With just 100 days to go until May’s Scottish Parliament election, Duncan McKay asks if the opposition parties are willing to be as ruthless as the party they all want to topple.
2016: where the opposition bring a knife to a gun fight
At the turn of the century, I was still a school pupil sitting my Highers. One of my Highers was Media Studies (I now work in communications, so maybe it wasn’t entirely wasted).
The vast majority of the year was spent examining Brian De Palma’s 1987 classic, The Untouchables. And by examining I mean watching the film over and over again. The novelty of watching the same film over and over during school time soon wears off I can assure you.
At this stage (and I appreciate you’re probably about two seconds away from clicking on another tab) you’re wondering what on earth Kevin Costner as Elliot Ness has to do with Scottish politics. Well, stick with me.
In one of the pivotal scenes (below), Sean Connery, (who unbelievably won an Oscar for his role in which, judging by his accent, he was simultaneously Scottish, Dutch, Irish, Canadian and American) is murdered by Al Capone’s mob.
His last words in the film are “Isn’t that just like a ***? Brings a knife to a gun fight”
And this is where the film draws a parallel with Scottish politics.
In this scenario the opposition parties are the ones bringing knives to gun fights. Two instances in the past month demonstrate this clearly.
Firstly, SNP Aberdeenshire West MSP Dennis Robertson made the following remarks in the chamber at the turn of the year: “The member has just mentioned a jobs crisis in the North Sea oil industry. There is no crisis… We have the most skilled workforce in the North Sea and the industry is booming.”
It’s believed that 65,000 people have lost their jobs either directly or through the supply chain since the start of 2014 in the oil and gas sector.
At the time there was some outrage from the opposition and Robertson offered his apologies the next day on his website the next day.
Opposition members such as Murdo Fraser tweeted, giving Robertson the benefit of the doubt:
A second incident took place last weekend where a senior SNP source told the Sunday Herald in relation to the UK Government’s Cadet Expansion Programme, “There’s no way we’re having this cannon fodder scheme in schools. It’s back to the days of General Wolfe and ‘No great mischief if they fall’.”
Many people have taken offence at the remarks, especially UK Government Ministers Michael Fallon and David Mundell, however, the story hasn’t gained much traction amongst the opposition parties at Holyrood.
Contrast these two examples with how the SNP behaves when opponents misspeak.
In September 2012, Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont gave a speech heralding a change in the way Scottish Labour would look at policy. She said “Scotland cannot be the only something for nothing country in the world.”
Whether or not you agree with Ms Lamont’s assessment, there was certainly a debate to be had about the merits of universal benefits in an era of stretched budgets.
Instead, the SNP focused ruthlessly on the “something for nothing” line and turned it into a point of attack (and has been used as recently as earlier this month).
The same episode repeated itself when Willie Bain, former Labour MP joked that Labour wouldn’t be supporting a motion in Parliament because the SNP were supporting it.
Now whether this had an element of truth about it or not, it didn’t matter. To the SNP, elected members and supporters alike, the so-called “Bain Principle” confirmed everything they thought of Scottish Labour. The Bain Principle alongside another off hand joke, Project Fear have become articles of faith for the SNP.
We have known for some years that the SNP’s campaigning machine was much stronger than the rest of the parties. It is impressive, professional and critically, ruthless. The SNP punish mistakes. Can the opposition parties say the same? On the evidence so far in this campaign for 2016 it doesn’t look likely.
In The Untouchables, Al Capone is captured after Elliot Ness has to adapt his methods in order to capture his nemesis. So far in 2016, there’s little evidence that the opposition parties are changing their methods to bring down their biggest foe.