Now unionists want to drive Scotland from the union

Election campaigns are distorting prisms. Partisan or otherwise, contentious opinion can quickly harden into received wisdom. Disputable beliefs become established fact. It has been happening in Britain in the approach to the general election. This week a televised debate between seven party leaders spoke to the profound structural shift in British politics. In 2010 putting three rather than two leaders on the screen seemed a constitutional novelty. Yet all the while the old guard pretends it is business as usual.

Take the debate about the economy. The Treasury-inspired canard that the fiscal deficit represents the only serious challenge to the nation's prosperity has somehow been inscribed on tablets of stone. You do not have to be much of an economist to see that a chronically weak productivity performance, a widening current account gap and stagnant wages are matters of much greater concern for voters.

No matter, a serious debate about how best to raise competitiveness and living standards has been replaced by a facile and futile squabble about whether the government should balance the budget in 2018 or 2020.

The more dangerous example of the received truths phenomenon centres on the advance of the Scottish National party. The surest bet on an otherwise unpredictable result is that the SNP will sweep the board in Scotland. For now, the nationalists hold six of the nation's 59 seats in the House of Commons. The polls say they will win at least 40, and maybe 50, on May 7. That could leave Nicola Sturgeon's party holding the balance of power in a hung parliament.

Whatever the precise arithmetic, the response of the Westminster establishment has been another holy commandment: in the likely event of an inconclusive election, Scotland's nationalists must be shunned. David Cameron has declared the SNP unfit to play any role in the governance of the union that is the United Kingdom. In the prime minister's phrase, how could supporters of the union consider working "with a bunch of people who would rip up the [union] flag given half a chance". Ed Miliband, Labour leader, half-concurs.

Last September's independence referendum was supposed to settle the Scottish question. It has done nothing of the sort. Reasonably enough, the 45 per cent of Scotland's voters who backed secession have not seen much incentive to switch their allegiance to unionist parties at the general election. If the goal is greater autonomy for the Edinburgh parliament, who better to pursue it at Westminster than the SNP?

Scots have been reinforced in the view by Mr Cameron's grudging response to the referendum result. True, the prime minister and other unionist leaders have published proposals to devolve significant powers to the Scottish parliament. But Mr Cameron has made any bargain contingent: if Scotland is to get self-government, so too must England, he declared from the steps of Downing Street on the very morning after the referendum. This was a gift to the SNP - to nationalist minds, proof positive that England's Tories cannot be trusted.

On the face of it, the inclusion of the SNP in a post-election coalition government at Westminster would be curious. Why would those set on leaving the union want to be part of running it? But turn the proposition around, and the idea of debarring the SNP looks more than absurd. How can the governing party in one of the four nations of the union (and one that may well emerge the third largest party in the House of Commons) be denied any place in the governance of the union? Locking out the SNP as a matter of practical politics is one thing; elevating this into a sacred principle would be to treat as worthless the votes of the people of Scotland. Why would they want to stay in such a union?

It is not as if Mr Cameron has taken a principled position. After all, Tory members of the Holyrood parliament helped sustain Alex Salmond's minority government between 2007 and 2011. More likely, England's Conservatives have concluded they have nothing more to lose in Scotland. Opposition to devolution and Margaret Thatcher's choice of Scotland as a laboratory for the poll tax long ago reduced the party's presence to a single Westminster MP.

The nationalists now have Labour and the Liberal Democrats in their sights. And, whisper it ever so quietly, Mr Cameron would be thrilled if Ms Sturgeon helped keep him in office by grabbing seats from Mr Miliband.

For his part, the Labour leader can scarcely claim the moral high ground. Labour has been largely the author of its looming demise. For decades its leadership treated Scotland as a rotten borough, a place to scoop up votes to propel it to office. With one or two honourable exceptions, the best and brightest in the Scottish Labour party have disdained Scottish politics for careers at Westminster. Even now, the best answer Labour has to the nationalist prospectus seems to be that a vote for the SNP could put Mr Cameron back in Downing Street.

Harried by Mr Cameron's attacks, Mr Miliband has said he too would refuse to include SNP ministers in any post-election coalition, though he has left the door half-open to a minority Labour government operating with the tacit support of nationalists. It is hard to imagine that the nation at large will recognise the distinction.

It may well be that the moment has passed - that it is too late to salvage the union and Britain is now marking time until a second referendum sees Scotland secede. What is clear is that an approach to the SNP that seeks to deny it a voice in the governance of the union is calculated to accelerate the present drift.

Messrs Cameron and Miliband are fighting the election as if nothing much has changed. The truth is that this week's TV debate, mostly dull in itself, spoke to a political landscape transformed by rising nationalisms and splintering allegiances. The union with Scotland can survive only under very different terms. And the established parties will soon enough have to learn to govern with new partners. Oh, and there is one more thing - the voters are tiring of old views dressed up as new facts.

[email protected]

© The Financial Times Limited 2015. All rights reserved.
FT and Financial Times are trademarks of the Financial Times Ltd.
Not to be redistributed, copied or modified in any way.
Euro2day.gr is solely responsible for providing this translation and the Financial Times Limited does not accept any liability for the accuracy or quality of the translation