How the Scottish National Party became the only show in town

LONDON — The history of the past decade has been the history of political earthquakes — but few countries have been shaken quite like Scotland.

Rewind 15 years and Scottish nationalism was a relatively fringe pursuit. The Scottish National Party (SNP) was stuck in opposition in Scotland’s devolved assembly, just as it had been ever since the Parliament was created in 1999. Support for independence was a long way off any kind of majority. The party had never sent more than a large handful of MPs to Westminster.

Next week Scottish voters go to the polls and — barring a miracle — will elect the fourth successive SNP government at Holyrood, in yet another landslide victory for leader Nicola Sturgeon. The party holds almost every Scottish seat at Westminster, and opinion polls show support for independence is nudging toward a majority view at around — or just beyond — 50 percent.

On this week’s Westminster Insider podcast, POLITICO’s Jack Blanchard looks back at the history of the Scottish nationalist movement, and explains how it shifted from a fringe pursuit to perhaps the majority view in Scotland.

“I would say the 1990s were the decade where the SNP became relevant,” says Alex Salmond, who — funnily enough — became party leader in 1990. “And basically the fundamental decision that the SNP made under my first term leadership was to start assuming a place in the social and economic spectrum. So instead of just saying, ‘we’re on the side of Scotland,’ be prepared to take sides within Scotland … and therefore building up its credentials as a social democratic party, one that could be relied on by groups in Scotland to defend their interests.”

The creation of the Scottish Parliament in 1999 gave the SNP and Salmond an electoral focus. Eight years later they were in power, beating the Scottish Labour Party by just a single seat. Scottish Labour was hamstrung by the increasing unpopularity of the Labour government in Westminster, particularly in the aftermath of the Iraq war.

“Alex became the most significant Westminster opponent of the war,” says Jack McConnell, Labour first minister of Scotland until his party’s defeat of 2007. “It give him a big, big platform. The Labour government was having problems with scandals and so on, and again, the SNP became very prominent in opposition to some of those scandals. So they went from being in a pretty hopeless position, very quickly — in the course of 12 months — they moved up in the polls.”

Salmond capitalized on the platform the first ministership offered, and won a further victory in 2011 — this time a landslide, giving him the authority to demand an independence referendum. And although that was narrowly defeated in 2014, support for independence has only solidified — especially in the aftermath of the Brexit vote, and the chaos in Westminster which followed.

“There’s been a huge structural change,” says Torcuil Crichton, a veteran Daily Record journalist who has covered politics for the past 20 years. “The earthquake of 2014, the 55/45 split [in the independence referendum] in Scotland, which came about as a result, I think, of the deeper earthquake of the mistrust in politics and the rise of identity politics — that’s a structural change that’s there for a long time to come. There’s no sign of people who voted ‘yes’ to independence changing their minds very much … Everything that happens in Scotland is seen through the prism of independence.”

Salmond, who has now left the SNP in acrimony following allegations about his personal conduct — all of which he denies — is running for a separate pro-independence party, Alba, in next week’s election.

He insists the case for an independent Scotland is stronger than ever and denies the harsh realities of Brexit — which would require some sort of border between Scotland and England were Scotland to re-join the EU — have wrecked his chances of success.

“You don’t have to have a hard border between England and Scotland,” he says. “Firstly, there won’t be a people border — I mean, that’s just stupid. The Common Travel Area [between the nations of the U.K. and Ireland] was initiated in 1922 … So we’re not talking about borders for people. But there will be some form of administrative border if Scotland goes back into the European Union.”

His immediate solution for Scotland would be to rejoin the EU’s single market via the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), and then to agree a customs union with what remains of the U.K.

“You can get back into EFTA in weeks,” he insists. “And then through EFTA [join] the European Economic Area, which will take a bit longer — but not that long. And you can offer a customs union with the rest of the U.K., which should be attractive to England, given that [in terms of] manufactured goods they sell far more to Scotland than Scotland sells to them.

“So that would soften the border administratively, but a sort of border it is going to be. And you cannot just wish it away, unless, of course, you want Scotland to stay part of a U.K. trading bloc, and shut out of other trading blocs. I think that would be very foolish, because the U.K.’s decision to leave the single market place is the greatest act of self-destruction of any major countries in the post-war period.”