There is only one form of answer that David Cameron would realistically give to the question: ‘Who do you want to win the 2011 Holyrood election?’ and it would go something like this:
‘We are working very hard to make sure that Annabel Goldie has a strong bloc of Conservative MSPs in the Scottish Parliament, arguing in favour of the United Kingdom, arguing in favour of keeping household bills down, arguing for more police numbers and making sure some of the ballyhoo that we’ve seen over the past four years is not repeated’.
Well, ok, he’s not going to use a silly word like that. What does ‘bloc’ mean anyway?
For the viewers watching at home, they would unreasonably but understandably be hoping for a single answer – either ‘SNP’ or ‘Labour’.
Tavish, Annabel and Patrick are going to be asked this question of who they want to be the biggest party time and time again up to May 5th and they are well within their rights not to say either way.
They may well have formed a view and there is surely no doubt that the Prime Minister certainly has. So who does Dave want? Labour or SNP? Let’s look at the options shall we….
DavidCameron4SNP
Without wishing to invite the tired accusations of Tartan Tory, it is quite patently the case that Alex Salmond and David Cameron get on with each other rather well. The relationship between the two posts has certainly surely improved since Gordon Brown vacated Number 10, a period that included a whole year elapsing before the two leaders were in contact.
The calls made directly by Salmond to Cameron since the General Election include payment of the Fossil Fuel Levy, borrowing powers for the Scottish Parliament, a fuel duty regulator, capital acceleration for budget spending and Barnett consequentials from spending on the 2012 Olympics. There seems to be an implicit understanding of ‘some you win and some you lose’ around these demands, seemingly accepted with a hearty degree of respect on both sides, despite the attention-grabbing rhetoric delivered for the media headlines.
So there is a healthy, combative working relationship in place between current FM and PM but what of the thorny issue of independence? David Cameron claims to have the union jack stamped onto his insides like a stick of rock which surely rubs awkwardly against a First Minister whose main objective is to break up the United Kingdom?
Well, so far it doesn’t seem to be a problem. David Cameron is somewhat ‘above the fray’ in terms of constitutional affairs, leaving such issues to the Liberal Democrat body armour that he fashioned around his party. Alex Salmond’s main aim is to ensure the voting Scottish public is, at some point (and preferably on the day of any referendum), in favour of Scottish independence to the tune of 50.01% of turnout. That Scotland-focussed aim doesn’t really affect Cameron and his Scottish Conservative MPs. Sorry, MP. Consequently, there is no head-on collision between the two leaders. Two polar opposite views are not crossing paths and, so, not causing problems.
I would wager that the highly unlikely prospect of Cornish independence causes more headaches for David Cameron than Scottish independence does as there are more seats in the South West of the UK that the Conservatives can realistically win in 2015 than there are in the whole of Scotland.
I honestly believe there would be no hidden grimace nor silent grinding of teeth if the Prime Minister had to phone up Alex Salmond and congratulate him on a second term on May 7th.
DavidCameron4Labour
When Scottish Labour shared power at Holyrood with the Lib Dems from 1999 to 2007 there was very little discord with the, admittedly Labour, UK Government.
The Conservatives may, quite reasonably, be concerned at the prospect of being attacked by their main opposition rivals from two angles and balk at the prospect of Ed Miliband and Iain Gray being able to coordinate policy and party message with the not inconsiderable Westminster and Holyrood resources that they would have available to them.
That said, Ed Miliband has endured a timid (if not quite torrid) start to this tenure as Labour leader. Ed hit the ground sauntering and, on current evidence, there is a very high likelihood that Iain Gray would hit the ground dawdling given the lack of policy he has ready to implement and the apparent power struggle at the top of his party. David Cameron would arguably welcome having leaders that are perceived as anonymous by the Great British public across the Chamber in Westminster and at the helm in Holyrood.
In terms of policy, and independence to one side, there is probably little to choose between Labour and the SNP with regard to direct impact on the UK coalition. Both parties will complain that spending is being cut too sharply and that changes to health and education south of the border have a significant impact on Scotland as a nation that does not have the public appetite to turn GPs into accountants, quasi-privatise the NHS and charge students the earth just to go to university.
