlooks, there is no such thing as an ‘SNP philosophy’ underpinning matters. Merely a conglomeration of differing ideologies, largely antithetical to each other, temporarily united in pursuit of a Scottish nationalist separatism. A separatism I contend is and always has been inherently populist by nature. A product of ‘us’ (the virtuous people) pitied against ‘them’ (the wicked, distant elite), all with an added Anglophobic flair for extra measure.
In short, my objection to the SNP is clearly not because it is a social democratic challenger to my own Scottish Labour tradition. How could it be? One simply cannot describe the SNP in terms of being ‘left’ or ‘right’, it is both of these things. It is also none of these things. A strange movement which is all and nothing in equal measure, united only be its separation mission.
And this is where I found the answer I sought. The SNP are so repulsive to my sense of politics specifically because they aren’t a political party driven by a guiding philosophical mission. There is no value system which colours their vision for policy. Scottish Labour’s socially democratic philosophy, a product of the extensive narratives of British socialism, enables my own party to construct meaningful and consistent policies aimed at the common good. The SNP have no prism through which they can examine policies more generally, except via the unhelpfully populist prism of ‘separation’. They are – simply put – the first of the populist movements which sprouted up in UK politics in the years following the Iraq war and wider western failures of the unipolar moment.
Populism itself has a definition it would be prudent to lay out at this point. Let’s begin with dispelling some intellectual fallacies. Populism isn’t the same thing as popular policy, nor is it a synonym for democracy. Populism is the manufacturing of a crude binary: ‘us’ vs ‘them’. Specifically, ‘us’ representing the ‘pure’ and ‘virtuous’ people pitied against ‘them’, a ‘corrupt’ and ‘degenerate’ elite.
It becomes possible to understand the SNP through the prism of this conceptualisation. For the Nationalists they speak of a ‘pure’ people suppressed by a distant elite. With a depressing regularity they allege Scots are somehow victims of a corrupt London elite. After 17 years of SNP misrule in Scotland we can readily witness the phenomena of populism playing out. They speak of Scottish exceptionalism, of us all being ‘Jock Tamsin’s Bairns’, as if being born Scottish renders one inherently more egalitarian than an Englishman.
In this rhetoric – presenting itself as somehow socially progressive and leftist – the SNP push the notion of a homogenous and ‘pure’ people. It’s nativism tooth and claw and one can easily see the threads which connect the modern SNP to the literati forbears such as Hugh MacDiarmid.
MacDiarmid himself was an unabashed Anglophobe (self-admitted), who idolised fascist and communist leaders. Among Hugh MacDiarmid’s papers discovered in the National Library of Scotland was some notes and poems unpublished, written during the early years of World War 2. One poem included the lines, ‘The leprous swine in London town/ And their Anglo-Scots accomplices/ Are, as they have always been/ Scotland’s only enemies’. In a note he looked forward to the destruction of London — ‘earth’s greatest stumbling block and rock of offence’5.
As London was enduring the blitz, Hitler and Mussolini’s armies marched across the face of Europe, a founding member of the precursor of the modern Scottish National Party celebrated. One should hardly be surprised, given MacDiarmid earlier in the 1930s believed Mussolini and his fascist party represented ‘the real will that bides its time’; in short, the ‘enlightened dictator’.
This is the record of the man who was a founding member of the National Party of Scotland, forerunner to the modern Scottish National Party. Today’s SNP insist on claiming being born in Scotland renders us more egalitarian than ‘Westminster’. It’s easy to see the modern bogey-man of contemporary SNP rhetoric – ‘Westminster’ and ‘the Tories’ – as an evolution on MacDiarmid’s vile screeds about ‘the leprous swine in London town’. This is the populism of the SNP, ‘us’ versus ‘them’. Scotland against a corrupt, distant London elite.
Since 2007 under the aegis of the SNP, Scottish nationalism (lower case ‘n’) has truly flourished and sprung to the fore of our political and cultural discourse. Pity then that none of it is the stuff of liberal democracy or leftist politics. Far from it, it’s a nativist populism which should curdle the blood. Take for example Alex Salmond’s (former SNP leader and First Minister) good friend Gareth Wardell (aka ‘Grouse Beater’). His essays, publications, interviews and social media activism has inculcated into the mainstream of Scottish society rhetoric equidistant to MacDiarmid’s vile screeds.
By way of example, Oct 9 2022 saw Grouse Beater touting sales of a collection of his essays on X (formerly known as Twitter) saying
‘Want to think like a Scot though you're not a Scot?
