There were several factors in the SNP’s 2007 Holyrood power-grab. Not the least of these was the complacency, turning eventually to entitlement, that had come to settle on Labour’s Scottish contingent of MPs and MSPs.   

Voters in their traditional working-class strongholds began to sense this, encouraged by well-organised teams of SNP volunteers and activists who walked these streets at all hours of the day and night while the elected local Labour member slumbered in their Westminster claret cups. 

As the SNP began deploying a formidable arsenal of sophisticated electoral machinery to track voting patterns, street by street, house by house, a silent and clandestine transfer of power was occurring.  

You could see and hear this great tectonic shift in Scottish politics if you ventured into those neighbourhoods where it was happening. For me, it was embodied by an elderly Glaswegian who stopped for a chat at Parkhead Cross in the east end of the city just a few days before the 2015 UK election which would see the SNP win 56 out of the 59 Westminster seats in Scotland.  

This man had been a lifelong Labour supporter who was intending, very reluctantly, to vote for the SNP. He’d been pleased when Tony Blair led Labour back to power in 1997 after 18 years in the wilderness. He’d then grown increasingly disillusioned as the party had squandered its three-term majority. “They said they’d undo Margaret Thatcher’s anti-trade union legislation, but it never happened,” he said. He was also dismayed at the party’s drift to the right, exemplified by its obeisance to corporate interests. 

When will SNP members wake up to the big John Swinney 'Yes' swindle?

Victoria........

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