Keir Starmer’s team has been called upon to refute any Conservative allegations that Labor will be backed in the SNP government after the next general election by drawing early and clear “red lines” against any deal with the Scottish party.
A number of senior Labor figures in the 2015 election campaign – during which conservatives repeatedly claimed that Ed Miliband, the party leader at the time, would be dependent on the SNP – urged their leadership to counter this tactic well before the next election.
Some want the party to rule out a possible Scottish referendum during the next parliament or additional funding in exchange for SNP support.
Labor’s current position is that no deals will be made before or after the election, but officials are already considering how they can do more to counter Conservative attacks based on a potential link to the SNP.
The 2015 Miliband team said the Tories had “planted” them with allegations of a deal after opinion polls predicted huge gains from the SNP. A poster showed Miliband in the pocket of then-SNP leader Alex Salmond. The Labor team said it was appalled by the way the threat affected voters in their own focus groups.
Several told the Observer that the party must act now to counter the threat, long before the chaotic environment of a general election campaign. Douglas Alexander, who chaired the strategy for the 2015 general election and lost his seat in the SNP, was among those calling for early action.
A 2015 Conservative Party election poster featured Ed Miliband in the pocket of SNP’s Alex Salmond. Photo: Conservative Party / PA
“There is no economic coalition that the Conservatives can put together in the United Kingdom that makes any sense in time for the next general election,” he said. “So instead they will try to create a cultural coalition. Central to this will probably be even more appeals to English nationalism. Labor is in a stronger position to set out its position on the SNP than in 2015. The SNP has long since lost the momentum it enjoyed in the months since the 2014 independence referendum.
“My own instinct is that Labor can tackle the problem early on by making it clear in Scotland and across the UK that the way to get a Labor government is easy … vote for a Labor MP.
“It is quite possible to say:” The only coalition we are looking for is one with the voters. Labor will seek to issue its manifesto and other parties will have to choose whether to support us. ” Gaining this clarity in the minutes works both as a message for the campaign and as a management strategy. “
Other senior figures in the 2015 Labor campaign believe the party needs to go further. They said Miliband’s eventual declaration that there would be no deals had been “extracted from us” after initial attempts to fix the problem.
“I would try to draw clear red lines long before the election,” said one. “They must exclude a coalition. They must rule out a second referendum on independence. The other obvious area is the exclusion of extra money for Scotland outside the UK’s regulated resource balance. That would make a big difference. “
Some believe that while Labor needs to consider its response to this line of attack, the claim simply will not be as effective against Starmer’s party. The Labor leader is already vying with Boris Johnson over who people prefer to be prime minister – something Miliband never managed to achieve – and advisers do not think Starmer is perceived as weak in the same way.
Some sociologists also believe that the whole idea that the issue has sunk Miliband’s candidacy for number 10 is exaggerated, as in fact opinion polls overestimate the support of Labor throughout the campaign.
Ongoing polls do not pose a serious concern to voters. An Opinium survey for the Observer earlier this month found that when given a hypothetical choice, 46% would prefer a minority Labor government led by Starmer with the support of the SNP and Lib Dems, while only 32% would prefer a Tory government. led by Johnson. Meanwhile, 45% would prefer a Labor-Democrat coalition led by party leaders Starmer and Ed Davy, compared to 35% who would like to see a Tory government led by Johnson.
Many voters would be concerned about the prospect of Nicola Sturgeon holding power over the UK government. Photo: Murdo McLeod / Guardian
Members of the Labor team in 2015, who spoke to the Observer, agreed that Starmer should intervene early. One suggests that, as an alternative to excluding all SNP deals, Labor could include the party in a committee examining what an independent Scotland would look like, along with a package for further transfers.
“If a general majority seems unlikely, we will ask people to vote for a day-to-day minority government based on its seat,” they said. “This is a recipe for instability and new elections that will not be a popular prospect.
“The alternative is to say that everyone knows that at some point there will be a new referendum and the right way to proceed is to determine what options will be presented to people in detail, instead of voting for abstract concepts. On this basis, we could say that a movement of trust and supply is possible, as we had with the Liberals in the 1970s. There would be no SNP ministers and no special services either above or below the counter.
Some of Starmer’s team believe that any Tory attack focused on a “coalition of chaos” led by Labor has been undermined by Johnson’s chaotic leadership, the Tories’ deal with the DUP in 2017 and the fact that the SNP’s place in British policy is less relevant than in 2015. In fact, some are more concerned about the Tories’ assumption that the Labor left will ultimately influence Starmer.
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