Indeed, the main concern for David Cameron in terms of the Scottish Parliament election result is what the irascible Liberal Democrats will do next. A formal coalition with the SNP or Labour in Scotland while there is a formal coalition with the Conservatives in London is surely a nightmare scenario for the Prime Minister. A tantalising thought for those of us who believe the Lib Dems sold out but surely an unworkable situation in the medium to long term nonetheless.
How the Liberal Democrats can continue to operate as a single entity while implementing contradictory policies either side of the border is beyond me. And how the coalition can continue if the Liberal Democrats were to finally sink under the weight of its own impossibly duplicitous political dexterity is anyone’s guess.
For those reasons, of which Clegg and Cameron are surely acutely aware, it is surely not possible for a Holyrood coalition to work from 2011 in any conceivable way. The Conservatives will continue to be rebuffed, the Greens will continue to be too small in number and the Lib Dems as coalition partners will quite simply be too problematic a consideration for their London leaders’ tastes.
May 2011 will see a single winner, a minority Government under one single party’s control and David Cameron must have a preference in mind. Broadly speaking, one has to think that the Prime Minister has not had too many sleepless nights over the fact that a Nationalist is currently the First Minister of Scotland and perhaps, just perhaps, David is thinking that it is a case of ‘better the Nationalist you know rather than the Unionist you don’t’.
#1 by James on February 22, 2011 - 1:38 pm
Obviously I don’t think the Greens will be too small in number to feature. Even with 2 in 2007 there was a prospect of coalition with the Nats and the Libs, and I’m obviously expecting us to go up too. Some of the polls have shown ways to get to 65 with two parties, one of them being us.
Not that that means any such arrangement would definitely work, of course.
#2 by Indy on February 22, 2011 - 1:47 pm
Cameron would probably prefer the SNP for the simple reason that Labour would portray a victory for them as the start of a Uk resurgance – or “fightback” as they like to call it.
#3 by Aldos Rendos on February 22, 2011 - 2:37 pm
Great article Jeff, giving me food for thought. The other aspect of course is the Lib Dem vote. DC won’t want to see it collapse and put the pressure back on Clegg. Ideally he would like their vote to stablise or even take seats off either the SNP or Labour to prevent any internal revolt from within the Lib Dems.
#4 by Jeff on February 22, 2011 - 6:12 pm
Thanks Aldos. Absolutely agree on the Lib Dem vote. It is the first chance that the Conservatives and Lib Dems will have to potentially have some sort of combined approach to an election on a grand scale, but the detail of that is another blog post for another day.
You’re right though, a desperately poor performance from the Lib Dems could be a worse result for Cameron than a poor performance from the Scottish Conservatives, given that Clegg needs to stay onside and Goldie will take the fall for a bad night anyway.
#5 by DougtheDug on February 22, 2011 - 2:59 pm
I suspect that Labour would be David Cameron’s preference by quite a long way. If the SNP win then the issue of independence hasn’t gone away and Scotland still has to be watched.
If Labour win then the SNP have been stopped and Labour will be confirmed as the natural party of Scotland. It doesn’t matter how many MSP’s or MP’s Labour has in Scotland since they are hard-line unionists they simply have no way of threatening a Westminster Tory Government and David Cameron can do what he likes to Scotland’s institutions and budget.
David Cameron has only one MP to lose in Scotland and even if that MP goes it’s not going to be a showstopper in Westminster.
Cameron can relax with a Labour Scotland as it’s back to the old familiar world of Labour versus Conservative with both being very much parties of the British establishment and happy with the buggin’s turn of Government in Westminster.
#6 by Indy on February 22, 2011 - 7:53 pm
That is only true if you assume that Cameron cares deeply whether Scotland becomes independent. I suspect he doesn’t. If you look at the recent MoD restructuring for example,basically stripping Scotland of most capacity, that tells its own tale.
