Rise and Fall of Counter-Hegemonic Elites in Scottish Politics
10/10/2023
Scotland is at a crossroads. The Scottish National Party (SNP) is imploding. The party has been in power in the devolved Scottish parliament since 2007, first in a minority government and then the majority since 2010. But the nationalist mainstay then lost its Holyrood parliamentary majority in 2016 and now governs as a minority government with the support of the pro-independence Scottish Green Party. The SNP’s success at Westminster, securing all but three Scottish seats during the 2015 election and retaining a large, if diminished majority, is now also in question.
The SNP leadership, defined by years of one-party dominance in Scotland, is facing the same fate as other formerly hegemonic dominant-party forces like Labour and the Conservatives. The last few years have been witness to stagnation, corruption, institutional centralisation, mission drift, overstretched ‘national’ voting coalitions, warring factions in a supposed ‘broad church’ party, and constitutional ambiguity. Furthermore, the contradiction of a historic Scottish economic base, at once over- and underdeveloped in comparison to England, with highly technical and dense fossil fuel and shipping industries in the Central Belt and North-East alongside underweight service and agricultural sectors, has helped complicate the material position of the SNP.
Scotland, before and after devolution in 1999, has cycled through short periods of dealignment and multi-party competition and longer eras of dominant-party rule centred around civic, ethnic, sectarian, and class-based efforts to represent the nation within, against, and in collaboration with the Westminster establishment. These almost hegemonic dominant-party eras have been defined by sequential periods of dominance under the Liberal Party in the 19th century, the Scottish Unionist (Conservative Party) in the first half of the 20th century (peaking in 1955), the Labour Party in the late 20th century, and now the SNP.
From Sectarian to Independence Politics
All of Scotland’s parties have managed to construct some level of cross-class and broad-church support in both rural and urban areas. However, until the middle to late 20th century, dominant parties tended to be somewhat sectarian. Indeed, the Liberals and Conservatives drew their support from both working and middle-class protestants in the Church of Scotland and non-conformist groups like the Free Church.
As Scotland has become demographically more diverse and less religious, the formerly Catholic-aligned Labour Party rose to prominence before being replaced by the SNP, which had historically been a Presbyterian party of the lower-middle class. Yet the SNP under Alex Salmond found strength in the 2000s and 2010s in both the old working-class Irish-Catholic strongholds of the West Coast and Dundee, and additionally, the more rural Protestant heartlands of Perthshire, Argyle, Stirling, Ayrshire, and Angus. While the old cross-class sectarian voting blocks of over 50% of the population have faded into history, they have been replaced with similar polarisations around unionist and nationalist positions.
The SNP’s Broad Church
The characteristically dominant broad-church coalition the SNP had built around independence and moderate social-democratic policy within the structures of devolution seems to be coming apart. The SNP’s leadership election in 2023 highlighted the buried tensions between the more socially conservative and fossil fuel-friendly ‘Tartan Tory’ wing of the party, the elite social progressivist, Atlanticist and European federalist tendencies of its leadership cadres, and the radicalism and populism of the broader mass-membership independence movement.
The first demographic is represented by the evangelical Calvinist MSP Kate Forbes, endorsed by industrialist and billionaire Jim McColl and several politicians from the rural heartlands around Perth and Inverness. The second group finds its voice in the candidacy and leadership of Humza Yousaf, backed by Glasgow and Dundee City Council leaders and most of the SNP top brass. The third cohort has left the SNP and found its way into the Scottish Socialist Party, the Radical Independence Campaign, trade unionism, the short-lived RISE Party, the Alex Salmond-led Alba Party and, most importantly, exhausted apathy.
It is clear that the latter no longer see the SNP as a vehicle for populist discontent or democratic accountability, especially considering the economically neoliberal and transnational turn of the former two factions. There has been much media commentary on the sell-off of public utilities and institutions to foreign buyers, and the SNP leadership’s evolution towards increasingly pro-nuclear deterrent and NATO policies after the invasion of Ukraine. Indeed, membership numbers have fallen drastically, with a loss of over 30,000 members in less than a year in 2023.
