Labour struggles after independence vote may have worked in our favour, says MP

Blair McDougall was head of the Better Together campaign in 2014, and is now the Labour MP for East Renfrewshire.

Blair McDougall was the head of the Better Together campaign ahead of the 2014 independence referendum (PA) (PA Archive)

Labour’s struggles in the wake of the independence referendum may have stood them in good stead for the future, the former head of the Better Together campaign has said.

Blair McDougall was elected in July as the Labour MP for East Renfrewshire, almost 10 years after the 2014 vote in which he secured a 55% to 45% victory to keep Scotland in the UK.

In the wake of the referendum, Labour struggled with the Tories and the SNP were able to capitalise.

The party dropped to third in the 2016 Scottish Parliament election – despite having been the dominant force in Scottish politics until the SNP’s first win in 2007 – and within months of the September 18 2014 vote, it dropped to just one MP north of the border.

At the point when political gravity finally came home for the SNP in terms of their own record, we are the people who are better positioned to take advantage of that

Blair McDougall, Labour

But Mr McDougall told the PA news agency ahead of the 10th anniversary of the referendum that Labour’s decision not to engage in “identity politics” meant it was well placed to win back support when the constitution became less of an issue.

“I’m sure I gave interviews five years ago where I bemoaned Labour coming out of the referendum without a strategy in the way that (former Scottish Tory leader) Ruth Davidson did, for example,” he said.

“But I actually think when you look at it over the longer term and you look at where Scottish politics is now, I think Scottish Labour, by being true to the fact that we are not motivated primarily by these constitutional things, in the long term is a healthier place to be and allows us in this moment to be more competitive in a way than if we had painted ourselves red, white and blue in the way that the Conservatives had.

“That was always a short-term tactic rather than a long-term strategy.

“It’s just that, in the context of Scottish politics, short-term meant 10 years.”

Such a move, he said, allowed Labour to appeal to soft-Yes voters who may have moved to the SNP for a short period.

“They were SNP voters for a period, they weren’t nationalists, even if they were soft No or experimental Yes voters.

“They were primarily change voters, they weren’t happy with the way the world was.

“So at the point when political gravity finally came home for the SNP in terms of their own record, we are the people who are better positioned to take advantage of that.”

He said the constitutional argument, which has dominated Scottish politics since the SNP’s first win in 2007, has “allowed failure to go unpunished”.

He added: “You could be an incompetent minister, you could be a failing government, but if you were on the right side of the constitutional argument, whether you were a No voter or Yes voter, you would be forgiven for that.

“Finally, I think people have lost patience with that and aren’t willing to give that a free pass anymore.”