Should socialists vote for the SNP at 2015 general election?

[Pickman's model]

An independent Scotland has been thoroughly rejected, so the dream of a socialist Scotland can only be achieved with a socialist Westminster government, the SNP should just call themselves the Scottish Tories and try and win socialist votes that way.

fyi: the dream of a socialist scotland doesn't require a socialist westminster, it requires you to be unconscious

 

[DotCommunist]

The snp aren't a socialist party- a weakly soc/dec crumbs from the table sort of thing. Up to scots socialists how they vote I suppose but I wouldn't back the snp in 2015

 

[tony heath]

One could go back to 28 March 1979 and assassinate the SNP and it would in a completely different position to now. Sorry Tim Bellend.

 

[butchersapron]

The snp aren't a socialist party- a weakly soc/dec crumbs from the table sort of thing. Up to scots socialists how they vote I suppose but I wouldn't back the snp in 2015

They're not even a social democratic party. They never have been. The fallout from the 79-97 period and the reaction this got from the scottish electorate forced them to adopt certain bit of social-democratic garb - the easiest most populist bits - without altering their underlying conservative core set of aims/beliefs.

 

[J Ed]

Whoever (I think it was butchersapron?) said that Salmond was an election win away from becoming the Scots Nat equivalent of Nick Clegg was right.

Why wouldn't the Scottish left vote for the SSP?

 

[frogwoman]

No

Next

 

[littlebabyjesus]

But that's as much to do with the fact that they are (a) totemic policy of Scottish Devolution and (b) allow the SNP (and the LDs previously) to try and pretend it's different from the other three parties. If Scotland had become independent I'd have put good money on University fees being introduced. The lack of university fees and prescription charges shouldn't be chalked up to the SNP but rather the ability of the working class to use competing interests of the state/capital that devolution has brought about to work for it (which leads back onto Danny's point).

I think this is the best way to understand populist parties like the SNP and devolution. No party is ever going to win an election to a devolved regional assembly by offering people less than the rest of the country is getting. If they weren't delivering something, what would justify the assembly's existence?

 

[ayatollah]

I think this is the best way to understand populist parties like the SNP and devolution. No party is ever going to win an election to a devolved regional assembly by offering people less than the rest of the country is getting. If they weren't delivering something, what would justify the assembly's existence?

Quite so, littlebabyjesus. It is ironic that if the Scots Nats had actually won the Referendum they would pretty soon have been forced to reveal their true neoliberal colours, by a currency crisis, sundry other "punishments" by the financial markets, and a need to renegotiate EU entry and hence eventually adopt the Euro and the budgetary straightjacket imposed by the ECB. This would have led the SNP government to impose over a year or so a "Greek Style" slashing of the public sector budget and wage cuts and redundancies in the public sector that the Tory/Lib/NuLabour neoliberals at Westminster can only imagine in their wet dreams.

Having lost the referendum however the SNP is now free to posture "Left" to what I suspect will be an extraordinary degree - demanding that the Scottish budget is ringfenced from ANY of the forthcoming massive additional Austerity Offensive cuts to be implemented in England and Wales. Although I think "No" was politically the correct position for socialists to hold, I think the "No" vote actually gives the SNP (and their "socialist" Left Nationalist fellow travellers) a considerably extended time to confuse and divide workers in Scotland from united action with their fellow workers in England and Wales. Most English/Welsh workers won't be "inspired" by the demands of the Scots for special treatment as the Left nationalists hope - they'll just see it as a small minority of inhabitants of this island getting unfair preferential treatment - and the Tory press will ensure that is the attitude most often projected - leading to the equally reactionary demands for an "English Parliament for the English" - a gift for UKIP. What gets smothered and lost in all this nationalistic argy bargy is any sense of multinational working class solidarity - in fact any understanding of the objective centrality of class at all.

 

[Lo Siento.]

why don't the RIC stand as a party?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Unfortunately, the constitutional imbalance caused by devolution is very evident. I agree that demands for an English parliament are reactionary, but the so-called 'West Lothian' question is real enough. Tam Dalyell has said recently that the only way to solve that question is to scrap the Scottish parliament and reinvigorate regional democracy. I think he's technically right, but that scrapping the Scottish parliament now would be politically impossible. The wrecking of local government is yet another part of the poisonous legacy of Thatcher.

 

[ayatollah]

UOTE="Lo Siento., post: 13420477, member: 30264"]why don't the RIC stand as a party?[/QUOTE]
I understand the component grouplets of RIC ARE intending to soon explore getting together collectively as a radical Left party supporting Scottish independence. I would have thought just joining the SNP en masse to form its "Radical Left" wing would have given this collection of individuals and grouplets more access to "ordinary people" in SNP branches to spread their "Leftish" message. I suspect the odds and sods who compose RIC will be very disappointed at the small numbers of Scots workers motivated by the crass petty nationalist exuberance of the "Yes" campaign such as to want to engage with a bunch of very disparate (or is that "desperate" ?) Left nationalists (who often claim to be "Marxists" too) outside of the hegemonic vehicle for petty nationalism , the SNP.