Furthermore, the typical liberal professional middle-class Scottish voter, whether pro-independence or not, gravitated to the SNP under the supervision of Nicola Sturgeon, as a force capable of delivering growth and competent technocratic governance. Grievances over excess budget spend on infrastructure projects, falling educational achievements and perceived corruption are growing. To date the last two leaders of the SNP, Alex Salmond and Sturgeon, have both been arrested, the first over sexual assault and the second due to investigations into party finance irregularities. Despite Salmond’s acquittal and the fact that Sturgeon has not been officially charged by the police, the optics of corruption is pushing this professional cohort away.
Yousaf vs Forbes
The buried tensions between the SNP’s conservative and liberal wings finally emerged during the 2022 leadership election between Forbes and Yousaf. These two factions disagreed over the party’s green initiatives and collaboration with the Green Party to reduce oil licences, Sturgeon’s support for trans rights, and the broadly pro-European nature of the party leadership (around 36% of SNP voters also voted for Brexit in 2016).
The new SNP leader Humza Yousaf, broadly seen as the Sturgeon continuity candidate, has made appeals to the social liberalism of the party’s middle-class urban faction but is likely to alienate them when it comes to concerns over state capacity and good governance. His mistakes in managing a massively over-budget ferry transport system for Scotland’s remote islands and COVID-19 management were widely reported at the time. The SNP’s working-class radicals and rural conservatives have already effectively left the coalition. The urban poor, apart from those in Dundee, have swung to Labour while rural conservatives are either not voting or selectively voting for ‘Tartan Tories.’ Current polling suggests the SNP could lose half their Westminster seats in 2024, ceding control of much of the urbanised central belt to Labour. However, wealthy constituencies like Glasgow North, Glasgow West, and Edinburgh North and Leith are also likely to fall to Labour.
Consequently, whether this flight from the SNP in urban areas is predominantly a populist impulse looking for new outlets or the professional middle class searching for better governance options is unclear. Alternatively, the epoch of SNP dominance might be ending in reaction to exogenous factors from Westminster. Thirteen years of Conservative administration, and the antagonistic Scotland-England relationship that comes with Tory rule, is likely to find its terminus in 2024.
However, what looks to be the end of nearly 12 years of SNP party hegemony in Scotland opens up a question of essential political dynamics in the country. Namely, are we now entering a new era of multi-party competition and realignment, or just another interregnum in the cycle of dominant party systems?
Designing the Devo State: From Plurality to Coalition to Super Majorities
The continuance of singular dominant-party politics in Scotland post-devolution has been a surprise, considering the design of the devolved Scottish parliament and semi-proportional electoral system. Under the aegis of the British Blair government of 1997-2007, Scottish devolution was finally achieved after several attempts throughout the 20th century. The New Labour leadership at the time implemented devolution to head off the threat from a resurgent Scottish and Welsh nationalism and to secure their power in the Celtic fringe (Wales, Scotland, Ireland) and Greater London.
Indeed, Labour under Blair banked on maintaining pluralities backed by smaller progressive parties in the devolved assemblies. By instituting an additional member voting system, a method halfway between traditional first-past-the-post and proportional representation, Labour intended to deprive nationalist parties, and by logical extension themselves, of large majorities. However, the Labour government at Westminster predicted that they would be able to maintain large pluralities in the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh, and the London Assemblies.
While this proved true for the Welsh Assembly, which has been led by Labour since its inception, both Scotland and London quickly broke with the planned Labour plurality plus progressive coalition model. Throughout the 2000s, the London Assembly was led by the Conservatives, albeit with small pluralities and the need for collaboration with other parties. It was the Scottish parliament that embodied and then strayed from the New Labour model of devolution, perhaps signalling a deeper tendency to dominant party majorities in the country’s political culture.
The first two elections in 1999 and 2003 returned Labour-Liberal Democratic coalitions, with Labour holding a plurality of seats. By 2007, the SNP had knocked Labour from first place. By 2011, the SNP under Alex Salmond had won an absolute majority of 69 seats and had maintained a plurality up to 2023. In 2016, the Scottish Conservatives replaced Labour as the official opposition in Holyrood. The widespread mismanagement and unresponsive politics of the New Labour Westminster years had finally come home to roost in Scottish politics.
