There are arguably two main factors that will, and already have, destabilised the SNP’s push for a second term at Holyrood.
These are:
(1) The perception that the SNP failed to address the financial crisis with the appropriate rhetoric, language and policies.
(2) The release of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbasset Al-Megrahi.
The party has noone to blame for the former electoral liability with Salmond’s ‘spivs and speculators’ line still painfully cringeworthy, particularly when set against the pragmatic backroom manoeuvres from Gordon Brown that assisted HBOS being bought over by Lloyds and saving Scottish (and UK) jobs.
For the latter, the SNP still has a battle on its hands and, as the latest Wikileaks revelation on the matter shows, it is around other backroom manoeuvres from then Prime Minister Gordon Brown that a public discussion over Megrahi, and scrutiny into the events leading up to the release, remains outstanding.
The Sunday Telegraph has revealed tonight that “Britain helped Libya secure Megrahi release” and that the Middle East and North Africa Minister assured the Libyans that the Prime Minister did not want Megrahi to die in prison. Even the fact that UK Government Minister provided legal advice to Libya regarding how Megrahi could be released on compassionate grounds is highly concerning in light of the furious reaction that we witnessed after Kenny MacAskill made his decision.
I remain of the view that any civilised society does not keep dying people incarcerated but that view was probably in the minority amongst the Scottish public, a fact that Iain Gray exploited at the time with his assurance that “if I had been First Minister, Megrahi would not have been released”. An easy hit from the Labour leader at the time, but how that statement sits against evidence that seems to point to Labour helping Megrahi be released from prison deserves consideration.
Anyone who disagrees with MacAskill’s decision are of course still welcome to do so and perhaps it was the wrong decision. However, who is more to blame, the person who was legally obligated to come to that decision or individuals who tried to move events in that direction?
The whole furore regarding Megrahi got very old very quickly, and I’m sure it would do again if the same press hysteria was to reemerge. However, if one party is being hung out to dry while another party that facilitated the decision that caused the outrage is getting away with it scot free, then perhaps the whole issue needs to be revisited and any blame or disappointment be apportioned more appropriately across a highly judgemental Scottish electorate.
#1 by Mark on February 6, 2011 - 12:27 am
The Scottish electorate may well be judgemental, but looking at the latest opinion polls what seems have happened is that the lib-dem vote has collapsed, presumably due to the coalition with the Tories, and that labour have been the main beneficiaries, presumably because they are the most obvious anti-tory party. The SNP vote share and predicted seats haven’t changed much since 2007, despite the banking crisis and Al-Megrahi…
#2 by Doug Daniel on February 6, 2011 - 3:08 am
I’m not sure I agree with you about those two events destabilising the SNP’s bid for a second term. Maybe I’m just living in a little bubble, but I’ve not seen many people recently stating that they thought the SNP handled the financial crisis badly. In all things “financial crisisy”, I think most people understand the blame lies squarely at the Labour UK Government’s door for getting us into that mess, and that any cuts made by the SNP are as a result of cuts handed down by the Coalition in Westminster.
In regards to the Megrahi release, I think a lot of people are of the opinion that he didn’t do it anyway, and those who are very much in the he-should-have-rotted-in-prison camp are probably more likely to be voting Tory anyway. If anything, I think the SNP’s handling of the demands by the US senate played very much in their favour, as even the 90-minute patriots would have seen it as the US trying to bully Scotland, with the SNP steadfastly refusing to bow to the pressure.
If Labour somehow manage to escape the Megrahi/WikiLeaks affair unscathed, then I think the Scottish press should pat themselves on the back for doing a fantastic job of shielding the public from the truth, which seems to be the main role of the MSM these days.
For me, the two things that stand in the way of a second SNP term are 1) the Scottish media and 2) donkey-in-a-red-rosette syndrome.
#3 by Jeff on February 6, 2011 - 9:10 am
I think your mixing up the cuts and the financial crisis as was. I would agree that many should find it difficult to blame the Scottish Gov’t for reduced spending (though how effective the constant refrain of ‘SNP cuts’ is is anyone’s guess). I was more referring to the days in 2008 when the financial crisis was really hitting the fan. I personally thought the SNP looked like rabbits in the headlights and failed to show the leadership and dialogue that would have helped them seize the moment. Brown looked like a heavyweight and Salmond, as rare an occasion as it may have been, looked like a bit of a lightweight.