Follow Grouse Beater News - stay ahead of House Jocks, Vichy adherents, Union trolls and Alister Jack’6
Whether it is Hugh MacDiarmid, Tom Nairn, James Kelman, or contemporary writers such as Gareth Wardell (Grouse Beater), the othering of political adversaries and demonisation of ‘London’/ ‘Westminster’ (i.e. England) is a central and recurring feature of this ‘civic nationalism’ Scotland has been blighted by since the 2007 rise of the SNP.
To the minds of the nationalist literati of Scotland, anyone opposing separation are ‘Vichyites’, collaborators with that reviled distant Westminster elite. Again, I insist that we see this for what it manifestly obviously is, populism.
Their insistence that ‘the people’ (they mean pro-independence people) are facing off in a twilight struggle against a distant English elite insisting on oppressing ‘us’, can even be seen in the work of Alistair Gray.
Although lauded as being among Scotland’s greatest literati, Mr Gray depressingly also adheres to a similar theme as MacDiarmid, Nairn, Kelman and Wardell. In his 2012 contribution to ‘Unstated: Writers on Scottish Independence’ he wrote the infamous ‘Settlers and Colonists’ essay.
In his piece Gray bemoans the ‘colonists’ from down south who arrive in Scotland to advance their careers. He is explicit, insisting on drawing a parallel between non-Scots working in senior arts roles and the historic British empire colonial administration. He wrote “But for roughly two centuries most subjects of the British empire were ruled by native Britons employed directly by the London government. They were the colonists, not settlers. They regarded marriage between themselves and the local natives as almost unthinkable, calling it going native”7
Alistair Gray decries senior arts administrators who arrive in Scotland (to work in their field of expertise) but are somehow insufficiently Scotland-committed. In one sentence he writes, “With Scottish Arts Council help the National Theatre of Scotland was founded in 2005, with its main office in Glasgow. Vicky Featherstone, its first artistic director, may be leaving in 2013 for work nearer London. That is my only reason for thinking her a colonist”8
To the nationalist populist imaginings of Gray, Vicky Featherstone should be seen no differently than some colonial administrator sent to the colonies by the London elite to govern the fringes of Pax Britannica. How dare an English woman work as founding artistic director of Scotland’s National Theatre if she was insufficiently prepared to spend the rest of her working life to that one job!
Apparently to the minds of the nationalist literati, Ms Featherstone and people like her are not only guilty of not being Scottish, but stand accused of the crime of being insufficiently ready to fully embrace ‘Scottishness’. Thus, they are branded colonists, who exist to serve that distant elite in ‘London’. (Unlike the ‘settlers’, those good non-Scots who are staying longer term, of whom Gray apparently approves)
Just as Scottish nationalism relishes in the populist creed of ‘us’ virtuous people versus ‘them’ the corrupt distant (often somehow foreign) elite; it shares other traits with the populists of our moment. Further evidence of populism being the inherent character of Scottish nationalism can be found in examining concepts of sovereignty.
Salmond and Sturgeon with great political impact succeeded in mobilising a popular will against the notion of pulling and sharing the risks and rewards of unionism. And the populist playbook is here for all to see and admit. Their agenda has mimicked Farage and Brexit.
Farage decried the European Union as a corrupt distant elite against ‘us’ the ‘people’. He insisted that we should dismiss the experts and ‘take back control’. His Brexit appealed to a traditionalist sense of sovereignty where it should be horded within the confines of a border rather than pulled and shared supranationally.
I insist to you all that this is the mirror image in rhetoric and concept to the SNP. They substitute Brussels for London, insisting it is a corrupt distant elite. They insist that exceptionalist Scotland should ‘take back control’ and be masters of our own fates. It is laughable that more people fail to spot the obvious comradeship between a Brexiteer concept of what sovereignty means and the peddlers of Scottish separationism.
It is with a weary sigh that I observed Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP clutch their pearls after Brexit took place. ‘Scotland dragged out of the European Union against our will’ she chuntered endlessly on the media airwaves. Apparently, she did not realise (or hoped she had sufficiently gaslit us into not spotting) the curious similarity of her idea of what ‘sovereignty’ actually meant. A Brexiteer would tell you we needed independence from Brussels because it diluted our sovereignty. Nigel Farage would say you can only preserve your sovereignty by hording it inside the borders of your demos. This is precisely what Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP believe too. They also reject the modern Europeanist ideal of sovereignty as being enhanced when pulled and shared above the national unit. Sturgeon – as with Farage – detests the very notion that we might pull and share our sovereignty above the Scottish national unit.
