The Ulsterisation of Scotland | Michael Fraser

[Source: HM Government, who do not necessarily endorse the views of this organisation or article]

   Another election in Scotland has come and gone and the Scottish National Party has once again comprehensively outgunned its opponents to establish itself as the dominant party in the Scottish Parliament. This, allied with the performance of the Green Party, means that the election of a pro-independence majority in the Scottish Parliament will almost certainly result in a fresh attempt at instigating an independence referendum. 

   The SNP’s success has come in spite of a series of serious allegations against them, including the near unprecedented suggestion that the First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, misled parliament and breached the ministerial code, that several SNP ministers were accused in matters of sexual impropriety, and the revelation that due to a lack of transparency from Holyrood, billions of pounds of public money that was diverted to Scotland to help during the pandemic has been left unaccounted for.

   Nevertheless, the SNP has continued its dominance of Scottish politics and will rightly earn the opportunity to govern Scotland for a further five years. Say what you want about their recent record in government, but their record in elections is undeniably impressive and one that any political party would envy.

   Of course, it is not difficult to see why so many Scots might be tempted by the SNP. The promises they can make when viewed alongside the incompetence of a Westminster government that itself lurches and stumbles from crisis to crisis makes diving out of the Union more attractive by the day. But with the SNP and its allies commanding a pro-independence majority in the Scottish Parliament, the initiation of a move to outright independence looks set to dominate the Scottish political scene for the next few years. Naturally, all other issues, including Scotland’s devastating drug epidemic and the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic, will have to take a back seat. That is what nationalism means.

   In a period where the economy and public health has diminished, still the emphasis is on independence. If a global pandemic is not enough to temper the nationalist obsession with Scotland’s constitutional status, then what will be? In all likelihood, nothing. In the SNP’s case, is it any wonder that a single-issue political party is so obsessed with independence? After all, it is their raison d’etre, and their voters know that.

   The simple fact is that today in Scotland, it is not jobs, housing, living standards, or the economy that matters to the people of Scotland; it is the constitutional status of their nation that matters. With this, Scotland has finally become Ulsterised, with a power-struggle between two sides: a pro-independence side that is dominated by one party, the SNP, and a pro-Union side, that is split among three of the main British political parties. 

   The insinuation that Scotland has begun to mimic Northern Ireland’s political arena is not a completely new one. The aftermath of the last referendum on independence gave birth to the term and in 2016, roughly 18 months after the Scottish Referendum of 2014 and just prior to the referendum on the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union, Libby Brooks of the Guardian accused those who perpetuated the Ulsterisation of Scotland theory as being ‘disrespectful’, owing to the notion that such language and comparisons betrays ‘ugly resonances’. Brooks is not incorrect in this assertion, and indeed that is the reason why it is such an appropriate term to use. The politics in Scotland has become ugly.

   Many people have taken exception to the use of that term for precisely that reason. They view it as being hyperbolic and unnecessary. Yet if we actually analyse the state of both countries’ political situations, the similarities are strikingly clear. 

   Northern Ireland has a situation where a young unionist who is a pro-abortion, pro-LGBT rights voter may have to vote for the DUP because the alternative is for Sinn Fein to win an election, and therefore attempt to push for a United Ireland. Whilst Scotland does not have the extreme politics of Northern Ireland, the choice is the same. Politics has turned into an arena where people are more likely to vote for a party based on its views on Scottish independence than whether or not they offer a salient blueprint for Scotland’s future economic success, or indeed the betterment of the person. There is a deep division in the country, and one that has been exacerbated by Brexit. 

   The disingenuous attempt from large sections of Scottish nationalism to paint Scotland as an oppressed, downtrodden colony of England is as inaccurate as it is crass, and it is this which is disrespectful. Not only is this an example of the worst type of historical revisionism, but it is also insensitive to those who did suffer from the excesses of British colonialism. The SNP has sought to ally itself and its people with the Irish nationalist cause and has attempted to draw parallels between the two situations. Tactics straight out of the Sinn Fein playbook should concern people across the political spectrum in Scotland and the wider United Kingdom.