On Megrahi, I think there is a drip-drip affect on large swathes of the public that the ‘wrong’ decision is emblematic of a party not tough enough on crime in general. 1,000 police officers and statistics may be on the SNP’s side but there’s little doubt that it is the Megrahi decision that’s making Gray act a bit more Robocop than he might have ordinarily.
#4 by Doug Daniel on February 7, 2011 - 1:19 am
But the “soft on crime” jibe just doesn’t fit in with the reality of the situation because as you say, statistics are on the SNP’s side. Surely the public will see through this? I moan about the media all the time, but you have to ask why they aren’t scrutinising this more, by saying “wait a second, maybe it’s right that short sentences don’t work, and therefore this Gray chap is a reactionary fool?” The media and politicians need to grow up quickly, or this country will never move forward.
As to mixing up the cuts and the financial crisis (or Global Economic Crisis to give it the full, can’t-blame-Labour-because-it-happened-everywhere-except-that-it-didn’t-really title), the cuts have only come about as a result of that crisis – or at least that’s what the Tories and Lib Dems would have us believe – so I think it’s fair to link the two and that’s why I include the cuts in “all things financial crisisy”. Either the cuts were a necessity brought on by Labour’s handling of the UK economy, or they were avoidable and the Tories and Lib Dems are making ideological cuts. I don’t see how the SNP can be blamed for either of these situations. The people are not stupid enough to blindly accept the “SNP cuts” headlines.
Oh wait, this is the same people that fell for the “only Labour can stop the Tories” line last May. Bugger, we’re screwed.
#5 by Mr. Mxyzptlk on February 6, 2011 - 10:32 am
The reality of being in power(limited no doubt) has led to the snp making ‘decisions’ and as all Governments find some go tits up and they have to take the blame although they all try to deflect it on to others….
Its an unfortunate consequence of Democracy and one the snp will have to endure soon.
all that guff over Megrahi if you read Kenny speech he states he and he alone made the final decision i mean that’s quite clear dont you think so.
or is he lying trough his teeth…………or i know another one been hypnotised by unionists to do their bidding again..
#6 by Hamish on February 6, 2011 - 10:40 am
I agree with the judgment that the SNP and Alex Salmond have been damaged by the financial crisis. The view is common both outside and inside Scotland that it was the ‘Scottish’ banks that were the worst offenders, and that an Independent Scotland would never have been able to rescue them. There is a lot wrong with that view but it exists.
The legacy is that Scottish financial institutions and expertise have lost some of their former reputation.
So has Alex; it’s no longer a feather in his cap that he once worked for RBS.
On Megrahi, I think the decision was plain wrong. The Justice Secretary should have waited until there was a clear medical consensus that Megrahi was at death’s door. Or until his appeal was successful.
#7 by DougtheDug on February 6, 2011 - 11:56 am
Jeff:
“The perception that the SNP failed to address the financial crisis with the appropriate rhetoric, language and policies.”
I’m not sure that there is a perception in Scotland that the SNP failed to address the financial crisis with the appropriate rhetoric and language and as far as policies go most people are smart enough to know that the Scottish Parliament is just a big regional council with a block grant and has zero powers over the banking system.
In terms of “rhetoric and language” if you dig even just a little into what happened to HBOS then the, “spivs and speculators”, line looks more and more like the truth and Gordon and his “backroom manoeuvres” looks more and more like a man completely out of his depth whose strings are being pulled by those in the City who smell a killing. Where did the BBC’s Robert Peston, who is a good friend of Gordon, get all these juicy leaks and how did speculators manage to make £190 Million of profits in the two minutes before Peston announced the rescue package for HBOS on the BBC which boosted the shareprice of HBOS instantly.
The financial crisis of 2008 was a consequence of the long term failure of the regulatory system in the UK and the man at the helm of that system since 1997 was Gordon Brown. Gordon was the man in the headlights and like a hedgehog curling into a ball the only instinctive response he had was to throw lots and lots of public money around in order to save private institutions and his reputation. Private profit, public risk. The banks got the profits during the good years and us, the taxpayers, bailed them out in the bad. Labour made sure their city pals didn’t suffer.
The problem for the SNP is that no-one in the MSM and especially the BBC is willing to lift the rock on that 2008 episode to see what comes crawling out.
Megrahi? Well what can you say? It appears from Wikileaks that if Megrahi had been in an English jail he would have been winging his way homeward under the, “Deal in the Desert”, PTA long before compassionate release became an issue. Travelling with the blessing of the Labour party and their oil company friends.
