Scottish Nationalism Is on the Ropes After the UK Election
The Scottish National Party suffered a heavy defeat in last week’s Westminster election. The result leaves Scotland trapped for now inside a British state whose deep-seated problems the new Labour government will be unable to address.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer (L) meets Scottish first minister and SNP leader John Swinney during a postelection visit to Edinburgh, July 7. (Scott Heppell – WPA Pool / Getty Images)
The Scottish National Party (SNP) went into the UK general election on July 4 defending forty-eight out of Scotland’s fifty-seven Westminster seats. By the time all the votes had been counted on July 6, just nine nationalist legislators were left standing.
Of Scotland’s remaining forty-eight seats, thirty-seven went to Labour — including every constituency in Glasgow, the nucleus of progressive nationalist opinion, alongside Dundee — six to the Liberal Democrats, and five to the Conservatives.
The result leaves Scotland trapped in a divided and decaying British state. In his prime ministerial acceptance speech, Keir Starmer promised to deliver a “decade of national renewal,” with a government that would work tirelessly to rebuild, “brick by brick,” the country’s crumbling social infrastructure. Behind such eager rhetoric lies a grittier reality.
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