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Among the many challenges facing Scotland’s incoming first minister Nicola Sturgeon, there is one any party leader would ostensibly be glad of.
With an unprecedented surge in membership after the country voted no to independence in last month’s referendum, the SNP is now the third largest party in the UK, with a tally of nearly 60,000 new members that is still rising.
When Sturgeon last week announced a country-wide tour – including the 13,000 capacity SSE Hydro in Glasgow – to meet these new members in advance of her confirmation as Alex Salmond’s successor at SNP conference next month, tickets sold out within days. The enthusiasm is palpable.
But how will the new leader of a party renowned for its sometimes robotic discipline and top-down approach manage the expectations of this chaotic influx, freshly politicised by the referendum campaign and the majority of whom it is safe to assume want independence to remain central to her agenda?
Buoyed by the wider yes movement’s often nebulous prospectus for a fairer, more socially just Scotland, this cohort will be expecting a much more radical, anti-austerity, anti-privatisation programme than the SNP has thus far delivered in government.
But, in her first interview with the Guardian since it was announced that she will be elected unopposed as SNP leader, and hence be formally confirmed as first minister by the Scottish parliament, Sturgeon insists: “This idea that I’m suddenly going to shift the centre of gravity ideologically of the SNP is wide of the mark.”
Though she has made no secret of being to the left of her predecessor, she adds: “I’m not suddenly going to try and dissociate myself from Alex Salmond or make it my defining job to prove how different I am.”
Jack McConnell, former Labour first minster, was not so coy this weekend when he described the shift in SNP leadership from a right-wing populist to a social democrat as making his own party’s challenge in winning back the confidence of the Scottish electorate even more difficult.
With Scottish Labour in ever greater disarray following a disastrous referendum campaign on top of recent Holyrood drubbings, senior figures acknowledge that many supporters will not be wooed back in next May’s general election simply by arguing that voting Labour remains the best way to keep the Tories out.
Sturgeon is certainly convincing when she says “the SNP of all of the parties is the one going into that election with greatest confidence and optimism”. Recent polling has put the nationalists as high as 45% in Westminster voting intention, while a TNS survey published on Friday found the SNP’s trust ratings on delivery of new powers are more than double those of Labour.
The question is whether she can translate this post-referendum peak into longer term, electorally canny support that might, she hints, make the SNP as critical to the Westminster landscape come May as UKIP. She describes the general election as “an opportunity to make sure Westminster doesn’t get to wriggle off the hook..[and].. to use the muscle and the might that we’ve got in the Scotland to make sure we’re not let down”.
Conversely, new SNP voters could exact their own price at the ballot box should Sturgeon fail to deliver speedily enough on a more radical agenda, along with the majority of no voters – and this includes SNP supporters – frustrated at a general election being turned into another vote on Scotland’s constitutional future.
With current Westminster focus on whether UKIP could hold the balance of power, a Guardian analysis suggests the party is likely to win five seats, and is a strong contender in 10 others. But YouGov’s Peter Kelner has predicted that an 8% swing to the SNP would cost Labour 19 seats in Scotland, with most recent polls showing even greater support for the nationalists.
Asked if she can imagine a scenario where it is the SNP, not UKIP, that holds the balance of power in Westminster, Sturgeon says: “We live in a multi-party system. There’s been a coalition in the UK for the last four years. It’s one of the reasons why the broadcasters’ proposals on the debates are so unacceptable. So, yes I can imagine being in a position where we are influential and we’re able to strike a blow for things we think are important.” Asked specifically about the unlikely possibility of coalition with a minority Labour administration, she is likewise evasive, but suggests: “There are ways in a Westminster scenario like that short of a formal coalition that you can make sure your influence is felt.” Nor does she rule out the possibility of a “yes alliance” of pro-independence parties to fight specific seats.
Although she repeats her intention to negotiate in good faith with the Lord Smith, who is heading the fast-tracked programme to draw up a package of new tax and welfare powers for Scotland by January, Sturgeon’s reiteration of the SNP narrative around Westminster parties’ “vow”, made on the front page of the Daily Record the day before the referendum, is steady. Despite initial research that suggests it was not hugely influential on voting intention, or the fact the vow itself does not promise devo-max, she insists it was sufficient to make the difference between a yes and no vote.
Although she still believes Scotland will become independent “at some stage in the future”, she says the decision to include another referendum in the party’s 2016 Holyrood manifesto will be determined by circumstances, including the delivery of more powers and the possibility of an EU referendum, and then – ultimately – by public opinion: “I’m not going to write our 2016 manifesto in the autumn of 2014.”