#8 by Jeff on February 6, 2011 - 12:25 pm
Doug,
Of course the Scottish Government had limited powers to implement any meaningful defence against the financial crisis but the SNP had 7 MPs in Westminster at the time, including Alex Salmond, and I can’t recall any significant calls for UK policies at that time of any radical overhauls of the system or quick wins that deviated from what Labour were putting in place. The rise in support for independence before the crisis was palpable and exciting and there is surely little doubt that the credit crunch was a big test for the SNP with the public looking at how it would react if it was in power in an independent Scotland. The only inference that can be taken from the resulting decrease in support for independence and indeed the slump in support for the SNP in Holyrood polls is that it failed that test.
My own thoughts on the matter are backed up by anecdotal comments from fairly non-political people that I know but there’s nothing wrong with the SNP having to build again to win back that level of support for both independence and Holyrood that they enjoyed a few years ago. They have it in them to do it and the next few months serves up a fine opportunity.
£190m of profit on the back of volatility in the HBOS share price is small fry set against the long term viability of the tens/hundreds of billions pound bank as a whole. That was the error that Salmond made then, a lack of judgement about what was important and what is not. Did he go for the easy soundbite rather than get to grips with what was really going on and what was needed to fix it? We’re talking about a man aspiring to lead an independent Scotland, he should have been above slanging from the sidelines at that juncture but, for whatever reason, he decided against jumping the shark.
You say Gordon Brown threw money at the problem but that was money that was required to plug the gaps, plug the short-term shortfalls that couldn’t be found on the wholesale markets. The deal with Lloyds’ Victor Blanks, however pally and chummy it may have been, was a heck of a lot more practical and beneficial than blaming ‘spivs and speculators’, a valid complaint that, nonetheless, didn’t fix the massive problem at hand.
With you on Megrahi though…
#9 by DougtheDug on February 6, 2011 - 3:49 pm
Jeff:
I’m not sure that I understand your argument here. On the one hand you say that the SNP MP’s should have called in Westminster for different policies to Labour and on the other hand you believe that the Labour solution was correct.
Salmond’s comment on, “spivs and speculators”, was directed at the share price fall in HBOS not on the entire banking crisis and was a correct reading of how the HBOS share price was manipulated and telling the truth is not bad judgment. If you think £190 Million for two minutes work is small fry then you live in a different world to mine. There’s a good list of what happened to the HBOS share price in this page from the London Evening Standard.
HBOS was the only bank which was forced into a shotgun marriage which ensured that Lloyds would need a bailout further down the line. This forced marriage appears to be based on the share price crash and a panic measure from Brown who waived the competition rules for his good pal Blank to buy HBOS. Apparently Lloyds had already approached HBOS six weeks earlier to talk about a takeover. Since Lloyds would have not bought the bank if they thought they were buying a pig in a poke it looks like they viewed the share price crash in HBOS as a commercial opportunity not as a chance to be white knights in the banking crisis.
My prefered solution to the banking crisis would have been for the government to guarantee all depositors, stop speculation on the share prices and let the banks fail if that was the way the market was headed and then to recreate nationalised banks out of the remaining assets. The branches, staff and infrastructure would have still been there and the new banks could have been created debt free. The financial markets rather than joe public should have taken the hit for the crisis. Trying to prop up the banks has left the UK in massive debt and countries like Ireland effectively bankrupt. However I don’t think even Alex Salmond would have gone for this solution.
I don’t get the reference to, “jumping the shark”, which is a description applied to TV sitcoms which have run out of ideas and steam so in the case of Salmond if he’s not jumped the shark it’s a good omen.
#10 by Richard Thomson on February 6, 2011 - 1:12 pm
“The party has noone to blame for the former electoral liability with Salmond’s ‘spivs and speculators’ line still painfully cringeworthy, particularly when set against the pragmatic backroom manoeuvres from Gordon Brown that assisted HBOS being bought over by Lloyds and saving Scottish (and UK) jobs.”
Jeff:
What a shame then that Gordon Brown waved away Lloyds when they wanted to take over Northern Rock. He was behind the curve when it came to liquidity, recapitalisation, easing takeovers and fiscal stimulus – given it was Brown’s own regulatory architecture which failed to prevent or mitigate the crisis, I can’t understand why anyone outside the Labour Party would wish to give the washed-up old hubris merchant the slightest credit for anything.
