Leading article: Separatism and scare tactics

Published: 02 May 2007

"Within the next few weeks I won't be Prime Minister of this country. In all probability, a Scot will become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom." So said Tony Blair, speaking in Edinburgh on the tenth anniversary of the election that took him to Downing Street on a landslide.

The campaign pitch was obvious. In one final push to shore up the fading Scottish Labour vote, Mr Blair was trying to reassure wavering voters that one of their own would accede to the top job in London and that their interests would be properly represented at the national level. On the 300th anniversary of the Act of Union coming into force, he was also affirming his faith that the United Kingdom would endure and warning against the politics of "narrow nationalism".

Whether Mr Blair's words will have the effect he desired, however, must be open to doubt. The appeal of the Scottish National Party is not, at this stage, exclusively, or even primarily, to do with separation. It has much to do with opposition to the policies of the Blair government, including - but not exclusively - the Iraq war. Disillusionment with the Scottish Labour Party, and the poor quality of Labour members of the Scottish Parliament, accounts for another large part of the SNP's appeal.

But an SNP vote will not be exclusively a protest against the status quo. It will also reflect the skill of the SNP leader, Alex Salmond. Mr Salmond has run a forceful campaign. He has shown himself capable of operating in the big league - at least as capable as Scotland's current First Minister, Jack McConnell.

There will, of course, be those who vote for the SNP tomorrow in order to register support for Scottish independence. But this is not the party's policy going into these elections; it is rather for a referendum on independence to be held before 2010. The promise of a future referendum allows people to vote SNP this time around without committing themselves to independence. This makes an SNP vote seem less risky than it might have been.

As of now, the polls suggest that voters in Scotland are almost evenly divided about going it alone. If the SNP does become the largest party in the Scottish Parliament and does pass legislation to facilitate a referendum, this will be the time for a serious debate about separation. Whatever happens then, the final verdict of the voters must be respected.

For our part, we have no problem with a Scotland that chooses to go its own way: we can see pluses, as well as minuses. Labour's latest warnings about separatism are simply scare tactics drummed up to divert voters from the party's own shortcomings.