Who's "Anti-Scottish", Now?

SNP advertisement from the 2007 election.

     This week, the SNP unveiled its plans for local government taxation should it win the Scottish parliamentary election in May.

     Under the proposed changes, households within the four highest Council Tax bands will have to pay more for the funding of councils; specifically, those living in the average home at the lowest of these bands (Band E) will pay an extra £105 per year, while those living in the highest band (Band H) will be paying extra £517 per year. For everyone else in Scotland – those who live in homes within the lowest bands of A through D – there will be no changes to how much they pay.

     The biggest revelation by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was that the package included the end of the Council Tax freeze in 2017 – ten years after the SNP implemented it when it came to power for the first time. The freeze was conducted under the pretense of helping all taxpayers by providing tax relief and it has been funded by the Scottish Government, which provided the money on the condition that the local councils did not change Council Tax rates (i.e., the “freeze”). However, the initiative has been criticized – including by the SNP government’s own poverty “czar” – for disproportionately benefiting those on higher incomes and living in larger homes at the expense of funding for public services.

     Sturgeon has claimed that the move to make those in the higher property bands pay more will raise £100 million for education initiatives, whilst the end of the Council Tax freeze and giving councils the ability to vary it by 3% per year will allow them to raise another £70 million for public services.

     In addition, those who are asset-rich but cash-poor – living in higher band homes on low incomes, such as pensioners – will be entitled to an exemption, and there will be relief across all property bands – particularly families with children. The First Minister further claimed that the charges for those in all bands will still be lower than of the freeze were not in place, average rates will remain lower than those in England, and that there were no plans for revaluation of properties, which are still taxed based on valuation from 1994.

     In many ways, this seems all well and good – getting rid of the prolonged freeze to give councils more breathing room and making changes to the overall system to make it “fairer”.

     However, it amounts to an overall tinkering with the present system, which is something they had criticized doing in years past. In fact, heading into the 2007 Holyrood election, Nicola Sturgeon as deputy leader of the SNP had said: “the Council Tax is unfair and cannot be improved by tinkering around the edges.” She had made this statement following the announcement by the Scottish Tories under then-leader Annabel Goldie that if elected, they would retain the Council Tax system with a discount for pensioners.

     To be fair, the Council Tax as been criticized throughout the United Kingdom by people of all persuasions. It was cobbled together by John Major’s government following the disastrous debacle over the Community Charge (aka, Poll Tax) which provoked a campaign of nonpayment, as well as riots and helped to bring down his predecessor, Margaret Thatcher. Council Tax has not generated such feeling as the Poll Tax, but is still considered unfair and regressive in many quarters as a means of funding local government.

     However, in responding to the Conservatives’ policy on retaining the Council Tax, Nicola Sturgeon went further in her criticism by calling them “anti-Scottish” for wanting to do so. Specifically, she said: “The anti-Scottish Tories have clearly run out of ideas as this is not the first time they have announced this policy.” Her party campaigned in 2006 and 2007 on a pledge to abolish the “unfair Council Tax” in Scotland and replace it with a “fairer local income tax where over half a million pensioners pay nothing and most will pay significantly less.”

     In May 2007, the SNP won the parliamentary election and formed a government for the first time, and they instituted the Council Tax freeze as a precursor to their objective of permanently replacing it.

     Once they got to the nuts and bolts of crafting policy however, they quickly realized that a local income tax was insufficient and undesirable; insufficient – because it could not be enough to bear the weight of funding local government, and undesirable – because it would have to be set by Holyrood and thus erode local accountability.

     Given these concerns, the SNP went into the 2011 election saying it would: “consult with others to produce a fairer system based on ability to pay to replace the council tax and we will put this to the people at the next election, by which time Scotland will have more powers over income tax.” Following that election, the cross-party Commission on Local Tax Reform was created during the current parliament and presented its recommendations in December – calling for the end of the Council Tax.

