2023 will be about the battle between Labour and SNP

Along with power in Scotland, the reputation for infighting has since passed to the SNP, now 15 years in office and afflicted with disputes of its own. Alongside past conflicts within certain local parties, splits have persisted across the movement over the path to independence.

You could say the two parties are alike.

The values that Nicola Sturgeon espouses are largely Labour values. Under Nicola Sturgeon, the social justice mission of the SNP has been indistinguishable from Labour’s. Both parties have seized the importance of acting against climate change. Both parties champion equality. In essence, the SNP and Labour are family, the Romulus and Remus of Scottish politics, and that helps explain the depth of rivalry between them.

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The SNP has defined itself for years against the alien entity of a Tory Westminster government run predominantly by public school elitists, but with an election likely in 2024, this coming year in Scotland will be marked out by the family feud between two auld enemies, the SNP and Labour. At stake for Labour is a Scottish revival on the back of a UK-wide Labour surge; at stake for the SNP is the momentum of the independence struggle and their credibility as a force that can deliver it.

The prime targets for both sides are former Labour voters who now support the SNP.

The SNP’s December Budget had an eye to all this. It strengthened the SNP’s claim to be a party of the left, spiking Labour’s guns by introducing a 1p tax rise for higher earners and freezing tax thresholds. This was something of a necessity, with the SNP having to balance the books without borrowing powers, but a bitter decision for John Swinney and Nicola Sturgeon was made more palatable by the political advantage in it.

SNP unwillingness to increase taxes on the wealthy to support public services was a frequent Labour attack line during the Corbyn years. Labour used it to define itself as the true guardian of the struggling working classes, but this Budget has neutralised that. Scottish Labour in its Budget response was restricted to pressing the Scottish Government on how it would ensure value for money.

It’s hard to imagine Labour wanting to up the ante on further on tax rises in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, especially with Sir Keir Starmer tacking relentlessly to the centre.

But Anas Sarwar may not be too concerned. His focus is elsewhere. Since becoming leader, he has seemed less interested in tax-and-spend than in staking out Labour’s ground as the only party that can oust the Tories at Westminster. In October, he made Scottish Labour’s General Election pitch: “I don’t think there’s a majority in favour of independence, I don’t think there’s a majority that want a referendum next year, but neither is the majority for the status quo.

“There is a majority for change, and the change on offer in 2024, that next General Election, will be Labour.”

Acknowledging up front that Labour needed about one-tenth of SNP voters to switch to Labour to make significant seat gains in 2024, he has set his sights on former Labour voters who support independence: “We may disagree on the final destination for Scotland,” he argues, “but what we can all agree on is that this is a rotten, immoral, economically illiterate Tory government.”

It’s a better pitch than Labour has had in a long time.

The SNP’s response has been to decry Labour as a “Brexit-backing, democracy-denying, Tory-enabling party” (Ian Blackford), but come what’s likely to be a momentous election, that may not be enough to stop new-ish SNP voters backing Labour to kick out the Tories.

The SNP hope those voters can be persuaded to stay onside by insisting that the 2024 election is a vote on independence that should be treated with the reverence of a real referendum.

But it’s not clear whether voters will be prepared to play along. Nicola Sturgeon does not have the power to change a General Election into a referendum just by force of will. She may be regarded as a deity by some, but even she is not capable of constitutional transfiguration. All her plan can do is strengthen or weaken the SNP’s hand; it cannot deliver independence.

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Polling in November and December put support for leaving the UK on more than 50 per cent, but as ever, the polls are volatile and the substantial majority for independence Ms Sturgeon yearns for is simply not there.

If pro-independence support stayed at 50 or 52 per cent and everyone who backed it voted SNP, then it would fall far short of a decisive endorsement of independence, though it would make it harder for a new PM to deny there was a democratic mandate for a referendum. It would also deny Labour seats, meaning the party’s revival in Scotland came to nothing.

And if instead Scottish Labour took votes off the SNP, contributing to a Starmer victory at Westminster? Then the independence movement would probably falter. The fertile political conditions that yielded record high levels of support for independence for 14 years would be no more.

The toxic SNP-Tory co-dependency that has produced such pantomimish mutual antagonism, exploited for electoral gain by both sides, would cease to matter. A more simpatico Labour administration would take over, providing a more challenging sparring partner for Nicola Sturgeon and a more palatable government for fed-up Scots.

So we can expect tempers to flare over the coming year. Ms Sturgeon and Mr Sarwar may be united in their social justice objective, but they are divided over the route to achieving it. The irony is that a Labour government in London that worked closely and cooperatively with a nationalist government in Scotland is probably what a majority of voters would like to see.

Don’t hold your breath.