Even though the SNP has spent more time in the Scottish parliament as a minority or coalition government than as a majority, its overwhelming victory in the 2015 Westminster election and continued dominance of Scottish seats in the House of Commons has allowed the nationalist party to position itself as a hegemonic ‘counter-elite’ in opposition to London. In contrast to regionalist or separatist parties in Germany or Italy, the SNP, like nationalists in Catalonia and the Basque region, have normally faced dominant single-party governments in Westminster instead of diffuse coalitions. This also lends itself to the construction of a counter-elite, both responsible for shepherding and protecting the nation from the predations of the larger bloc and impotent in its ability to do so within a greater union under the influence of the ruling ‘Westminster’ party.
Indeed, the key theme of this contradiction has always been oil and the public spending benefits that flow from it to local and national fiscal budgets. The SNP offered itself not just as a contrary voice for Scotland but as a force capable of engineering fossil fuel proceeds towards a comparatively overdeveloped and abundant Scottish state governed by a competent new elite.
Energy Politics as Independence Politics
Simply put, energy politics are independence politics in Scotland. Indeed, various fossil fuels have shaped the dynamics of the country for over a century and contributed to the aspirations of local counter-elites in both the Labour Party and the SNP, which has, in turn aided the development of stagnant dominant party trends.
The discovery of North Sea oil in Scotland between 1965 and 1970 and the subsequent oil price crisis in 1973 in which OPEC nations embargoed fuel exports headed to Europe, led to Scottish reserves gaining a higher strategic importance for the UK. These new reserves allowed the UK to absorb some price shocks from the embargo, and later provided budgetary cover for the Thatcher administration’s unfunded tax cuts.
Alternatives inspired by social democratic reforms and industrial policy such as nationalisation or an oil-supported sovereign wealth fund were left off of the table, despite Scotland sending proportionally more economically interventionist MPs to Westminster than England. Indeed, even the Scottish Conservative Party, before its takeover by hardline Thatcherites, tended towards more paternalist and social democratic reforms and devolutionist aims than the UK-level party. A battle summed up by the clash between the liberal-conservative Malcolm Rifkind as Scottish Secretary and the hard-monetarist MP Michael Forsyth.
The uncertainty of Scotland’s oil led to an ‘It’s Scotland’s Oil’ campaign in the 1970s, which upped the SNP’s electoral success significantly within Westminster to 30% of the electorate by 1974. The discovery of North Sea oil allowed the SNP to shift its rhetoric from an earlier ‘romantic’ nationalism to a far more pragmatic imperative towards responsive local elite governance and development strategies. The widespread involvement of international, American-led oil companies in the UK’s development of its North Sea reserves produced an SNP rhetoric around rejecting overarching Atlanticist power and the initiation of civic claims to resource nationalism.
However, because the SNP, along with most European governing parties, has committed to Net Zero targets and a larger green agenda, its position as a resource-nationalist force has become more complicated. Under the Sturgeon administration’s later years, especially once the SNP had entered a coalition with the Greens in Holyrood, commitments to oil exploration and new drilling permits were phased out.
There has been concern from business-friendly SNP politicians like the former energy secretary Fergus Ewing, who cites the need for energy security in Scotland and Europe as the Russo-Ukrainian war progresses. Indeed, conflicts over energy policy quietly shaped the recent leadership contest between the more green-aligned Humza Yousef and the pro-oil Kate Forbes. Interestingly, the SNP, once positioned as the party of sovereigntist counter-hegemonic power, has slowly moved towards a more internationalist policy platform on European federalism, NATO, the nuclear deterrent, and energy policy, completing a cycle from counter-elite to local elite rule.
Cycles of Corruption and Stagnation
Cycles of rhetoric and action in Scotland seem to flow between calls for a rejuvenated nation achieved through mass politics and claims for pragmatic collaboration with global finance and the effectiveness of centralised party systems. This eventually leads to widespread complacency as counter-elites become dominant ruling elites in the eyes of the Scottish electorate, and the blame is transferred from Westminster back to more proximate governance.
This dynamic has only become pronounced since the establishment of devolution, which has formalised a new set of fiefdoms ranging from the council level and Holyrood to Scotland’s Westminster seats and former MEPs. While the Conservative Party’s dominance in 1955 relied solely on the presence of 50 or so Westminster MPs and a few local councils, the 21st-century dominant force of the SNP is able to arrange power across multiple different vectors. Labour attempted much the same method of diffused power across multiple electorates in the 1990s and 2000s. By 2015, many voters talked of voting for the SNP, not in support of independence, but to punish a dominant Labour Party that had become complacent at its Scottish power centres.
