The SNP's Westminster MPs: canny, targeted and on their toes
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Version 0 of 1. Journalists were crowded like a pack of scent-hungry hounds outside the SNP Westminster group meeting on Monday evening, waiting for party leader Nicola Sturgeon to reveal her decision on foxhunting. She swept out of the room with a smile and a joke, but no comment, flanked by her predecessor, Alex Salmond, and Angus Robertson, the SNP’s Westminster leader. All three, as well as the 54 MPs who followed in their wake out on to the ancient flagstones of Westminster Hall, remained tight-lipped and disciplined, refusing to indicate how they would vote. Half an hour later, a carefully worded press release was sent out by Robertson, explaining that the decision had been taken to vote down the Tory proposals, partly out of principle and partly in protest at Cameron’s treatment of Scotland since the election. The SNP, currently polling at a remarkable 60% for next year’s Holyrood elections, is enjoying an auspicious celestial alignment at Westminster. It has been sharing the opposition benches with not one but two leaderless parties. Labour appears paralysed by the Tories’ portrayal of them as the party of welfare, allowing the SNP to noisily assume the anti-austerity mantle. The government, evidently conscious of the narrowness of its majority, is unlikely to countenance losing a vote so early in its term. But it is hard to dismiss purely as party spin the SNP’s claim that it has already been responsible for four Tory climbdowns: on human rights, the date of the EU referendum, Evel and now foxhunting. Related: Surge in English SNP members: 'the core message is very attractive' More than capable of taking advantage of these circumstances is the increasingly confident cohort of 56 SNP MPs, a “transformational” number in terms of parliamentary effectiveness, according to their leader, Robertson. Of that number, 49 have never served as MPs before: as they find their level amid the baffling traditions of the Commons, it is apparent that they are coalescing into a highly effective group, as the events of Monday showed. “Remarkable,” is how Tommy Sheppard, MP for Edinburgh East, describes the discussions behind closed doors on Monday evening. “It was certainly the lengthiest and most detailed discussion we’ve had on anything,” explains the former assistant general secretary of Scottish Labour and now one of the SNP’s more visible new recruits, having already appeared several times on Newsnight. “I don’t think there was a single person in the room who was in favour of foxhunting – you can’t say it was nothing to do with foxhunting, but it was about so much more as well. It went to the heart of our project here.” Speaking on the Commons terrace as a bagpiping busker belts out Amazing Grace on the bridge nearby, he dismisses suggestions that the group was pressured by the party leadership: “There’s been all of this bollocks about us having shackles on us, or ‘Queen Nicola’s come down to instruct us what to do’. Nothing could be further from the truth.” (In fact, Sturgeon’s intention is to attend every third or fourth Westminster group meeting when the logistics make it possible.) “Nicola was scheduled to attend this group meeting a month ago, before we even knew what the issue was. She spoke number three or four in the debate, made the same length of contribution as anyone else – there was no question of this being some diktat. I have to say, if that is typical of the way we go about things down here, then it augurs very well indeed.” The Westminster establishment remains confounded by the new SNP members. Lobby journalists are perplexed that some of them are turning down or ignoring lunch invitations that would be snapped up by MPs from other parties. Many can be seen in one of the terrace canteens at lunch time, refusing to eat behind the screen for MPs but taking their dinner trays to mingle with researchers, security guards and catering staff. As for their usual Commons drinking hole, the party appears to favour the dingy, windowless Sport and Social Club, once the haunt of Labour MPs but now generally colonised by rowdy young staffers. An element of caution is perhaps understandable, given some of the group’s experiences. One MP recalls a senior cabinet minister expressing snooty surprise that a Scot was drinking fruit juice rather than hard liquor. Another was told on entering a reception room: “This is only the third grandest, but we’ve still nailed everything down because we heard that your lot were coming.” Nor can one underestimate the culture shock – on top of long-term sleep deprivation – of going straight from a fiercely contested election campaign into a monumentally obtuse working environment. As Hannah Bardell, a former Salmond staffer and now MP for Livingston, puts it: “At the beginning I was hotdesking, staying in a hotel, still living at my mum’s back home, with no staff, so trying to manage my own diary and it was, ‘Oh my God, what have I done?’” The polls had been indicating for some time before the election that there would be more SNP members than Liberal Democrats, says Robertson, who had begun work before 7 May on the practicalities of operating as the third party in Westminster. The formerly Liberal Democrat corridor where the SNP press team currently reside – they are recruiting more than 20 new staff over the summer – has yet to be renamed, although the initials LD before the office numbers have been discreetly sanded off the doors by the House authorities. In the last parliament we’d be lucky to get one question. In defence questions last week there were nine SNP MPs “I know everyone was tremendously interested in ‘Where is your office, what seats are you sitting in’ and all of that. From my perspective. you have people arriving in a place where