Why the inevitability of an SNP victory is dangerous for our democracy

It was a slogan that came to my mind this week as we approached a Holyrood election in which it was all-but certain that the SNP would emerge as the largest party – and the lead party of government – once again. Is electoral “inevitability” something that we should desire?

At the heart of a healthy liberal democracy is the potential for change. Not every election needs to bring a change of government, but the longer a government goes on, the more likely it is that bad habits creep in. Open corruption is the extreme case, but complacency and self-interest (both conscious and unconscious) are more common and often just as harmful in the long-term.

For almost 20 years now we have had an SNP government in Holyrood. It is often remarked that this means there is a cohort of young voters – a growing number every day – who have never known anything other than SNP rule.

What is less-often remarked is that there is also a growing generation of civil servants and those working in government agencies and other organisations who have only ever served a nationalist government: SNP priorities, ways of working and ways of looking at the world. An unchanging, inevitable party of government leads politicians and the institutions they command to forget that their priorities and interests might not perfectly map onto the diverse and conflicting interests of our country.

As time goes on that distortion and disconnect is only likely to grow. When all parties essentially concede in advance that the SNP will form the next government – as has been the case in, at minimum, the last three elections – a corrosive sort of political logic starts to take shape: if you can’t beat them – join them.

This argument has played itself out in Scotland’s most northerly constituency in recent months. The SNP candidate in Shetland based her election campaign on the idea that the isles would be more likely to get investment from the Scottish Government if they had “a seat at the table” – that is, an SNP MSP. Only she could deliver a new hospital or tunnels for Shetland, because only she would have the inside route to government decision-making.

Implicit in that message, of course, is the assumption that the only possible “table” is a nationalist one. We cannot get rid of the SNP, so we must “go along to get along”, or risk being left behind.

You might think that it is wrong for investment in our communities to be predicated on the way we vote. If you know you have no lever to remove the SNP, however, can you blame people for thinking that knuckling under is the most rational response?

That seems to have been the calculation made by Shetlanders on Thursday, as they backed the SNP for the first time since devolution, and established that the “go along to get along” argument can be a winning one.

It seems that the SNP want us all to learn to desire the inevitable. Whether or not this is healthy for our democracy is another matter.

William Deans is Chief of Staff to Alistair Carmichael MP, and holds an MSc in Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict.