The Economist UK - 30.11.2019

30 Britain The EconomistNovember 30th 2019

1

T

he pumpwhirrs as it sucks salmon

from their pen. Then the prospective

mphelps feed the fish into a stunner,

which whacks them on the back of the

head. Having slaughtered a hundred or

so, Craig Harrow pauses for a photo with

a suitably attractive specimen, before

delivering a stump speech to a dozen

taciturn, blood-spattered fish farmers.

He apologises for taking up their time. “If

there are any ardent nationalists here,”

the Liberal Democrat candidate says, “I’m

sorry about that, too, because I’m pro-eu

and pro-uk.” And so begins the week’s

campaign for Ross, Skye and Lochaber.

At 12,000 square kilometres, only a bit

smaller than Northern Ireland, the

sparsely populated constituency is the

biggest in Britain. It stretches from Skye,

off Scotland’s west coast, to the Black Isle

(which is neither black nor an island) on

the east coast. Mr Harrow’s attempt to

win it back for the Lib Dems from Ian

Blackford, the leader in Westminster of

the Scottish National Party (snp), will

therefore involve a lot of travel. After

visiting the salmon farm near Ullapool,

on the west coast, he ends the day in

Dingwall, on the other side of Scotland,

pressing the flesh with farmers at a

union meeting.

With both thesnpand the Lib Dems

opposing Brexit, Mr Harrow must unite

the unionist vote behind him. Mr Black-

ford is confident he will be able to hold

him off. The Lib Dems held the seat until

2015, but fell more than 7,000 votes short

of unseating Mr Blackford at the last

election, two years ago. Thesnp’s man

may be a former banker, but he is also a

keen crofter and has a national profile.

Before he heads out leafleting in Portree,

Skye, he asks an activist to help him get 16

of his sheep to market.

A winter election is tough for activists

across the country, but it is particularly

bitter in northern Scotland, where the

sun sets before 4pm. The only way across

parts of the constituency is by single-

track roads, which feel perilous at the

best of times. Online campaigning helps,

but candidates are still keen to show

their faces. And as Mr Harrow notes, the

evening, “the time when most people

would be in, is the time when you don’t

want to knock on their door because it

will be dark.” Which means that to have

any hope of overturning Mr Blackford’s

majority he will have to make every

daylight hour count.

Skye news

Campaign logistics

PORTREE AND ULLAPOOL

The battle for the biggest constituency in Britain

C

owie, a villagein the coal belt just

south of Stirling, used to be a Labour

stronghold. But all the 15 or so men in the

bar-room of the Cowie Tavern (there are no

women) will be voting for the Scottish Na-

tional Party (snp) on December 12th. The

only remaining Labour supporters are the

twin barmen, Steve and John Sneddon, and

their father James, a former shop-steward

in the brickworks who sits in the lounge

area with a rug over his knees. Not even

they are enthusiastic about the current

state of the party. “Corbyn’s too left-wing

and too indecisive,” says Steve. “The only

good thing that will come out of this elec-

tion is that he’s going to go.”

Bannockburn, another former mining

village and the site of the decisive battle in

the 14th century in which Robert the Bruce

rubbed the nose of the English King Ed-

ward II in Scottish dirt, is four miles away.

But the two dozen drinkers in the Empire

pub, all former Labour supporters, will to a

man (and a woman—aside from the bar-

maid there is one) vote Conservative. “My

father was a miner. He’d turn in his grave,”

says Stewart Thomson, a retired electri-

cian. But the vote is a tactical one: “I’m vot-

ing Tory to keep the snpout.”

The difference between the two vil-

lages, according to one of the drinkers in

the Empire, is that “in Cowie, they’re Cath-

olics”. Immigration in the 19th century has

left bits of central Scotland with echoes of

Northern Irish politics, in which national-

ism is associated with Catholicism, and

unionism with Protestantism.

The two pubs illustrate the three main

features of the campaign in Scotland. This

election, like everything in Scottish poli-

tics, is ultimately about independence. La-

bour, which is trying to position itself in

the middle ground on both Brexit and inde-

pendence, looks like being roadkill. And

while the English election is two-dimen-

sional—left v right, Leave v Remain—the

added Scottish dimension of indepen-

dence makes it a Rubik’s Cube of complex-

ity. Combined with small majorities—the

margin of victory last time in 46 out of 59

seats was less than 10%—that makes the

Scottish election highly unpredictable.

The result is crucial to the national out-

come. Without the gains the Tories made in

Scotland in 2017, Theresa May would not

have been able to form a government. It is

also crucial to how the independence story

plays out. If the snpholds the balance of

power next month, the price of its support

will be another Scottish referendum. But if

the snpis knocked back, the cause of inde-

pendence will be too.

After the unionists won the 2014 refer-

endum on independence, the Conservative

government assumed that the nationalist

movement would lose steam. Instead, it

was galvanised, and the snpwon a stonk-

ing victory in the Westminster election of

2015, getting 56 out of 59 seats. Labour,

which had run Scotland for half a century,

went down from 41mps to one.

In the snp’s view, the eureferendum, in

which the ukvoted 52:48 to leave and Scot-

land voted 62:38 to remain, justified revis-

iting the independence question. But the

EDINBURGH, STIRLING AND ABERDEENSHIRE

North of the border the election is even

more unpredictable than in England

Scotland

An election in

three dimensions

Correction:Last week we said that Lord Bilimoria

would be the next director-general of the

Confederation of British Industry. In fact he is

expected to be its next president. Sorry.