there are procedures which are not obvious, ways of working that in some respects are outdated, traditions that you sometimes don’t get, and everybody’s on a different place on the learning curve,” Robertson explains. “What we did at the start was allocate every member to a policy group. From that we built on the solid foundations. Everybody has been allocated a role, everyone is part of a wider team, building a happy ship where everybody works hard and people can learn from one another.” This was evident when Brendan O’Hara was thrown into the spotlight in the week following his election, when Trident whistleblower William McNeilly went awol from Faslane naval base, in the first-timer’s constituency of Argyll & Bute. O’Hara spoke at the next group meeting about his experience of dealing with the media and the technicalities of securing an adjournment debate. All this is happening in the context of a chamber where the party spokesperson is called earlier and can make a longer contribution than was ever allowed before, where there are SNP members on every select committee, including two chairs, and signed up to a panoply of all-party parliamentary groups. “In the last parliament we’d be lucky to get one question. In defence questions last week there were nine SNP MPs,” says Robertson. “It is utterly transformational the impact that we are now able to have.” Since 8 May, the 56 have been conscious of avoiding any comparison with the “Feeble 50”, Alex Salmond’s mocking monicker from the 1987 general election describing the large intake of Scottish Labour MPs whom he deemed ineffective against the Thatcher government. For one SNP insider, another number and another year are more analogous: the 47 MSPs elected in 2007, to form the first minority SNP government in Holyrood. “Being a minority group does instill that sense of unity,” he says. “You can see it with this group too, passing on ideas and tips to each other.” They also come with a huge diversity of life experience. “Many of them came to party politics through the independence referendum and never dreamed of standing. It’s an entirely different route into politics based on conviction and belief.” Related: Labour MPs heap praise on SNP's Mhairi Black after maiden speech According to Mhairi Black, at 20 years old the baby of the House, whose barnstorming maiden speech earlier this week was a viral hit, the group has three distinguishing features. “We’re all very close and we’re all looking out for each other, making sure no one falls through the cracks. Second, there’s the level of intelligence, different life experience and points of view. Lastly, we’re just really tight. There’s a lot of honesty in the group. Nobody feels they can’t be frank and open. When we finally do reach a decision, we’ve poked all the holes in it before the opposition can, so we end up producing something of very high quality.” That the group are also canny, targeted and on their toes in undeniable. Take last week’s budget: whilst Labour was in confusion over Osborne’s pseudo-living wage, the new SNP member for Glasgow Central, Alison Thewliss, spotted a provision that would require a woman who had a third child as the result of rape to justify her position in order to avoid losing tax credits. She challenged the proposal on Twitter within hours of its publication; the matter was then taken up by the media and women’s groups. “They are skilled as focusing on the detail rather than trying to bring down entire bills, at spotting those nuggets they can effectively campaign on,” says one Westminster observer. After recess, the SNP group is expected to focus its attention on other areas where it considers the government vulnerable: cuts to disability benefits, provisions for the EU referendum, where Tory MPs are not at one with their front bench, as well as Chris Grayling’s re-fettled Evel proposals and the ongoing Scotland bill, which Scottish secretary David Mundell has signalled will include “substantive” changes when it next comes before MPs. I’ve noticed some Labour MPs are quite uncomfortable about the fact they like us. We’re challenging their preconceptions The recently published trade union bill “is going to be a rammy”, the newly elected MP for Glasgow South West, Chris Stephens, predicts. “It’s about human rights as much as workplace issues and it has huge potential to bring a lot of people together.” Stephens, a former Unison office bearer, is one of a number of new SNP MPs with labour movement credibility and is playing his part in a gradual thawing of relations between Labour and the SNP. Meanwhile, Scotland’s sole remaining Labour MP, Ian Murray, insists: “We’ll vote together when we can.” As Mhairi Black observes: “I’ve noticed some [Labour MPs] are quite uncomfortable about the fact that they like us. We’re challenging their preconceptions that we’re all raving nationalists with nothing of any substance to say. A lot of our constituents have the same problem.” For Natalie McGarry, who beat Labour veteran Margaret Curran to secure the seat of Glasgow East, a younger generation of Labour MPs are more open to their SNP colleagues. “There’s still an element that don’t understand what happened in Scotland and think we’re to blame for letting the Tories in. But it’s clear to us that the Labour party need to step up for us to form a really effective opposition.” With activities at Westminster challenging a narrow view of nationalism, and a planned charm offensive across the UK and Ireland, it is plain that the party intends to significantly expand its reach beyond Scotland. One Tory’s response to the SNP 56 may have been prescient. “There seem to be more of you Scots,” he told the new nationalist MP, who pointed out that there were exactly the same number of Scottish MPs as in the previous parliament. “All the same,” he replied, “there seem to be more of you.” |