The parallels between the SNP’s cause and Sinn Fein’s souverainistic demands have been explicitly made.

   Scotland has always had unbreakable links to Northern Ireland and always will. The two share a culture and a history that makes emotional and cultural severance impossible. The ancient sectarian divide of the north of Ireland was transported across the Irish Sea to Scotland and the animosity between Catholics and Protestants, remarkably unapparent in the rest of the United Kingdom, found fertile breeding ground in the shipyards and mining towns of Scotland. 

   Whilst that connection has always been there, the politics in Scotland was historically broadly similar to the rest of Britain in the sense that the two dominant political parties of the modern era were the Labour Party and the Conservative Party, with social class being the chief way of determining who one voted for. Today, however, with the dramatic collapse of Labour north of Hadrian’s Wall, and the Conservatives having lost support since the Thatcher years, the SNP has exploited popular disillusionment with Westminster and divided the country in much the same way we see in Northern Ireland. Distressingly, this has cheapened the political debate in Scotland and increased the prospect that Scotland will continue along the path to a ‘neverendum’ where every election is fought on the independence issue. This nationalist versus unionist dogfight was visible in the most recent Holyrood election in Scotland.

   The situation in Dumbarton, where Jackie Baillie has been the local MSP since 1999, offers a snapshot of this. The Conservative vote dipped by 6.2% while Labour increased their share by 6.1%. The result? A Labour hold and the denying of the SNP a majority at Holyrood. This is a microcosm of the issues facing Scottish politics. Nationalists will accuse the Tories of putting the Union over their beliefs while Unionists will hail those same Tory voters as patriots who voted Labour through gritted teeth because it was what they had to do. 

   Ayr, another key battleground which was under Conservative control, went to the nationalists by just 0.4%. The reason for this was a split opposition with Labour’s vote totaling 11% and preventing pro-Union parties from taking the seat. The unionist dilemma is particularly keenly felt when it is Labour supporters who are faced with the grim choice of nationalists or Tories to represent them.

   Yet perhaps the greatest indication of Scotland’s contemporary political predicament can be seen if we analyse results from Dundee, one of the traditional SNP strongholds in the country. Joe Fitzpatrick, who lost his job as Public Health Minister due to the continuing drugs crisis that plagues the country, was re-elected to the Scottish Parliament as MSP with an increased share of 3.8% in spite of his previous record. For Dundee, a city with drug death rates three times worse than those in England, it matters not that Mr. Fitzpatrick has overseen this epidemic; what matters is that he stands for the SNP, and by extension for independence.

Single-issue voting has become so prominent, that the citizens of Dundee saw fit to re-elect a conspicuously failed former minister with an increased majority.

   The Ulsterisation of Scotland has culminated in a situation whereby the people of Scotland are essentially offered two choices. Either one votes for the SNP or one votes for one of the pro-Union political parties, such as the Liberal Democrats, the Labour Party, or the Conservatives. In effect, people are voting for an independence referendum or they are voting to prevent one. The result of this? The SNP has managed to dominate Scottish politics despite its poor record in government, and its embroilment in various scandals. When given a choice between a party committed to independence and numerous parties committed to retaining Scotland’s place in the United Kingdom, there can only be one winner. It is a similar concept to the one that saw the Brexit Party, only just formed, sweep up in the European Parliament election of 2019.

If, as it now seems, a new independence referendum is to be called and the Scottish people elect to leave the United Kingdom, the resultant constitutional, social, and political severance would make Brexit compare to a mildly hostile divorce. The SNP now has what it wants: a fresh mandate for an independence referendum, a divided Scotland, and the Ulsterisation of politics which pits nationalist against unionist; Scot against Scot. The import of Ulster-style political allegiances will endure and will go down as another blemish on the record of an already much maligned SNP government. But one that, nevertheless, now holds the balance of power in the Scottish Parliament.

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