Labour on the other hand needs Scotland to get into power at Westminster. They have far more to gain from preventing independence than the Tories.
#7 by DougtheDug on February 22, 2011 - 9:02 pm
Indy, I’m puzzled by this idea that the Conservatives are less keen on the Union than Labour because nothing they’ve done has ever given me that impression. They’ve never hinted in any way that they were indifferent to Scotland leaving the UK and from what David Cameron has said in the past about Britain he would regard losing Scotland not as losing a partner but as losing the northern province of his own country. To think David Cameron is not as big a British nationalist as Brown was is to make a big mistake.
Closing down airbases in Scotland and moving military operations south doesn’t imply any sympathy for an independent Scotland it just means that they have no Conservative MP’s to lose in Scotland when it comes to defence cuts and job losses.
A Labour run Scotland would be Scotland as it has been for about the last fifty years and the Conservatives are used to that. The Conservatives don’t have a lot of MP’s in the North-East of England but there’s no hint that they would be happy to see the North-East of England disappear from the UK either.
David Cameron would prefer a unionist Labour party to be in power in Scotland rather than a nationalist one because they are not a threat to the British state and prefer Conservative rule to independence. Labour are going to be campaigning to keep Scotland under David Cameron for the next four years at a minimum so it would be only fair for him to approve of a Labour run Scotland. They want him in power so he should return the favour.
#8 by Doug Daniel on February 23, 2011 - 9:41 am
I think I’d have to agree with Doug here (great name, by the way). To let Scotland become independent is to call the final death knell on the British Empire, thus admitting that England (through its rule of Britain) is no longer a global power. If people are forced to admit that, then there is suddenly no argument for keeping nuclear weapons and meddling in the affairs of other countries. Politicians like Cameron want power, and small countries are not seen as being powerful. England needs Britain to feel like a big player, otherwise we wouldn’t have gone to war over a tiny group of islands off the Argentine coast in the 80s.
#9 by Jeff on February 23, 2011 - 10:53 am
Dougs,
As valid and even accurate a point as that probably is, I just can’t imagine the question of global powerhouse that the UK may or may not be barely pricks Cameron’s consciousness on any given day.
I guess that doesn’t necessarily mean that the demise of the British Empire isn’t a factor for Holyrood, but it’s hard to put the hard graft of an election campaign in the same context.
#10 by Indy on February 23, 2011 - 1:28 pm
Losing 5 million Scots is not going to make the UK that much smaller though. And Scotland becoming independent will not automatically mean that Wales and N Ireland will follow suit. They may or may not. But I don’t think that it really at the forefront of anybody’s thinking. England will still have a population of 51 million which doesn’t make them a small country exactly!
#11 by Jeff on February 23, 2011 - 1:31 pm
Absolutely. And England could always grow its population by 5m through aggressive immigration which Middle England and Daily Mail are so strongly in favour of.
Hang on…..
#12 by Doug Daniel on February 23, 2011 - 4:46 pm
Personally, I would say power is more about land than people, especially when that land contains precious resources such as oil. It’s true that the loss of Scotland does not automatically equate to independence for Wales and Northern Ireland, but it would certainly set a precedent – who thought we would be seeing protests all across Northern Africa a couple of months ago? Different situations obviously, but who says Scottish independence won’t trigger a chain of events throughout the other remains of the British Empire, even including the overseas territories and Crown dependencies? None of these are particularly populous, but the Falklands war showed us that keeping them under British rule is considered to be of paramount importance.
I think people in power who consider themselves to be proud of Britain would take any attempt by a country to withdraw from the union as a personal insult. I could be wrong, of course, but surely the whole point of Conservatism is to conserve the status quo as much as possible, hence why they are always so resistant to change.
Incidentally, bear in mind that England’s population is below that of Italy, so if population is the key, that would put England behind Germany, France and Italy in the EU power stakes. Might even lose a seat or two in the EU parliament…
#13 by Indy on February 23, 2011 - 10:16 am
If you listen to what they say you might think that – but it’s always a good idea to watch what politicians do, as well as listen to what they say, because the two are not always consistent lol.