London is to Sturgeon’s concept of sovereignty what Brussels represented to Nigel Farage. Both are populists, both share a traditionalist conceptualisation of what sovereignty means in the 21st century. Neither of them gets to claim to be a good European, although Ms Sturgeon does enjoy cos-playing as one.
Yet we would be foolish to ignore yet further tell-tale signs of the populist playbook at work. Not only does the populist insist on a simplistic ‘us’ versus ‘them’, and relishes in traditionalist concepts of sovereignty; it also appeals to crude majoritarianism.
How is one to view the SNP’s core mission statement in terms other than the crudely majoritarian? To the likes of the Scottish Nationalist leadership, separation is an inherently majoritarian prospectus. A mandate for separation for them is clearly a 50 per cent +1 idea. A tyranny of the majority if ever I saw one.
If one draws the necessary distinction between popular policies and populism, we can dispel any notion that the SNP are anything other than populists pursuing a populist project. I for one support wider civic engagement in our democracy, a widening of the electoral franchise and the utilisation of digital technologies to drive up engagement. All of these things can improve our democracy and fix what ills it.
Scottish Labour exists to challenge vested interests and overthrow the tyranny of poverty. But we must do the right things for the right reasons and by the right means. One is reminded of how the SNP reduced discussion of how to renew our democracy to a binary of separation versus a misrepresented ‘status quo’ (conveniently ignoring any other choices).
In their (rarely read) ‘Renewing Democracy through Independence’ (July 14th publication) they peddled in misrepresentations about the nature of the UK (insisting it’s a unitary state alone in isolation, which it is not). They also bleated endlessly about the ‘unlimited sovereignty of Westminster’ (a curiosity of a worldview which most serious academics reject, but is something of a fetishism for Brexiteers and Scottish separatists alike). At no point did they seriously explore how to implement popular policies to improve devolution, fix the existing constitutional arrangements. No, instead they resorted to intellectual distortions and misrepresentations – all to peddle the majoritarian binary idea of separation.
It's clearly the stuff of the cynical populist mind. And I for one am repulsed by it.
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ii] Deconstructing the nationalist ‘us’ from the imagined ‘them’
The Scottish nationalist movement’s populist ‘us’ versus ‘them’ binary distinction is rooted upon an insistence of Scottish difference. After all, the entire ‘national question’ which ‘bides its time’ is predicated on the claim of difference. A difference rooted in a Scottishness which is distinctive and divergent from the cultural mores of that distant London elite.
A belief that the cultural more – that is to say the norm or rule that guides standards of morality – of the British state is fundamentally at odds with Scottish voters is an old nationalist idea. Noted nationalist writers such as Tom Nairn in ‘The Break-up of Britain’ drives illustrates this claim that Scottishness in culture inevitably produces a difference which justifies separation. He holds up an ‘us’ (Scottish) versus ‘them’ (Anglo-British) in distinctively un-civic nationalist rhetorical tones.
Nairn writes in ‘Break-up of Britain’ that the Britain is “a sinking paddle-wheel state”9, and is “an indefensible and inadaptable relic, neither properly archaic nor properly modern”10. Going on he paints a picture of a “long-term irreversible degeneration of the Anglo British State… within the hopeless decaying institutions of a lost imperial state”11.
This false insistence that the ‘them’ of Scottish nationalist populism is really just an English London elite clinging to the vestiges of Empire is a recurring one. Writers such as Tom Nairn made a career out of peddling precisely that trade.
Nairn insists that from the 1960s “once the material circumstances for a new sort of political mobilisation had formed”12 the icons of a Scottish ‘sub-culture’ stood readily on hand to be exploited. In short, nationalists insist “the SNP were able to capitalise on the currency and emotional salience of Scottish difference”13
At the heart then, is the recurring thesis of Scottish difference. A contention that Scotland in union is Scotland denied. Predicated upon the notion Scots – by dint of being Scottish (either by birth or choice) inevitably view the big cultural, social and political issues differently. Yet any deep dive into the available statistical evidence demonstrates this to be a false assumption on the part of nationalists.
Public attitude data and research clearly demonstrates that there is no ‘national question’ to speak of.
In fact, being ‘Scottish’ is an irrelevant factor when analysing the public attitudes of Scottish and English voters. There are no significant divergences of opinion between Scottish and English people on the bigger issues generally to speak of; and where differences do occur these are merely differences of degree. Marginal divergences not, incidentally, driven by Scottishness rendering folk more inclined to egalitarianism or a ‘common good’, but by how Scottish and English voters perceive party alignments with the policy issues.