Re ‘spivs and speculators’, Salmond had called for short selling in HBOS stocks to be prevented because of the additional turblulance it was creating. Oddly enough, the FSA stepped in shortly after on 18 September 2008 to do just that, banning for good measure the practice for 29 specific financial shares until 16 January 2009.
As I recall, at the first FMQs post the HBOS crash, Iain Gray wanted to put those same spivs and speculators ‘to the fire’. It’s hard to square that rhetoric with his misplaced mockery of Salmond which followed, but then Gray and Labour have always done a nice line in the truly cringeworthy.
#11 by Jeff on February 6, 2011 - 1:20 pm
Richard,
You seem to suggest that Gordon Brown should have sanctioned (as much as he had the power to) Lloyds taking over Northern Rock which surely contradicts any suggestion that Brown was wrong to facilitate a merger of Lloyds and HBOS. Northern Rock is a much smaller bank than HBOS was so it was easier for the Government to nationalise. HBOS was simply too big for the state to swallow so a more creative solution was required, and found.
For Salmond’s ‘spivs and speculators’, yes it was a valid complaint and yes it was clamped down on by the FSA but it was hardly the main issue of the day (see above) and that’s where I think Salmond, and the SNP, fell down and are now paying a price in the polls for. Where was the political leadership when two of the nation’s banks were on their knees?
I’m not saying Gordon Brown isn’t beyond blame for the financial crisis, indeed he is the main culprit as, as you say, he was behind the wheel for much (all?) of the decade preceding the problems. However, Brown isn’t standing in this election, Iain Gray is and, like it or lump it, Gray is relatively speaking a ‘clean skin’ as far as these events are concerned. Salmond significantly less so, particularly given how often he trades on his RBS experience as an economist.
#12 by James on February 6, 2011 - 1:56 pm
The SNP and the Tories have developed a shared love of the phrase (I paraphrase) “But Labour are pish too!”. Yes, I agree, they are. But that doesn’t justify mistakes made by either government.
For the record, I don’t think the Megrahi decision was one of those, either in principle or politics. On the latter front, I don’t think it features on the public radar at all. One of those things where you can poll people and they’ll be critical, but ask them if what matters and it won’t feature.
#13 by Jeff on February 6, 2011 - 2:19 pm
This’ll probably sound horribly patronising but I think the Megrahi decision affects the vote without many voters actually realising it. I can’t imagine many people are actively thinking – ‘releasing Megrahi was wrong so I’m not voting SNP’ but I think it has affected the perceived tone at the top of the party as it were, the attractiveness of the Nats as an option has uglified in the minds of some directly, but subconsciously, as a result of MacAskill’s decision. I think at least anyway.
#14 by Richard Thomson on February 6, 2011 - 1:34 pm
Jeff – the state did end up swallowing HBOS. And Lloyds TSB with it 🙂
It was Brown who prevented a takeover by LTSB of NR on the grounds that it would have happened over a weekend and therefore been anti-competative. His government then flapped around for another 6 months looking for a buyer for NR which never came. He should have either allowed the takeover or nationalised straight away – he did neither, to the great cost to the taxpayer.
As for leadership, perhaps it came in examples like this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7657612.stm You’ll note that all of the measures which Salmond called for eventually happened.
#15 by Jeff on February 6, 2011 - 2:02 pm
Hardly “swallowing” it. There’s a difference between a bail-out and full nationalisation, as would have been required for HBOS if it was left twisting in the breeze on its lonesome. LTSB was a crucial stabilising factor for the stricken Scottish bank.
You’re saying that LTSB should have taken over NR, what then would have happened to HBOS? There’s only so many takeovers that LTSB could have embarked on, and it didn’t have its problems to seek. I can understand a Nationalist outlook resulting in a desire to see RBS and HBOS as proud, independent institutions but a LTSB-NR merger and a nationalised HBOS was infeasible and impractical. If GB blocked an NR takeover then he presumably did so because he could see the problems coming down the line with HBOS and knew there was a better solution. That’s the vision that I’m saying Salmond lacked and picking small holes in Brown’s approach to solve the problem when the world was losing its heads only succeeds in highlighting how little Salmond actually did.
Fair enough with the link though, I still don’t think it changes the fact that the SNP has an image problem when it comes to the Scottish electorate considering its vote and thinking back to the financial crisis and what they believe the Nationalists’ role in it was.