Moving military infrastructure down south indicates to me a preparedness for the possibility of independence. Doesn’t mean they actively want it but it is an indication that they are thinking along those lines – and the point is, as I said, that the Tories do not need Scotland in order to be in government in the UK. In fact Scotland becoming independent would be an advantage for them electorally speaking, as it would remove a big chunk of Labour representation. Which would of course be a disaster for Labour.
#14 by Father MacKenzie on February 22, 2011 - 3:52 pm
Great article, but I should point out that Cornwall is in the South West rather than the SE, before any Cornish readers take umbridge.
#15 by Jeff on February 22, 2011 - 5:33 pm
Ooft. That’s embarrassing. Can I argue that it depends which way one is facing? Probably not.
Post updated, and thanks for pointing out!
(No pasties have been flung in anger from our Kernow chums, yet)
#16 by ben on February 22, 2011 - 8:02 pm
A Guardian commentary – “David Cameron must be careful about conflating Britain and England” – has made me realise that the Conservative’s radical reform plans (nhs, schools, universities, police) is going to massively increase the divergence and difference between England and Scotland and this could actually pull the Union apart. Also, didn’t the Scotsman report that Cameron has virtually abandoned Annabel Goldie (“Scots Tories ‘cast adrift’ by David Cameron”).
#17 by Daniel J on February 22, 2011 - 9:02 pm
Quite a good point about policy divergence there.
#18 by Steve on February 22, 2011 - 8:13 pm
I think he’d prefer the SNP to win. What’s bad for labour is surely good for the conservatives.
Even if the SNP win, Scotland will still be a long way from independence, so not much of a worry there.
#19 by NoOffenceAlan on February 22, 2011 - 10:59 pm
Why would it be a problem for the Lib Dems to operate different policies North and South of the border?
Labour enacted different policies in Westminster, Scotland and Wales during 1999-2007.
#20 by Thomas Boyd on February 23, 2011 - 12:56 pm
I hope Labour win 50 MSP in 2011
#21 by Jeff on February 23, 2011 - 1:29 pm
Or 50 MSPs even. A Labour ’50 MSP’ sounds like a poor Scottish rap imitation of 50 cent.
Still, it brings a whole new meaning to ‘West side’ I suppose. Mind you, Iain Gray is more East side I would have thought. Not that I’m that great with points of the compass, as was proved earlier….
#22 by Hamish on February 23, 2011 - 8:13 pm
The Conservatives have always suffered from their inherent imperialism. They honestly believe that the English can run other countries better than the natives.
But I think the electoral arithmetic will eventually get through to them — that they can win more easily in England than in the UK.
That plus growing English nationalism.
Frankly if I was English, I would want to be rid of these troublesome Scots.
#23 by Chris on February 24, 2011 - 2:02 pm
I think fundamentally the Tories are a pragmatist party.
Their best bet is for a weak administration with no government able to command a majority. United we stand, divided we fall.
Fundamentally he won’t be bothered if it is a Labour led or SNP led minority administration that is implementing his cuts. He is not going to do anything momentally stupid (like a poll tax) that will cause constitutional ructions. Independence is so far off most people’s agenda that it is not a serious political threat.
His biggest fear would probably be a grand coalition or the so-unlikely-you-know-it-makes-sense Lab/SNP coalition.
#24 by Thomas Boyd on February 26, 2011 - 12:48 pm
I think Labour Party will win Glasgow Govan.Firstly
Labour need to win 50 MSP’s thats my main target.
The union is important to Scotland. I am unionst
in one way be voting Labour twice they I think
will be the biggest single Party in the Scotland
Parliament. SNP history shows. That SNP have long
hard road to travel. England would destory Scotland.
Forexample Mrs Thatcher’s Conservative Party wipe
the SNP out in 1979 election. The SNP got 2 MP’s
in 1979 and 1983 general elections.
#25 by James on February 26, 2011 - 1:24 pm
You know if you live in Glasgow that a 2nd vote for Labour has never elected anyone (and probably never will)?