     In the wake of this, the SNP decided to forgo an all-out replacement of the Council Tax and instead, opted for the position of merely tweaking and reforming the current system.

     As Brian Taylor of the BBC noted, it has been a “long, slow retreat” for the SNP on this issue, and having placated the people with the nine year freeze, they now hope that this modest, moderate plan will be enough to satisfy the voters in thinking that they have kept their promise of producing “a fairer system based on ability to pay”, even if they failed to “replace the council tax.”

     Possibly the greatest irony of this climb-down from abolition is that the policy decided upon by the SNP shares much similarity with the recommendations offered by the tax commission created by the Conservatives. Tartan Tories, indeed.

     However, this may not matter for the election that occurs in two months. Indeed, one of my acquaintances on Twitter, who goes under the name “El Del” (@Del_ivered), believes that the very modesty of the proposed changes only further ensures the SNP’s reelection prospects. Specifically, he notes how the ability of councils to raise tax by 3% may actually be the SNP effectively passing on some of its ability to tax from Holyrood on to those councils, so that councils are left with the decision to raise council taxes for public services, but income taxation in Scotland stays the same as in the rest of the United Kingdom.

     This is important, because Labour and the Liberal Democrats have been advocating for increase in income taxes in Scotland in the belief that it may be attractive to some voters who believe that people – especially those of a higher income – ought to pay more for the benefit of public services. Not only does Del contend that they fell into a Nationalist trap, but they were “so hellbent on unleashing their tax missile at the SNP, they were blind to the vital bigger picture: Keeping [the] UK a level playing field and Westminster budgets relevant to Scots.”

     In this light, he further asserted that while the SNP does not “care a whit for UK cohesion”, they also did not wish to see talent drain away from Scotland to other parts of the UK due to tax differentials and that “calls for worker solidarity across the UK at the indy referendum were forgotten as [Kezia] Dugdale and [Willie] Rennie were happily prepared to make Scotland the highest-taxed part of Britain.”

     Having avoided this and for achieving a “reformed” (i.e., “tinkered”) Council Tax system, Del believes that pointing to broken promises by the SNP on abolishing and replacing it will prove to be ineffective because voters care about the here and now.

     However, pointing out this broken promise on Council Tax replacement is necessary when one realizes the circumstances of the election in 2007. To be sure, there were many things going on which help to explain why Labour lost power to the SNP that year, but this was still an election in which the SNP only beat Labour by one seat to form a minority government in Edinburgh. Given how close this election was in some individual constituencies (not to mention the irregularities and various voting/counting/ballot paper issues – possibly most infamously in Cunninghame North) and in the Scotland-wide result, it is possible that the “abolish and replace” promise was probably enough to help the SNP to power for the first time. Looking back, this election proved consequential, for it eventually led to the referendum, further constitutional upheaval, and nine years of SNP rule (with the last five years as a majority government). Without that promise, it is possible that Labour would have held on to power. At the very least, enough votes against the SNP would probably have kept it from attaining power that year, and all things being equal, prevented the madness of past nine years.

     Another issue is the fact that Sturgeon called the Conservatives “anti-Scottish” for taking the very position that that her party is now promoting: retaining the Council Tax system with some adjustments. Furthermore, during the 2011 election, senior SNP MSP Humza Yousaf tweeted that Scottish Labour was "betraying Scotland" by not lending its support for "scrapping the unfair Council Tax." Well, what does this make the SNP? As Euan McColm said recently in The Scotsman, "there's something troubling about the othering of politicians by opponents. It speaks of a pettiness that's a world away from the talk of consensus and working together that we so often hear."

     For that matter, if certain powers are not to be used because of the resulting disadvantage to Scotland (and the benefit of the rest of the UK), then what is the purpose – the need – for devolution, more powers, the recent struggle over the fiscal framework, or even separation? Indeed, this would seem to take the argument for the Union, as I explained a couple of weeks ago. Again, the SNP may not care about the unity of the UK, but they have paradoxically emerged as a UK unity party.