In short, even where Scottish and English voters do actually somewhat disagree, it’s not particularly significant and entirely unrelated to Scottishness. There is no ‘national question’ silently biding its time.
Scotland in union is not Scotland denied, at least not according to any measurable empirical social attitudes data. That said, I make no comment however on how ‘real’ any perception of Scottish difference is emotionally in the imaginings of their own mind.
British social attitudes data
Unfortunately for Tom Nairn and his compatriots any dive into social attitudes data conducted by psephologists with the British Social Attitudes publication (BSA).
Nairn captures the nationalist insistence that the “salience of Scottish difference” insists upon independence. But, there is no “Scottish difference” which is rooted in Scottishness. I’ll demonstrate this by examining BSA data firstly regarding Scottish and English perceptions of fairness, inequalities (i.e. egalitarianism), then focus on the BSA data regarding immigration attitudes between Scotland and England.
So, let’s focus specifically on social attitudes of Scottish and English people regarding inequalities and fairness; and the results are telling.
According to the BSA’s 37th edition, it found that while people living in Scotland do tend to be more democratically minded, nevertheless “these dissimilarities primarily reflect differences in party political affiliation rather than whether someone lives in either England or Scotland.”14
At the heart of the 2014 independence referendum push was the idea that Scotland could create a fairer society, if only it were freed from the ‘other’ (England/London/Westminster). The idea that Scots could form a “better form of social democracy”15 was always predicated on the two central themes, firstly that Scotland wanted to embark on a more radical program tackling inequalities and secondly, it couldn’t be achieved because of England. This, again, is what Nairn and others consistently reiterate when they speak of the “salience of Scottish difference”.
But if we examine the BSA’s 37th edition findings we discover this nationalist creed of ‘us’ virtuous progressive Scots versus ‘them’ regressive English is total rubbish.
Table 1 from the BSA 37th edition demonstrates a number of things. Not least Scotland and England are not at loggerheads over perceived fairness/unfairness in the British state. To quote the BSA directly,
“the majority of people in both England and Scotland view Britain’s income distribution as either “unfair” or “very unfair” suggests that the two countries are not completely at odds”16
If we are to be fair, there are indeed some differences which can be found. For example Scotland is more likely than England to view “somewhat wrong” or “very wrong” for those with higher incomes to be able to buy better health care; see table 2 below17
However, this difference is not a result of Scottishness, merely a difference of perception of parties alignment with policy and differing party political loyalties.
“Past research, including analysis of BSA data, has shown that people in Scotland tend to be more socially democratic in outlook than people in England. Yet these differences tend to be subtle, rather than indicative of fundamental differences in ideology”18
“However, throughout this chapter we have seen that despite subtle differences, people in England and Scotland show relatively consistent attitudes around how society should look. The overall dissatisfaction with the status quo may therefore suggest a desire for change, not just within Scotland, but across Great Britain as a whole.”19
In short, being born Scottish or growing up inculcated in ‘Scottish culture’ has zero bearing on learning more egalitarian. It’s about parties, alignments and loyalties not Scottishness per se. In fact, Scottish and English people both seem dissatisfied with the UK status quo on fairness and inequalities.
There is zero evidence to legitimise the nationalist ‘us’ vs ‘them’ populism in this data.
But let’s go further. That was merely exploring perceptions of fairness, inequalities and egalitarianism.
What about something more on the nose then, such as immigration?
If we use John Curtice & Ian Montagu’s research paper published in 2017 we discover in the immediate aftermath of the 2014 independence referendum, SNP defenestration of Labour in Scotland (2015) and UK Brexit vote (2016) there was no divergences of opinion on immigration.
In fact, the perceptions are statistically so similar as to be taken as the same. To quote the Sir John Curtice directly
“In Scotland, more people believe immigration is good for the British economy (46%) than believe it is bad (17%). But the same is true In England & Wales, where 47% think immigration is good for the economy and 16% think it is bad
In Scotland, more people think immigration enriches British culture (43%) than undermines it (20%). Again, the picture in England is very similar, with 43% believing immigration has a positive impact upon British culture and 23% believing that it has a negative impact.20
If we ask the question, ‘are liberal attitudes more prevalent in Scotland than England?’ we get an exceptionally clear answer: no.
