In 1997 SNP MPs gazed across the House of Commons at Tony Blair’s New Labour, with its slick presentation and strict message discipline, and felt pangs of jealousy.
A decade later they took that template, painted it tartan, and began 17 years of Scottish political domination by winning power at Holyrood. Now the two parties may be on the verge of once again swapping places.
On Friday morning in Glasgow Sir Keir Starmer began a cheerful Scottish Labour general election campaign vowing to govern “for Scotland and with Scotland”.
Later that day the first minister, John Swinney, was forced to abandon the formal announcement of a £5 million funding package for the Scottish islands because heavy clouds on Shetland meant his plane could not land.
It was the kind of calamity that used to befall Labour when it was in the doldrums.
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Hopes that the SNP leader, after Humza Yousaf’s uninspiring 13 months, would give the party a bounce had faded after the first poll conducted since Swinney rose to power found that Labour had taken a commanding ten-point lead in Westminster voting intention north of the border.
Labour’s vote share now stands at 39 per cent, up five points from a previous YouGov poll last month, shortly before Yousaf’s resignation. The SNP now stands on 29 per cent, down four points, with the Labour and SNP vote shares being their highest and lowest respectively since the 2014 independence referendum.
Rishi Sunak’s gamble to call the election on July 4, earlier than most had anticipated, has caught many in the SNP off guard.
“The wind is definitely in our face, rather than at our back,” one SNP MP, whose seat is under threat from Labour, said. “But we are still in the game to be the biggest party [in Scotland], which we wouldn’t have been if Humza had been in charge.”
Since its last Westminster win in 2010, Scottish Labour has had its nose rubbed in the dirt by the nationalists. By vote share in the 11 various elections thereafter it has come second five times, third on five occasions and a distant fifth in the 2019 disastrous European ballot, where it failed to win a single seat.
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At the last general election, the SNP won 45 per cent of the vote and 48 seats, with Labour languishing a poor third on 18.5 per cent and returning one solitary MP, Ian Murray, for Edinburgh South.
During the Nicola Sturgeon glory years there was a 41-point chasm between the parties, with Labour in third place behind the Conservatives.
However, a police investigation into SNP finances which led to the arrest of Sturgeon and her husband Peter Murrell has coincided with a change in electoral fortunes. She denies any wrongdoing and was released without charge but remains under investigation. Murrell has been charged with embezzling funds and a police report into the case was delivered to prosecutors the day the election was announced.
Since taking charge, Swinney has made several unfortunate errors.
In a move that enraged many of his at-risk MPs, he refused to back a major sanction against one of his allies who ran up an £11,000 iPad data bill and tried to pay it off using his expenses.
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Michael Matheson, the former health secretary at Holyrood, was found to have breached the MSP code of conduct by attempting to use public money — expenses and office costs — to foot the bill.
He later resigned from his post and announced he would cover the costs himself, revealing his children had used the device as a WiFi hotspot to watch football matches during a Christmas holiday in Morocco.
Another reversal in fortunes is the money flowing into the rival parties. In stark contrast to 2021, when Scottish Labour received only £250 in donations, it now has £500,000 in the bank and at least the same again has been pledged before the election.
Consequently it has invested in a slick backroom operation. Weeks ago candidates received packages marked “In the event of an election open this box”, containing leaflets and campaign guidance.
Within two minutes of the election starting gun, a slew of Scottish Labour campaign videos flooded social media as part of the party’s “project go” strategy to hit the ground running.
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“This will be the most we have spent on an election campaign in Scotland for more than 20 years,” one senior Labour figure said. “There is no lack of resource and we are making decisions based on where the money will be best spent rather than whether we have the money to spend.”
Meanwhile, according to the most recent figures, the SNP made a loss of more than £800,000 last year. Its campaign launch, in a hotel under the shadow of Edinburgh castle, was thought to have been scaled back. Behind Swinney’s smile, there was a grim realisation of the task ahead.
“There’s no money for the campaign, so what we’ve got we need to spend well,” one hopeful SNP source said.
Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, will announce a series of pledges within the next fortnight.
The promises are expected to include increased capital spending on health projects and a beefed-up Scotland Office, which Labour sources say will become “a delivery unit for Scotland” directly involved in projects such as GB Energy, a new, publicly owned clean energy company.
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Starmer will reveal a Scottish pledge card on his next visit and is expected to be a regular presence on the campaign trail. Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, and Angela Rayer, the deputy leader, will also be a frequent sight north of the border.
Swinney is likely to be flanked by Kate Forbes, his new deputy first minister, and Stephen Flynn, the SNP Westminster leader, who are also the early favourites to replace him.
• Who’s in John Swinney’s cabinet and what challenges do they face?
A disastrous general election for the SNP is unlikely to be fatal for Swinney given his short tenure as leader.
The reputations of his predecessors risk undermining his campaign. Yousaf’s popularity ratings are at minus 40, worse than the Scottish Conservative leader, Douglas Ross. The police investigation effectively excludes Sturgeon from going out on the stump, and Alex Salmond, who was cleared in court in 2020 of sexual assault, quit the SNP to form the rival Alba Party.
It is a bruise that opponents are only too keen to punch.
“If Labour candidates felt threatened at all, we could run a billboard campaign of Swinney with his predecessors’ faces,” one Labour candidate said.
It is the kind of quip the SNP would have made about Labour after the Blair years, as the once all-conquering leader was perceived to be an electoral drag on the party following his interventions in Iraq.