     Then again, it probably comes down to a simple fact: nobody likes paying taxes, and when they do pay taxes, they’d rather not pay any more. Even when they say they believe in higher taxes to fund public services in surveys and polls, so often, they vote according to their pocket books and not their political or social ideals – in other words, they usually vote according to their own economic self-interest.

     This may prove difficult to understand for people such as Lesley Riddoch, who seem to be wondering why the SNP is timid in its ambitions for local taxation. Why, they ask, is the SNP passing up an opportunity to really shake up the system of local taxation and come up with something new, innovative, and radical? The reason why is that Scotland is not as radical as she thinks or hopes, and the SNP knows this. Like most political parties, they don’t want to “scare the horses” (i.e., the middle classes, who tend to decide elections) so that they can stay in power. Indeed, some of those within Middle Scotland (a close cousin of Middle England) who benefitted from the freeze may well be shocked at having to pay more after nine years of frozen rates.

     In addition, as Brian Taylor pointed out, the SNP knows that any major change in local government taxation will be first such change since the advent of the Poll Tax, and we all know where that went.

     This brings up the important fact that there are no plans for a revaluation of properties, which means that Council Tax bills will be based on valuations from over 20 years ago – and that current property values are not accounted for and some people are effectively paying at a discounted rate. This sounds similar to what happened in the 1980’s when the Tories kept putting off what they knew would be unpopular revaluations and increases in the old domestic rates, until they couldn’t any longer (especially in Scotland) and decided to solve this problem by introducing…the Poll Tax.

     It is perhaps possible that similar conditions are being produced which will eventually force the SNP to move further on local taxation than it has thus far. For the moment however, they seem content with more-or-less adopting the position on local taxation taken by Tories in that consequential election of 2007. Who’s “anti-Scottish”, now?

Voting As One on Europe

Britain's Union Flag and the EU Flag. Image Credit: Dave Kellam via Flickr CC

     The campaign on Britain’s membership of the European Union well and truly got underway last week as Prime Minister David Cameron announced the date of the referendum to be June 23rd.

     With modified membership terms, the British people will have their first say on Europe since overwhelmingly voting in favor of joining the EU’s predecessor, the European Economic Community (EEC, or the Common Market) 41 year ago, and the campaign promises to be a passionate and contentious battle between those who believe the UK’s future is in the 28-member bloc and those who believe that it will be better off outside of it.

     As it currently stands, most opinion polls show that the British public are almost evenly divided on the issue, and there still substantial numbers of people who remain on the fence. From now until the day of the vote itself, there will be robust arguments and counter-arguments, claims and counter-claims for and against EU membership. Only then will those on the fence have to make a decision based on what’s best for themselves, their families, and their country – and everyone will render their collective verdict on whether to keep the membership or terminate it.

     In an ideal world, there ought to be a supermajority requirement, so that in order for a vote in favor of changing the status quo (terminating membership, that is) to be valid, there would have to be substantially more than 50% plus one in favor of it, so as to ensure that when the decision is made, the vast majority of the population will be behind it.

     Alas, this is not going to happen unfortunately, and so a simple majority will suffice. However, it should be more realistic to believe that whichever way the vote goes in total, the result ought to be respected, and the people of the UK should accordingly move forward as one.

     However, this basic notion of democracy has been questioned by – you guessed it – the SNP. Indeed, it is no secret that the Nationalists have been banging on about calling another independence referendum should the UK as a whole vote to terminate its EU membership but the majority of Scots vote the other way.

     To be sure, the most opinion polls have showed that at the very least, Scots are more likely to vote in favor of the EU than their fellow Britons in other parts of the UK – England in particular, and the strength of the English “Leave” vote may well be enough to take Britain out of the EU without a majority of Scots backing it. This, claim the Nationalists and their supporters, will amount to Scotland being “dragged out of the EU against its will” and thus force the independence issue back to the surface – not that it really went away even after the decisive self-determination of Scots to keep the UK together – by giving Nicola Sturgeon the “material change” or “trigger” she has cited as the grounds for calling another referendum. Such an outcome, the theory goes, will result in Scotland voting for independence in order to stay in (or re-enter) the EU because the overall UK vote on the EU failed to go the way the majority of Scots wanted.