Figure 1 was taken from National Centre Social Research21 which reveals the most commonly number reported by Scottish and English voters was 5. This means that substantial proportion of the population on both sides of the border reckon that immigration is neither good nor bad for the economy. Furthermore, we can see that more people offered a score of between 6 and 10 than a figure between 0 and 4. This means that rather more people think that on balance immigration is good for the British economy than believe it is bad.
Finally, most critically, “while Scotland would appear on balance to have a relatively positive view of the economic consequences of migration, it is no different in this respect from England & Wales”22
“In short, while Scotland would appear on balance to have a relatively positive view of the economic consequences of migration, it is no different in this respect from England & Wales.”
It’s not a national question at all, it’s about age and educational attainment…
Where differences do exist in social attitudinal data, it’s not a divergence between English and Scottish people regarding migration at all. It’s actually a question of age and educational attainment. And within this context, again, there is no evidence of Scottish and English divergences.
Let’s start with age demographics. It’s well known that older people tend to be more sceptical of immigration than younger people. However. according to the research data it would be a mistake to assume that these differences are more marked or less marked in Scotland as compared to England. Again to reiterate: there is no national question here.
To quote Sir John Curtice directly from the BSA of 2017:
“Older people in Scotland are markedly less likely than their younger counterparts to feel that immigration has had a positive economic impact [see Table 2 below]. While around half of those aged 18–34 (52%) and those aged 35–54 (50%) in Scotland view immigration as good for the economy, just 36% of those aged 55 and over believe this to be the case. The equivalent figures in England & Wales are much the same. Fifty-four per cent of those aged 18–34 and 53% of 35–54 year olds in the rest of Britain are of the opinion that immigration is good for the economy, but just 37% of those aged 55 and over believe that to be the case”23
Turning briefly now to educational attainment and we discover “there is also little evidence that differences of view by educational background are less pronounced in Scotland.”24
Bottom line: those with more educational qualifications are more inclined to view immigration as having a primarily beneficial economic and cultural impact than those with fewer. And at no point does nationality (Scottish vs English) enter into it. A Scottish voter with fewer qualifications is more or less as likely as an English voter with fewer qualifications to view immigration sceptically. Likewise, Scottish and English voters with more qualifications are about as likely to view things more positively.
There. Is. No. National. Question.
So the divergences of opinion on immigration derive from age and educational attainment. Whether you’re a Scottish or English person has zero bearing whatsoever. There is no virtuous Scottish ‘us’ versus an English ‘them’ of nationalist imaginings.
Political differences
I have established that there is no ‘Scottish us’ distinct from an ‘English them’ to speak of regarding social attitudes on fairness, equalities (egalitarianism) or immigration. But there are nevertheless clearly political differences, how we explain that?
This is where things do get interesting.
Sir John Curtice explored the link between national identity and perceptions of the cultural consequences of migration between Scotland and England.
“The more strongly that someone feels English relative to their sense of being British, the more likely they are to believe that immigration has undermined Britain’s culture, and the less likely they are to indicate that immigration has enriched that culture. Meanwhile in Scotland there is again no consistent pattern, with the balance of responses among those who say they are ‘more Scottish than British’ much the same as it is among those who identify as ‘more British than Scottish’.”25
Ah-ha! See, there is a ‘Scottish exceptionalism’ Dean!
Well, actually no. Not true. Let me explain.
The SNP as a political movement has sought to present as ‘civic’ and ‘inclusive’ rhetorically, as more attractive clothing for their repulsive ‘us’ vs ‘them’ populism. The consequence of this has been that the SNP’s promotion of ‘Scottish’ as an inclusive identity appears to have helped it attract a body of support that is relatively positive about immigration. Yet, as the tables 4 & 5 above demonstrate, the SNP has not ensured that those who adhere strongly to a Scottish identity are especially likely to feel positively about immigration.
Bottom line: The relative success of the SNP, with its civic nationalist appeal, means that the link between how people vote and their views about immigration are rather different in Scotland than in England & Wales. But the party’s relative liberalism about immigration does not necessarily accurately reflect the views of Scots as a whole.
Summarising the data
Scottish and English people view migration in consistent ways, even back amid the fulminations on the back on the independence plebiscite, Labour’s General Election 2015 routing and the EU vote’s surprise 2016 victory for leave. Despite all of those electoral upheavals Scottish and English social attitudes on migration remained effectively the same.