As an example, Glasgow City and Lanarkshire Councils, Labour Party and trade union strongholds that produced a pipeline of former city councillors for the party in Westminster, came under increased scrutiny for corruption around the 2015 general election. In turn, the now SNP-led Glasgow Council came under investigation in 2019 for procurement anomalies.
Furthermore, the widespread frustration at the quality of life outcomes under Labour in 2014-2015 is now something strongly associated with the SNP and more proximate Scottish governance. Poor outcomes in educational attainment and preventable drug deaths are common knowledge among the electorate in 2023. The Scottish ferry fiasco and overspending on public infrastructure projects were also widely reported in local and national media. Finally, a current argument over the SNP’s plans to sell off public utilities and national monuments in Glasgow to settle pay claims has highlighted an austerity impulse within the party. For many, the willingness to ‘outsource’ buildings like the iconic Kelvingrove Museum has highlighted the current narrowness of the party’s conception of nationalism. Increasingly, the SNP’s nationalism is designed around negative disavowals of Westminster and England rather than positive conceptions of the common good. Indeed, the problems of Scotland are now as identified with Holyrood and city councils as they once were with Westminster.
The End of Hegemonic Elites and the Rise of Multi-Party Competition?
It appears that the SNP’s dominance of Scottish politics, a comparatively short period compared to the long decades of Labour and Conservative rule in the 20th century, is ending. Current polling suggests that Scotland, at least on the Westminster level, is transforming back into an arena of multi-party competition. YouGov polling points to the fact that Labour is on course to capture half of the SNP’s 44 Westminster seats, with the Scottish Conservatives maintaining strongholds in the southern borders and the oil and fishing dominated north-east.
There is a more distant horizon until the next Scottish parliamentary election, which is due in 2026. Current polling from early August 2023 proposes that the SNP only have a 3 to 4-point lead over Labour, a shrinkage of considerable depth from a 25 to 27-point advantage back in 2021. The Scottish Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Greens have maintained their average polling ranges over this period, signalling that the electoral movement is between a declining SNP and a growing Labour Party.
The counter-elite positioning of the SNP and former Scottish Labour Party cadres in the 1980s and 1990s against a Conservative-dominated Westminster seems to be coming to an end. We are likely to see a Scottish political scene where Labour is dominant across both Westminster and the Scottish Parliament, returning to the double dominance of the early 2000s under Tony Blair in London and Donald Dewar in Edinburgh. Yet at the same time, the smaller political forces of conservatism, greenism and liberalism remain more relevant in Scotland now than they were in 2015 or 2000.
Whether the problems of stagnation, corruption, unresponsiveness, and centralisation will be doubly exacerbated by a political elite no longer, like the SNP, counter-hegemonic in its positioning is an open question. Additionally, the shortening intervals between eras of multi-party competition and dominant party rule (the SNP have only maintained a hegemony since 2011) suggest that any new dominant party system will be short-lived.
The long tenure of the Scottish Conservatives in the early 20th century and Labour from the 1960s points to an era of mass politics structured around the associational life of the Scottish churches and trade unions. Membership in both has massively declined over the last thirty years. The underlying structures of dominant party rule no longer exist as they once did in 21st-century Scotland. The SNP managed to temporarily replicate these organising mechanisms through an incredibly popular and mobilising campaign for independence.
However, as the motivational power of the 2014 referendum has waned, the SNP’s counter-elite have been unable to build the solid structures of party and association needed to maintain their dominance of Scotland. In this way, Scotland is much closer to its English cousins than once thought. The ‘naturally’ collective and communitarian politics of the Scottish people have vanished into thin air.
Instead, the SNP governs a European country like any other, struggling with the same geopolitical, economic, and structural problems inherited from the global politics of the 1980s and 1990s. While the counter-elites of Scottish New Labour and the SNP might have positioned themselves against the dominance of a Conservative-led Westminster, they have broadly succumbed to the larger global trends and norms of economic deregulation and globalisation set by America.
Samuel McIlhagga is a reporter and analyst covering foreign affairs, geopolitics, and political theory. He holds an MPhil in Political Thought from the Univeristy of Cambridge
The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the CGI or its contributors. The designations employed in this publication and the presentation of material therein do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the CGI concerning the legal status of any country, area or territory or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers.