     This attempt to effectively achieve the break-up of the UK by taking advantage of potential voting differences on Europe is not new, for the SNP tried this during the 1975 referendum when it was against the Common Market and hoped that Scotland would vote “No” to the EEC while the overall UK voted “Yes”. According to a working paper from the Sussex European Institute by Valeria Tarditi, the SNP viewed that referendum as a way to prove the “illegitimacy of the British government and its policies in Scotland”, and they hoped “that the opinions expressed by the Scottish people would be totally different from the rest of the UK and, above all, that in Scotland there would be a clear majority that opposed EC membership.”

     As it was, the SNP hopes for this were shattered as Scots voted with their fellow Brits in favor of the Common Market – perhaps indicating that they viewed the EEC issue on its own merits, rather than seeking to use it for other means, as was noted by Labour MP John Mackintosh on the BBC as the results of that referendum were coming in.

     Now the modern-day SNP is pro-EU, but the rhetoric with regard to how the rest of the UK feels about it has not changed, and with the date for the referendum set, they have been ratcheting up their saber-rattling by repeatedly talking up the possibility of another independence referendum at virtually every chance they get. Nicola Sturgeon has said that the UK leaving the EU without a majority of Scots will “almost certainly” trigger a second referendum and her predecessor Alex Salmond said that the pressure for it would be “irresistible.”

     Along the way, the Nationalists have whined about the chosen referendum date – given that it takes place a month-and-a-half after the Scottish parliamentary elections, and therefore causes the two campaigns to overlap. Such overlapping, they have claimed, is just another “Westminster insult” toward the Scottish people. However, it’s more likely an insult to the Scottish people (along with the Welsh, Northern Irish, and the English – who hold assembly, local council, mayoral, and police commission elections on the same day as the Holyrood election) to say that they cannot be trusted to differentiate the two campaigns, just as they were able to do five years ago when they gave the SNP a majority in Holyrood while also voting in the UK-wide AV referendum.

     In the end, as Alan Cochrane noted in the Telegraph, “David Cameron was always going to hold the vote when he thought he’d the best chance of winning”, just as Alex Salmond – with Sturgeon supporting him – chose September 18, 2014 as the optimal date for holding the Scottish referendum.

     With regard to the upcoming EU referendum, this griping about the date, the potential outcome, and the fact the referendum is even being held is partly an exercise in SNP party management, because as also noted by Cochrane, the Nationalist First Minister of Scotland is on the same side of the EU debate as the Tory Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and having successfully bludgeoned the Labour Party over “standing shoulder-to-shoulder” with the Tories in common cause to save the Union and swelling the ranks of her party in the process, Sturgeon feels the need to put clear water between herself and David Cameron. To keep the more zealous of her party onside therefore, she picks fights with Cameron and the UK Government, and always reminds everyone that “Brexit” will likely result in agitations for “indyref2”.

     In this vein, the SNP and those minded towards them have for years been trying to write off the EU question as the obsessions of Westminster, the Tories, UKIP, and the English. Not only is this cheek given their own constitutional obsessions, but it is a false premise given that around 60% of Scots are themselves “Euroskeptic” – slightly lower than the overall UK proportion – according most recent British Social Attitudes Survey. Nevertheless, it suits them to hype up the differences between England and Scotland, so as to further their independence agenda and claim that Scotland will be dragged out of the EU via English votes.

