Ernest Hemingway noted that there were two ways to go bankrupt: “gradually, and then suddenly”. This is also how governing coalitions often end – and in the case of the abrupt divorce between Scotland’s Scottish National Party (SNP) and the Scottish Green Party, with ill feeling on both sides.
Humza Yousaf, the embattled SNP leader, says the deal has “served its purpose”. Given the ongoing beef about how to align the SNP’s aim to compete for moderate centrist votes against Labour and the Scottish Greens implacability on climate and conservation issues, as well as forays into identity politics, this was really a case of Yousaf rushing for the exit before the minor partner ditched him.
As a result, the Greens’ co-leaders Lorna Slater and Patrick Harvie have been ousted from ministerial roles. It is the political equivalent of a Gloria Gaynor goodbye – “Go, walk out the door” – with both sides blaming the other and the Greens hurling charges of “cowardice” and “betrayal” at the SNP.
This is both a very Scottish story and a warning about the limits of progressive alliances and their limitations when it comes to actually wielding power. In 2021, the SNP needed a partner, having failed to win an outright majority.
But this was also an affinity hailed as a great leap forward – a “cast iron mandate”, according to then First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, to unite around Scottish independence. It also earnt applause from many on the soft (and less soft) Left in England, hankering to show that a form of rainbow coalitions could govern in harmony and provide a convenient template for anti-Brexit alliances.
It has, to put it mildly, not worked out like that. Yousaf is clearly keen to distance himself from Sturgeon, who was arrested and questioned but released without charge in the fraud inquiry which has just seen her husband, the SNP’s former chief executive Peter Murrell, charged in connection with alleged embezzlement of party funds. Yousaf is a Sturgeon protégé who has been faced with the unenviable task of keeping loyalists to her legacy on board. And let’s remember that it is not so long since Sturgeon was a pin-up for liberals in the Angela Merkel mode of being exempt from much critical inquiry by her devotees.
Labour is now on the march and targeting Scotland’s Central Belt seats. Another Independence referendum is looking less likely in the near future as Keir Starmer has committed to keeping the Union intact. There is growing impatience with the SNP’s record in power on matters from lacklustre healthcare and education outcomes, to improvements to the “ferry fiasco” of vastly mishandled contracts and a commitment to using liquefied natural gas fuel in ferries which has ended up having questionable environmental benefits (liquefied gas is imported from Qatar to a terminal in Kent, then driven to Scotland).
In truth, while both parties claim to be environmentally sound, one is a lot more fundamentalist than the other on what this means, and which costs have to be borne. That led to targets being set arbitrarily to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 75 per cent by 2030, which Scottish ministers have now admitted cannot be reached and the focus set instead on 2045. This has the advantage of being so far ahead that someone else can be blamed, usually the government in London, if it proves hard to meet. It has also proved the nail in the coffin of the SNP-Green alliance.
The bust-up is about a lot more than climate policies, however. Progressive alliances are fragile when it comes to how far to foreground identity politics and the Scottish Greens attachment to the wilder shore of gender ideology has alienated many senior voices in the party, including the forthright Edinburgh MP Joanna Cherry.
Cherry tweeted that the separation means “Out with identity politics and virtue signalling. In with policies to tackle the bread-and-butter issues that our constituents are bringing up on the doorsteps.”
That is also a sign of deeper concern about the SNP’s electoral fortunes: the more the party is embroiled in clashes over gender recognition and puberty blockers (the Green’s co-leader Patrick Harvie refuses to endorse the Cass review of gender services for children and adolescents), the more the SNP is dragged into territory where there is an uneasy coalition of centre-left attitudes – and an overdose of woke ideology.
A built-in contradiction applies to how parties of the traditional centre-left and Greens see things. A small but telling example is the Greens’ attempt to ban the harvesting of sandeels (used to make fishmeal and fish oils), infuriating the fishing industry which claimed it will cost jobs and lead to reliance on Chinese imports.
SNP politicians have been uneasy at the pursuit of such blanket ban policies, which downgrade commercial interests or feel like impositions on coastal communities. Similar schisms have weakened Germany’s governing coalition, where Greens and Social Democrats are in an increasingly difficult marriage and often locally at loggerheads over development and conservation.
For the SNP, this is a key re-set ahead of what looks like a bruising general election. Yousaf, a leader who has never quite defined himself out of the shadow of the Sturgeon hegemony, is free of arguments with a partner party over sandeels and identity rights. The question is whether this comes too late to save his leadership when the general election puts that to the test.
Scotland’s deputy Labour leader Jackie Baillie talked today of a “chaotic and incompetent government, falling apart before our eyes,” which does not feel like an unfair conclusion. This progressive alliance turned into an unhappy co-dependency where the participants really wanted different things. It’s all over, bar the shouting and the Gloria Gaynor classic playing on a loop.
Anne McElvoy hosts the Power Play podcast for Politico
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