Yes., I agree, littlebabyjesus, the "west Lothian question" is a very real constitutional issue - and the related issue now with "Devo Max" of "too many" Scottish (mostly Labour) Westminster MPs is very real too. I suspect out of all this the demise of Labour as the mass party of the working class will have been brought forward quite a few years. The "West Lothian" question can be temporarily dealt with via a "English" matters" grand Committee of the House of Commons - but that wont sort it out in the long term. The British (unwritten) Constitution has always been a Buggers Muddle - now it's a complete shambles. The role of the unelected House of Lords, packed out by corrupt businessmen and old political cronies, in a supposed Bourgeois Democracy, is even more untenable too than it was before.

 

[redcogs]

i understand (and to a degree, share) the reaction against offering tactical support to nationalist organisations, even left nationalists like the SNP, whose track record has been reasonable under Salmond's canny leadership. i assume this to be because we mostly recognise that as circumstances change, (probably for the worse), that there will likely be a rightward shift in the SNP, away from the promotion of its current social democratic emphasis, towards a harder far less cuddly politics that might result in an encouragement of anti English sentiment and other forms of division, including racism.

But who amongst us actually believes that Sheridan does not also share this understanding - its a commonplace on the left.

Tommy is no fool. He has occasionally been foolhardy (maybe), and his (alleged) lapse into recklessness has been a serious setback for what was a healthy socialist voice in Scottish affairs. But i'm a bit concerned that the history of all that business and the sometimes sectarian falling out might now be preventing a dispassionate hearing for Sheridan's suggested way forward.

i hear the calls for the creation of a new Left organisation, and certainly i would be sympathetic to such an initiative if one were to spontaneously erupt out of the still resonating Yes campaign. But we can't just ignore that the main beneficiaries of Scottish anger has been the SNP, who have increased in size enormously this past few weeks. The SNP are not socialist, this we know, but they are no more and no less business orientated and neo liberal in their economics than the Labour Party, whose negative role in the referendum and their failure to confront austerity politics appears to have lost it the respect of many of their core working class supporters. Serves the fuckers right. Many socialists who contribute on these boards have worked with Labour people on all sorts of campaigns for all sorts of reasons. i see no objective reason for not doing the same - temporarily - with the Left nationalist SNP. After all, as many have pointed out - it would only be a tactic.

 

[danny la rouge]

It's (apparently) worth pointing out that the SNP didn't take any Labour votes last week, nor did the SNP lose the referendum; the SNP weren't on the ballot paper.

As I've said in the big thread, there's no point in the left, the SNP or anyone else extrapolating party votes from referendum votes.

 

[danny la rouge]

dispassionate hearing for Sheridan's suggested way forward.

It's not Tommy's idea. He's just articulating what many others have already said all over the social media. So the idea can have a fair hearing without Tommy sullying it.

As for Labour getting a drubbing, I'd enjoy that. In many places they had long lost the working class vote, not to another party, but to non voting. They have long been a party of the middle class, and have no claim on the description "progressive", far less socialist or social democratic. But I won't be voting SNP.

 

[redcogs]

i didn't imagine that the Sheridan voice is uniquely original danny.

i only became aware that he was promoting the idea of a tactical vote for the SNP at the general election when our angry 16 year old told us about it (when she also revealed her intention of joining the SNP!). Having failed in my parental duty to transmit socialist understandings to my offspring, you can imagine that this matter has provoked in me a certain curiosity.

Try as i might, i can't believe that having an ScotNat daughter would be any worse than having one who supported Labour with her money.

Hopefully her current nationalist enthusiasms will dwindle when she tires of being confined to her bedroom for the next three months

 

[danny la rouge]

i only became aware that he was promoting the idea of a tactical vote for the SNP at the general election when our angry 16 year old told us about it (when she also revealed her intention of joining the SNP!). Having failed in my parental duty to transmit socialist understandings to my offspring, you can imagine that this matter has provoked in me a certain curiosity.

There's been quite a rash of SNP joining. The young will do what they do. She'll grow out of it, it's to be hoped. I joined the Labour Party at her age (well, the LPYS), for crying out loud!

However, it's hardly tactical voting, actually joining the party! Unless there's some entryist thing going on, is there?

 

[butchersapron]

Where, btw are these people Sheridan calls to vote Nationalist switching from to do their tactical vote? Who is Sheridan's market and how big is it?

 

[redcogs]

According to the socialist worker account of the world 25 thousand people were directly addressed by Sheridan during the Hope not Fear campaign.

Hardly enough to produce any significant electoral landslides.

BTW, i'd be embarrassed about using the language of the "market". Whats wrong with demographic or summat else posh

 

[ferrelhadley]

the contrast between what the people in Scotland I know are talking about and what the patronising, smug internet waddicles of urban 75 are telling each other they are all about.

It must be such a burden to be such a bunch of intellectual giants and no one will listen too you ((((urbanz))))

 

[danny la rouge]

what the people in Scotland I know are talking about

Go on?

 

[redcogs]

the contrast between what the people in Scotland I know are talking about and what the patronising, smug internet waddicles of urban 75 are telling each other they are all about.

It must be such a burden to be such a bunch of intellectual giants and no one will listen too you ((((urbanz))))

The first thing that i heard this morning (as i emerged from a rather unsatisfactory sleep) was Mrs redcogs lamenting "I wish we had won independence"..

She works at a care home for people who have become too old or infirm to cope with independent living, and is one of Scotland's low paid but crucial workers. She knows how most of her colleagues voted last week (because she communicates with them), and really believed that everyone would benefit in some way by having governments that reflected the way we had voted in future elections. She remains really disappointed with the outcome, and is still angry.

i reckon there are plenty people 'out there' who are the same, feeling cheated and let down. It would be smug and patronising to ignore that reality - which is why its good to discuss a potential way forward.

 

[redsquirrel]

i reckon there are plenty people 'out there' who are the same, feeling cheated and let down. It would be smug and patronising to ignore that reality - which is why its good to discuss a potential way forward.

Yes it would, but it's equally patronising to write off NO voters as Tories, as dupes, as Daily Mail readers etc.

EDIT:

and really believed that everyone would benefit in some way by having governments that reflected the way we had voted in future elections

Do you really believe that this would have happened if YES and won?

Well, since I have no interest in devo max, I'm out. Cheers.

Hi Danny do you mind expanding on this. Is it because you don't see devo max providing a tool which the working class can use or you just feel that you're better off putting effort into other campaigns? Or something else entirely?

 

[redcogs]

Yes it would, but it's equally patronising to write off NO voters as Tories, as dupes, as Daily Mail readers etc.

EDITo you really believe that this would have happened if YES and won?

Hi Danny do you mind expanding on this. Is it because you don't see devo max providing a tool which the working class can use or you just feel that you're better off putting effort into other campaigns? Or something else entirely?

i hope i've not created an impression that i believe NO voters are Conservatives or duped mail readers. i know a few people who are declared NO voters who are 'left of centre' types, no doubt there are many many who are similar.

i do believe that we would benefit from governments that we had voted for, but its the democratic principle that is most important. Having endless Tory governments that we didn't elect was disastrous.

 

[butchersapron]

i hope i've not created an impression that i believe NO voters are Conservatives or duped mail readers. i know a few people who are declared NO voters who are 'left of centre' types, no doubt there are many many who are similar.

i do believe that we would benefit from governments that we had voted for, but its the democratic principle that is most important. Having endless Tory governments that we didn't elect was disastrous.

Maybe you'd like PR - let the people speak. That's what democracy is right? Come on, i thought you were a hardened IS socialist?

 

[redsquirrel]

i hope i've not created an impression that i believe NO voters are Conservatives or duped mail readers.

Don't worry you haven't not given that impression at all, but some YES voters definitely have.

i do believe that we would benefit from governments that we had voted for, but its the democratic principle that is most important. Having endless Tory governments that we didn't elect was disastrous.

Ah, sorry I misread your post, I thought you were talking about people actually being able to bring about a change through the ballot box.

 

[redcogs]

i would prefer PR, but i don't kid myself that that would be a proper substitute for working people directly controlling their workplaces and having recallable delegates to regional and national councils. i suppose that does make me a bit bolshevik.

But these days the "hardened" bit has sort of transmuted to soft and cuddly (unless pushed).

 

[redcogs]

Don't worry you haven't not given that impression at all, but some YES voters definitely have.

Ah, sorry I misread your post, I thought you were talking about people actually being able to bring about a change through the ballot box.

nae probs redsquirrel.

 

[danny la rouge]

Hi Danny do you mind expanding on this. Is it because you don't see devo max providing a tool which the working class can use or you just feel that you're better off putting effort into other campaigns? Or something else entirely?

Both, but primarily the former.

Tinkering with the institutions of "representative democracy" doesn't interest me. I don't think campaigning for or achieving "devo max" will in any way facilitate social change. "Devo max" is a scheme for the political management of the British state. It isn't a class accommodation event like the setting up of the NHS or the Welfare State. And the British State now says it favours some form of enhanced devolution, so no holes are opened in the ramparts of the state; at the moment I can see no advantage in pursuing it. I'll leave it to those involved in electoralism to "hold the Westminster Parties' feet to the fire" over what the terms of the "enhanced devo" settlement are. But that dance is mere electoralism, and not something I feel the need to be involved in.

 

[Pickman's model]

the contrast between what the people in Scotland I know are talking about and what the patronising, smug internet waddicles of urban 75 are telling each other they are all about.

It must be such a burden to be such a bunch of intellectual giants and no one will listen too you ((((urbanz))))

this seems a variation on the millions of pms of support.

 

[danny la rouge]

Here you go, butchersapron