     However, as former Labour MP Tom Harris bluntly wrote in his own column in the Telegraph, the reality regarding the EU debate and referendum is this: “it’s not all about you, Scotland.” Indeed, having watched as a “significant minority of Scots took to the airwaves and the doorsteps to explain their desire for a divorce from them” during the two year long independence referendum campaign, their “English, Welsh and Northern Irish compatriots have displayed a patience above and beyond what might be required of fellow citizens.” Now that the UK is having a referendum on EU membership, it should be plainly obvious that this about the United Kingdom as a whole and not about any one part in isolation of the others.

     Above all, it must be remembered that the question on the referendum ballot will be:

Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?

     It will not say “Should Scotland remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?”, nor will it say “Should England remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?”, and still further, it will not say “Should Wales remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?” or “Should Northern Ireland remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?”

     Why is that? Because, in the most respectful of terms, none of them have EU membership; the United Kingdom does, and it should be abundantly clear that whatever the outcome of the EU referendum vote in any one part of the United Kingdom – however defined – it is the overall vote throughout the United Kingdom that matters.

     This means that an overall UK result in which English “Leave” votes are strong enough to take the UK out without a majority of the other Home Nations is perfectly legitimate, and the same goes for a scenario in which the “Remain” votes of the other parts of the UK are enough to keep the UK in without a majority of the English. Both results are legitimate as they will represent the majority will of the British people in their totality, and should not cause resentment on the part of anybody so long as the vote is conducted fairly and held to the highest electoral standards.

     Indeed, there is the possibility that the English vote will be split roughly evenly – meaning that the results among the rest of the UK in Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales may be decisive in tilting the overall result one way or the other.

     This is why David Cameron – as a British citizen and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom – will be campaigning throughout the UK, including Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, to press his case for keeping the UK’s EU membership. This is why every vote in the referendum will count equally wherever it is cast throughout the United Kingdom, and this highlights the need for every eligible citizen to be registered for voting and then actually vote on the day that really matters. It also shows the importance of retaining the BBC's UK-wide News at Six in Scotland, for it is important for people to know what's going on in the UK overall and get a UK-wide perspective on news which effects everyone in the UK - including Scotland, and this has been made clear by focus groups. With regard to the EU referendum, this is particularly important, because Scots will be voting alongside people who are not foreigners, but their fellow Brits and only the overall result matters.

     Even if “Brexit” happens without a majority of Scots, it is not immediately clear that Sturgeon will make any quick moves to call for a referendum, or even if she will, for as explained by Martin Kettle in the Guardian and Joyce McMillan in the Scotsman, Brexit presents a myriad of issues for the SNP and makes independence far from certain. Indeed, if the cards are played wrong, the hopes among some in the SNP for a “Scotland stay/UK leave” vote in June may well backfire. There is certainly no guarantee that Sturgeon can achieve victory on a second referendum even in the aforementioned circumstances, and if she were to lose, it would almost certainly put off the independence issue for decades, if not terminally. So it is in Sturgeon’s own interest to vigorously and genuinely campaign – like Cameron – for a Remain vote throughout the UK, regardless of what some in her own party may be thinking.

     Hopefully, as John Mackintosh said in 1975, most people throughout Britain will focus on the main issue of EU membership. They need to think about the vote and the implications for themselves, their families, and the country in which they live – the United Kingdom – and go forward together with the decision made together as one.

Glimmer of Hope? The State of the Race for Holyrood (and Secession)

This year's election won't only decide who takes power at Holyrood, but will also likely set the trajectory of Scottish politics for perhaps another decade.  Kim Traynor via Wikimedia Commons CC

     With the Scottish parliamentary elections only three months away, a new YouGov poll for The Times has provided some interesting findings which may provide some hope for those who support the Union and are opposed to the SNP.

     Firstly, with regard to the election itself, the SNP still leads the way voting intentions with 50% in the constituency vote and 42% in the regional list vote, which according to the Scotland Votes election calculator, translates into 69 seats – the exact same number the Nationalists won five years ago. They would still have an outright majority in a legislature supposed to be designed against such outcomes and be elected to an unprecedented third term in power.

     However, this poll is a bit different than previous polls in that it shows comparatively low numbers for the SNP. Polls back in the late summer and fall were showing them getting in excess of 50%, sometimes as high as the upper 50’s and lower 60’s – a reflection of the ascendancy of the Nationalists when they won 56 of 59 Scottish seats in the House of Commons in May. Even now, another recent poll by TNS shows them with 57% in the constituency vote and 52% in the regional list vote.

     Nevertheless, it may be fair to ask whether the SNP has more-or-less reached its ceiling, whether it has maxed out its support among the electorate, and has nowhere to go but down. The answer to this will have to be deferred until after future polling, and perhaps even, until the election itself takes place in order for us to know where the SNP really stands among the voters. With the current polling figures from YouGov, the party will win 69 seats – the same number they won in 2011, which may appear to be a disappointment in comparison to the net gain in seats predicted in other polls.

     Part of the reason for this is that the proportional part of Holyrood’s election system (based on the regional list vote) works against the party that does well in the constituency vote, and the SNP is projected to do really well in that area – capturing all but eight of Scotland’s 73 Holyrood constituencies according to the Scotland Votes election calculator. As a result, the calculator projects that the SNP will get only four regional list seats on 42% of the vote, which leads to the other reason the party may do no better than in 2011: minor parties.

     There may well be some pro-separation voters who will vote for the SNP in the constituency vote – knowing that the first-past-the-post system punishes smaller parties such as the Greens – but then lend their second (regional) vote those small parties in the knowledge that they will register better in terms of proportionality.  As such, the Greens and the Scottish Socialist Party hold 6% and 2% respectively of the regional vote – likely at the expense of the SNP, and for their part, the Greens stand to pick up three seats for a total of five, which means that the pro-independence majority will stand at 74 seats.

     In the face of this, what is there to say about the main pro-Union parties who will have 55 seats among them if this poll were repeated on Election Day?

     For Labour, the outlook remains as dismal as it has ever been since the referendum. The party which only ten years ago had led a coalition government in Holyrood, and whose grip on some parts of Scotland was so tight that votes were said to be weighted and not counted, is sitting at 19% of the constituency vote and 20% of the regional vote, with much of their traditional voting base having voted Yes in the referendum and now voting SNP. If this result were to be replicated in May, Labour would lose all of its constituency seats, and will depend on the regional vote to give it 25 seats. In fact, Labour will take the lead in regional seats even though the SNP carries 42% of the vote, but again, the proportional system will work against constituency-heavy SNP.  

     Meanwhile, the Conservatives will have the same regional vote share, but end up with 19 seats – six less than Labour. However, the Tories do have a one point edge in the constituency vote, and this – combined with the relative collapse of Labour and the Liberal Democrats – is projected to be enough for them to win six constituency seats. Among them is Labour-held Eastwood, whose UK parliamentary equivalent was a Tory stronghold for most of the 20th Century and was once the safest Tory seat in Scotland until Jim Murphy won it in the Labour landslide of 1997.

     That election resulted in the complete wipeout of the Conservatives in Scotland in terms of seats in the Commons, and since 2001, they’ve only held one seat at Westminster and as much as 18 at Holyrood (and currently only 15), thanks to the perception of them being “toxic” during and following the years of Margaret Thatcher. But now they are poised to win 25 seats in May, and this is attributed to the leadership of Ruth Davidson, who is judged to have had a good referendum by campaigning for the Union and putting on a fresh face for the Conservatives. She is currently rated as doing well as party leader by 40% of YouGov poll respondents, as opposed to 36% who say she is doing badly.

     Among those who believe she is doing well includes 46% of Labour voters, which explains another reason for the recent Tory ascendancy in the polls: disillusioned Labour voters who are planning to vote Tory because of Labour’s shift to the left under UK party leader Jeremy Corbyn and Scottish leader Kezia Dugdale’s invitation to those who voted for separation but who may otherwise agree with Labour on everything else save for the constitutional question. They see this as Labour lessening its support for the Union - a point with which I respectfully disagree - and therefore see the Tories as the “only” Unionist party who will stand up against the SNP and speak for Scotland’s place in the United Kingdom.

     Much the same can be said about the Liberal Democrats, who have been paying the price for going into coalition with Conservatives following the 2010 UK general election which resulted in a hung parliament. While Labour and the Tories battle it out for second place (and bragging right for being the official opposition), the LibDems too have, under Willie Rennie, made an invitation to Yes voters to join their party and vote for them regardless of their difference on the constitution, because like with Labour, many of their former voters voted Yes and/or for the SNP. They currently sit at 6% in the constituency vote and 5% in the regional vote, which will be enough for them to hold on to the five seats they currently have, including their only two constituency seats of Orkney and Shetland – which have been in Liberal/Liberal Democrat hands for much of the last century.

     However, these results are not set in stone, and it is possible for the three parties to at least prevent the SNP from obtaining another a majority. The reality is that the SNP has been successful in picking off voters who had traditionally vote for the Conservatives, Labour, and the Liberal Democrats through slippery and slick triangulation – shape-shifting when needed to appeal to certain groups of voters in certain areas. So each party needs to go forth and present itself as the SNP alternative in the parts of Scotland in which they are still strongest. For Labour, this means concentrating on the Central Belt and Lowlands regions; the Borders for the Conservatives; the Highlands and Islands for the LibDems; and the northeast for the Tories and LibDems, with Aberdeen, Dundee, and the areas surrounding them also being potential targets for Labour.

     However, it’s not just about areas, but issues as well. The ongoing row over local council funding cuts has sparked a debate on taxation and how much people should be taxed. On this Labour and the LibDems have taken the side of using Holyrood’s existing powers to raise taxes to improve public services, and according to the YouGov polling, most voters support this proposition, including a clear majority of SNP voters. Another byproduct of the local government funding debate is whether the SNP’s nine year old council tax freeze needs to be brought to an end, as the Scottish Government’s own independent advisor on poverty has recommended. In his analysis, Professor John Curtice said that the freeze “may be approaching the end of its politically useful life, as well as, perhaps, its fiscally sustainable one” as council budgets and services come under increasing pressure and jobs are at stake. 54% of voters now wish to see council tax raised in order to improve local services – effectively ending the freeze.

     This may put the SNP in an uncomfortable position as the council tax freeze has been one of its landmark policies and is very likely reluctant to campaign on raising any taxes, lest it lose the middle class and upper class voters who have been the source of its electoral strength, thanks to them disproportionately benefiting from the freeze and other policies such as free prescriptions and free university tuition. It has certainly found itself on the same side of the Tories on whether taxes should be increased, and Labour under Dugdale is certain to use this point throughout the campaign with at least some belief that the public does stand for taxes to be increased.

     Whether this will work in practice remains to be seen. As Euan McColm said in The Scotsman, the agenda of exposing the Nationalists as faux radicals – “claiming to be left-wing while acting centrist” – may “work if the voters who are keeping the SNP in power were at all interested in hearing that they’ve been conned.” The problem of course, is that some within the middle classes who decide elections and who vote SNP do not see themselves as being conned because as far as they’re concerned, it is they who have benefited pretty well from SNP policies, which have been cloaked under the guise of universalism. Despite what Brian Wilson refers to as the “unctuous self-praise about what a uniquely caring people we are, delighted to pay a little more to help the weak in our midst”, the reality in Scotland according to McColm is that “regardless of the left-wing rhetoric that we hear so often in our political debate, voters remain cautious and self-­interested” (just as they are in England), and both the SNP and Labour – more-or-less occupying the same political space save for the constitution – know this.

     However for Labour, this is about setting itself apart from the SNP as well as the Tories – perhaps in an effort to capture some of their traditional working class vote who may feel conned that the SNP stands with the Tories on not raising taxes. For their part, the Tories have made some noise about the SNP not ruling out tax increases in the future, especially when it’s expected that Holyrood will gain complete control over income tax rates and bands in 2017. On this, they will lay their hopes on picking off middle class support for the SNP. This will likely not put them into power any time soon, but like with Labour fighting for its political life, the Tories have to propose something to differentiate themselves from everyone else, including the LibDems, who under Willie Rennie have also proposed tax increases. With any luck, all three pro-Union may save themselves from losing a few seats and help prevent the SNP from attaining another majority, which is the best case scenario for them.

     However, there is one definite ray of sunshine: support for separation – at least in this poll – is slipping. The last time YouGov asked the question in October, 49% of respondent declared they would vote No and 45% supported Yes; this time, there was a 51% response for No and a 43% response for Yes. With those who said “Don’t Know” and “Would not vote” taken out, this amounts to 55% No and 45% Yes – the same proportion from the actual vote in September 2014, which according to Professor Curtice, “is actually the lowest level of support for independence recorded in any YouGov poll conducted since the referendum.”

     Looking at the internals, 91% each of those who voted Yes and No would do so again; 5% of those who voted Yes in 2014 would vote No in a second referendum, while 4% who voted No would switch their vote to Yes. Breaking down by party, 99% of Tories, 94% of Labour, 95% of LibDems, and 12% of Nationalists at last year’s general election would vote No again; for this year’s Holyrood election, this stands at 99% Tories, 90% Labour, and 8% SNP (the LibDem figures were not available).

     Seen another way, the Conservatives will win 38% of No voters, closely followed by Labour at 34%, the LibDems at 12%, and 13% among the SNP. All of this appears to indicate the support for the Union remains very strong among the three main pro-Union parties, while around 90% of SNP voters either voted, or will again vote, for independence. The only area for long-term concern is the 18-24 age group, who responded in favor of Yes by 55%-45%, while all other groups responded in favor of No.

     At any rate, the YouGov polling shows that – at least for now – a second referendum is a distant prospect, if for no other reason than because of Nicola Sturgeon's own benchmark of having consistent support for independence at 60% or more in the polls for several months before going for it again. If she does go for it before the end of this decade and loses, it will mark a serious and near-fatal setback for the Nationalist cause with back-to-back defeats. It is therefore no wonder that some in the SNP are dreaming of an EU referendum scenario in which the overall UK votes to terminate its EU membership, but Scotland votes to keep it, so they use it as an excuse to call a second referendum based on that fact the YouGov polling currently shows Scots supporting the UK’s EU membership 66%-34%. Barring that circumstance, another referendum looks to be in the offing. As McColm further notes, after the election, Sturgeon will:

"have to maintain support while conspicuously not delivering that second referendum. With the focus off the constitution, perhaps flaws in the SNP’s domestic agenda (and these flaws do exist) will start to become apparent."

     Nevertheless, the pro-Union parties need to step up their own game if they wish to definitively take a referendum off the agenda after May, which requires preventing the Nats – perhaps along with the Greens – from having a majority and at the very least, operating as a minority government and not being able to get through a referendum bill, just as they could not do from 2007-2011. Such a bill would be symbolic and non-binding as constitutional matters remain reserved at Westminster, but if it were to pass, it is difficult to see how Westminster – in the absence of formal rules regulating referendums – can stand in the way if that’s what the majority of Holyrood wants.

     So the Tories, Labour, and the LibDems need to get out and campaign hard by focusing on the issues that matter to people beyond the constitutional arguments. Promises of avoiding a repeat referendum will not gain enough votes to prevent another SNP majority, but dealing with the day-to-day issues and concerns of people (such as health, education, and policing) and offering a positive alternative has the chance of at least making just enough people to think twice before voting for the SNP. Let the SNP wallow in the constitution while for example, council budgets tighten, services are reduced, and people are thrown out of work. Each party has their own strengths, and must use them to their advantage and fight like hell if they wish to upend the consensus narrative of this election year.