#16 by Richard Thomson on February 6, 2011 - 2:41 pm
I agree with the image problem point. I don’t think it has much basis in reality, and came about largely as a result of a concerted blame diversion game which elements in the media were all too happy to play along with. However, there’s no doubt that it exists, and that the SNP has been remiss in not doing more to tackle it.
Re LTSB/NR/HBOS, the Government ended up holding a massive stake in the whole lot of them anyway. That would still have been the case had LTSB been allowed to take over NR. I’m not interested in making a ‘nationalist’ point here – the fact is that whatever outcome you wish to consider, it would still have resulted in a massive share of UKFI ownership in all three banks.
There was no vision in how Brown acted – it was rabbit in the headlights territory all the way down the line. As for the SNP, there was a concerted effort to try and rubbish the party whatever it did, or didn’t, do or say in response to the financial crisis. The hypocisy inherent in criticising the behaviour of bankers, before going on to criticise those who criticised ‘spivs and speculators’, is simply a case in point.
#17 by DougtheDug on February 6, 2011 - 4:35 pm
“If GB blocked an NR takeover then he presumably did so because he could see the problems coming down the line with HBOS and knew there was a better solution. That’s the vision that I’m saying Salmond lacked and picking small holes in Brown’s approach to solve the problem when the world was losing its heads only succeeds in highlighting how little Salmond actually did.”
It appears it was Mervyn King who spotted the problems of the British Banking system and the British bailout was just a carbon copy of the Swedish bank bailout in 1992. If it continues to follow the Swedish model we as UK taxpayers are going to lose half the cash used to bail the banks out.
There is also the odd disconnect between King’s opinion that all the main British banks were in trouble and the FSA, Gordon Brown’s creation, still giving the banks like HBOS a clean bill of health right up to the end when the share price collapsed. The idea of Brown as the competent pair of hands looks less and less true the more that comes out. The head of the Bank of England has one view of the banks viability and the FSA has another and Brown as the real head of the Treasury sits and does nothing till he has to act in a panic.
What exactly was Salmond supposed to do? Alex Salmond was in a small group of 7 MP’s which were not even part of the official opposition in Westminster and as First Minister of Scotland his financial powers amount to divvying up the block grant in Holyrood.
#18 by cameron on February 6, 2011 - 3:45 pm
To be fair the problem with HBOS was more to do with Halifax than the Bank of Scotland. It wasn’t really a stricken Scottish Bank.
#19 by Indy on February 6, 2011 - 6:55 pm
Anyone with half a brain in their head knew that Britain did not want Megrahi to die in jail. Neither did the US. There are no shocks anywhere in the Megrahi stuff and people are past caring, other than the conspiracy theorists.
1,000 police officers and statistics are on the SNP’s side. Recorded crime at a 30 year low, knife crime cut by 26 per cent? That is a very strong record to fight on.
And, yes, Labour are going all out with an SNP soft on crime message- but has it not occurred to you that they are doing that to shore up their core vote? They are not trying to win votes from the SNP with that rhetoric, they are trying to hold on to their own traditional working class base. That tells its own tale don’t you think.
#20 by somepapfaedundee on February 6, 2011 - 9:29 pm
“The party has noone to blame for the former electoral liability with Salmond’s ‘spivs and speculators’ line still painfully cringeworthy”
Why do you find that ‘spivs and speculators’ line ‘painfully crigneworthy?
#21 by fitalass on February 7, 2011 - 11:52 am
Jeff, cracking article and thread debate on this issue.
“(1) The perception that the SNP failed to address the financial crisis with the appropriate rhetoric, language and policies.
(2) The release of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbasset Al-Megrahi.”
On point 1, that for me remains the biggest failure/disappointment of the SNP’s time in government. I felt that this was also a golden opportunity for the SNP to really put some clear water between themselves and the then Labour government at Westminster in Holyrood at that time. It was a missed opportunity on so many fronts, and compounded by the political mistake of attempting to form a coalition with Labour after the GE last year.
On the issue of Megrahi, I thought that the decision to release him was a grave mistake at the time. And again, very badly handled politically, and the drip drip release of documents since then just continues to reinforce that opinion.
#22 by Jeff on February 7, 2011 - 11:59 am
Thanks Fitalass,
I certainly agree with you that the inability, for whatever reason, to get some sort of closure behind the decision and just move on is hugely regrettable.
To be fair though, it is hardly the SNP’s fault if backroom shenanigans from the last UK Government are the reason that Megrahi still makes the headlines. (Not that I’m following things that closely so it might actually be separate documentation that is being released today)