It is not often that I find the main topic of my research (how political parties organise in multilevel states) on the front page of newspapers. Yet this has been the case a couple of times in the last week. Last Monday, as a friend of mine was asking what my book project was about, I was able to point to the front page of the newspaper that was sitting on the table. Let me tell you that this hardly ever happens to me.
What was the big deal last week, you may ask. Murdo Fraser, current deputy leader of the Scottish Tories and frontrunner candidate to the Scottish Conservative leadership, proposed a complete secession of the Scottish party from the British Conservative Party. Fraser proposes that should he be elected as leader of the Scottish and Unionist Party, the party should immediately be dissolved and a new centre-right party would then be created in Scotland. The name of this new party would have to be determined at a later stage. Obviously, not everyone agrees with the idea of splitting from the rest of the Conservative party (after all, there is Unionist in the party’s name).
Now it’s the turn of the Scottish Labour Party to want to change its relationship with the party in London. Scottish MP (and shadow minister for defence) Jim Murphy and MSP Sarah Boyak have produced a report that proposes to devolve more power to the Scottish party, elect a Scottish party leader (at the moment there is only a leader of the party in the Scottish Parliament) and relocate party HQ to Edinburgh (they have remained in Glasgow). This is an interesting development, as Labour had remained the most centralised of the three British parties. This reform would organise the party with a clear focus on Scottish politics: a Scottish party leader as the boss not only of the party’s MSPs but also of its MPs, party constituency associations to match Scottish Parliament constituencies rather than Westminster constituencies.
This reform, initiated by Ed Miliband, seems to be a direct response to some of the criticism that was waged at Scottish Labour and Iain Gray’s failed election campaign. Their campaign was criticised for being too negative and having focused too much on Westminster issues and attacks against the coalition government. In short, it was criticised for not understanding that a Holyrood election is won on devolved issues. However, these changes to not seem to be , and the level of party autonomy may once again depend on the willingness of the UK leader to leave the Scots decide by themselves. Like in the Conservative party, this proposal has opponents inside the party (see article in the Scotsman).
Both proposals illustrate the difficulty of being the sub-state branch of a statewide party in a devolved nation. This difficulty is compounded in Scotland by the SNP’s impressive victory in the last Scottish election and the necessity for these parties to position themselves on devolved issues and on independence.
Elodie Fabre 