Furthermore, discontent over inequalities and fairness in the UK is a British wide phenomenon and the notion of Scottish difference or exceptionalism is disproved. In short, even with this relatively brief dive into social attitudes it becomes easy to disprove the false nationalist populism of a virtuous Scottish ‘us’ being held back by a distant English/British ‘them’. It seems the ‘the real will that bides its time’ among the peddlers of Scottish nationalism is a myopic Anglophobia inspired by a disreputably jingoistic Scottish nationalist literati.
Regarding the political differences specifically the data is a reminder of the dangers of attempting to infer the prevalence of attitudes from the outcome of an election or a referendum. The fact is, where divergences between Scottish and English people emerge regarding - say immigration - this is substantively actually about perception of political parties and how voters think the issues marry up with the parties. It remains, to quote Sir John Curtice again, “[the SNP’s] relative liberalism about immigration does not necessarily accurately reflect the views of Scots as a whole.” Or said a different way, the fact the SNP have polled so well 2015-2019 does not mean we can simply conclude Scottish people view immigration more favourably than English people.
For all the hysterical populist rhetoric of Scotland held back, of Scotland denied, the objective reality is extremely different from the nationalist fever dreams. There is no nationalist ‘us’ versus an English/British/Westminster ‘them’.
Part II will come as soon as I find the time to write it. It’ll begin with
‘iii] Scottish nationalism and the populist cult of personalities’
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MacDonald, Andrew (2023), ‘Abortion rights group blasts SNP hopeful Kate Forbes’, Politico, March 10, https://www.politico.eu/article/abortion-rights-group-snp-leadership-kate-forbes/
Fraser, Douglas (2007), ‘The Purpose: SNP’s economic record at 10 years’, The BBC, May 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-39806656
Ibid, para 11, line 30
Chapman, Maggie (2023), ‘THERE MUST BE MORE TO ECONOMIC STRATEGY THAN GDP’, Scottish Green Party website, March 22, There must be more to economic strategy than GDP - Scottish Greens , https://greens.scot/news/there-must-be-more-to-economic-strategy-than-gdp
Scottish Green Party declaration, ‘A Greener and Fairer Economy - Scottish Greens’, https://greens.scot/glasgow/a-greener-and-fairer-economy
Thomson, Dean (2024), ‘Free the market and end the guff about the ‘wellbeing economy’, Think Scotland, February 21, https://thinkscotland.org/2024/02/free-the-market-and-end-the-guff-about-the-wellbeing-economy/
Lloyd, John (2020), ‘The Scottish literary giants who stoked the fires of Anglophobia’, Spectator Feb 8th, https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-scottish-literary-giants-who-stoked-the-fires-of-anglophobia/
Wardell, Gareth (2022), X (formerly known as Twitter), Oct 9th, https://x.com/Grouse_Beater/status/1579229317145714690
Gray, Alistair (2012), ‘Unstated: Writers on Scottish Independence’, ‘Settlers and Colonists’, page 101
Ibid, page 107
Tom Nairn , ‘The Break-up of Britain’, 2nd Edition (London, verso, 1981), p61
Ibid, p 63
Ibid, p 69
Tom Nairn , ‘The Break-up of Britain’, 2nd Edition (London, verso, 1981), p141-2
‘Unstated: Writers on Scottish Independence’, Ed. by Scott Hames (Edinburgh: Word Power Books, 2012), p4
British Social Attitudes (2020), ‘Social Inequality in Scotland and England’, 37th edition, National Centre for Social Research, October 8, page 2, https://natcen.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2023-08/bsa37_social-inequality-in-england-and-scotland_0.pdf
McAnulla, S., & Crines, A. (2017). ‘The rhetoric of Alex Salmond and the 2014 Scottish independence referendum’. British Politics, 12, page 487
British Social Attitudes (2020), ‘Social Inequality in Scotland and England’, 37th edition, National Centre for Social Research, October 8, page 6 https://natcen.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2023-08/bsa37_social-inequality-in-england-and-scotland_0.pdf
Ibid, page 7
Ibid, page 17
Ibid, page 18
Sir John Curtice, (2017), ‘Do Scotland and England & Wales Have Different Views About Immigration?’, What Scotland Thinks, British Social Attitudes findings summary, https://www.whatscotlandthinks.org/analysis/do-scotland-and-england-wales-have-different-views-about-immigration/
John Curtice & Ian Montagu (2017), British Social Attitudes (2017), ‘Do Scotland and England & Wales Have Different Views About Immigration?’, page 4, https://www.whatscotlandthinks.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Do-Scotland-and-England-and-Wales-Have-Different-Views-About-Immigration.pdf
Ibid, page 4
Ibid, page 8
Ibid, page 9
Ibid, page 16