The election is fast turning into a race for second place

The SNP will win the election. It seems strange to say that, yet for the first time since the Scottish Parliament’s inception, the statement is a near certainty. But then, Scottish politics has been so strange for so long it may be time to re-evaluate what is normal.

By what margin the SNP wins, and whether it can achieve a majority, is still unclear, but it is telling, and indeed remarkable, that there is not a single voice in Scottish politics arguing that anyone but Nicola Sturgeon will be First Minister after the votes are counted. Apart from Sturgeon herself.

At the SNP party conference in Glasgow, with less than ten weeks to go before the election, and with her party consistently polling over 50 per cent of the vote in both the constituency and list, Sturgeon will tell her party faithful to take nothing for granted.

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Meanwhile, Kezia Dugdale, the leader tasked with performing CPR on Scottish Labour, has already been accused of conceding the election months before the vote.

Asked on the BBC’s Daily Politics show whether Labour would finish second, she gave a straightforward answer: “Yes.” The transformation Scottish politics has experienced, summed up in one syllable.

She said: “I don’t believe for a second that the Tories are going to finish second in this election. Why? Because Ruth Davidson is a Tory. Just like George Osborne, just like David Cameron. She’s advocating 1980s’ tax policies and has no idea for the future.

“She says she’d be a stronger opposition to the SNP, yet she’s going to vote for their budget. How could they possibly be a strong opposition in that context?”

Opponents leapt on it. Dugdale was aiming for second, they said. As SNP MSP Joan McAlpine put it: “I’m sure that Kezia Dugdale’s MSPs won’t take kindly to her conceding the election before a single vote is cast.”

She said: “Labour are making promises they know they can’t keep because they don’t expect to be held accountable.

“In contrast, the SNP will work to win every vote between now and May and are fighting hard to earn the trust of the people of Scotland – as we seek the re-election of Nicola Sturgeon as First Minister and an SNP government with a strong track record of standing up for Scotland.”

Dugdale’s comments were an easy target and it was no surprise to see an SNP politician jump on them. But with the party 30 points behind in the polls, they may simply reflect a strain of realism within the Labour leadership.

The Scottish Labour leader has been clear that her measure of success as leader will not be defined by the number of seats won in the Scottish Parliament election. Maybe she has learned from Jim Murphy’s ill-fated stint, during which the then MP for East Renfrewshire set a general election target of holding every one of the party’s 41 constituencies. He held just one.

Going into its party conference, the SNP is clearly hoping the landslides experienced in the 2011 and 2015 elections will be repeated. But the striking thing is that no party, apart from the SNP, is approaching voters’ doorsteps pledging to form a government.

For the first time in Scottish parliamentary history, this is a race for second place.

The Tories, for example, have based much of their campaign around the idea that Ruth Davidson is more able than Kezia Dugdale, and that the Tories would be better placed to hold an SNP Government to account than Labour.

The Scottish Conservative conference was dominated by Davidson. Candidates lined up to stand in front of a lectern bearing the words ‘Ruth Davidson for a strong opposition’ and pay tribute to their leader.

Even the Prime Minister took time out from warning Scotland was “in danger of becoming a one-party state” to talk up the ability of the party’s Scottish leader. “Our next big challenge is right here in Scotland. And we have a not-so-secret weapon… a formidable force in politics… our Sturgeon-slaying, Dugdale-defying, absolute star of a leader… Ruth Davidson.”

He mentioned her repeatedly. When Davidson did take the stage, her message was pretty clear.

“Many people across Scotland, looking at the polls, are asking themselves a question: In a country where one party dominates, who is going to hold the SNP to account?

“Who is going to do the job that every good democracy needs – to offer a strong opposition? Who’s going to be a voice which stands up for all those Scots who don’t want to go back to the division of the last few years – but want us to go forward, together… who reject the Nationalist view that the referendum wasn’t a choice made – just a decision deferred? But who believe, as I do, that it was a once in a generation event, and who now want, as I want, to see Scotland come back together again.” 

The Scottish Green Party too is running a campaign based on the assumption that the SNP will emerge victorious from May’s election, with Patrick Harvie using his speech to the party conference to define the Greens as the only parliamentary force capable of pushing the SNP towards bolder, more radical policy.

In fact, the Green campaign seems to be more or less copied from the SNP’s approach to the General Election. The SNP went into that campaign promising to keep an Ed Miliband government from veering to the right. The Greens are now doing the same with the SNP.

Taking to the stage at conference, Harvie said: “We’ve been telling voters that a better Scotland needs a bolder Holyrood, but nobody’s been making that case more clearly for us than the SNP. Ahead in the polls and with nine years’ experience in government, they still seem set to make only the most timid of changes to the local tax system. They need to be pushed.

“Labour and the Lib Dems aren’t doing much better – how can we leave it to them to hold the SNP to account on an issue like fracking, when they seem to swap policies on it by the week? Holyrood needs better, bolder, more coherent opposition than that.

“Greens know that Scotland can be better, but we need a bolder Holyrood to make that happen. With Green MSPs representing every region of the country, we’ll have the chance to push the Government beyond its safe comfort zone, and win progressive change for Scotland.”

The new powers, and what to do with them, have changed the nature of political debate in Scotland. The argument has now moved beyond the relative simplicity of how to spend, and on to questions over how to raise.

The Tories were one of the first to call for the devolution of tax to the Scottish Parliament and at the conference, the party announced its plan: do nothing. The Tories will change nothing, at least at present. So why devolve it at all? Sources within the party suggest that, in time, they will aim to undercut the UK rate, in order to draw business to Scotland. But until then, the only explanation seems to be that it does not want tax powers at Holyrood in order to use them, but as a sword for other parties to fall on.

If that was the trap then both Labour and the Scottish Liberal Democrats seemed to take the bait, with both parties releasing plans to raise income tax by one pence as key parts of their manifestos. This, they said, would raise around £475m, to offset spending cuts administered to the block grant by the UK Government.

Speaking in Edinburgh, Willie Rennie said: “Liberal Democrats have an ambitious plan to get Scotland back on track by making the biggest investment in education since devolution with just one penny on income tax.

“A Scottish education was once the envy of the world. It has fallen hard and fast. But we have the plan that will put it right back up there.

“To get fit for the future, our economy and our children need the best education. If we fail to act, a generation of children will miss out on the quality education they deserve. Every day counts. Kids cannot get their time at school back once it is gone.

“Liberal Democrats are not prepared to stand by while the SNP inflict even more devastating damage to our once-proud education system.”

Dugdale pledged the same tax rise, but without specifying it would all go on education, along with the promise that the rise would be offset by a £100 payment, administered by local authorities, to those on less than £20,000 a year.

Announcing it, she said: “Given the choice between using our powers or making cuts to our children’s future, we choose to use our powers. We will tear up this SNP budget that simply manages Tory cuts and instead use the power we have to set the Scottish rate of income tax 1p higher than the rate set by George Osborne.”

The Tories, meanwhile, asserted that the rise would lead to people moving to England in order to flee from the Scottish Rate of Income Tax.

In fact, Davidson was pretty scathing about the idea of a one-pence rise in her conference speech: “It isn’t a plan for government, conference. It is a panic-ridden plea for attention. It’s not credible, it’s not competent – it’s the policy of a party which is sinking beneath the waves, all hands lost. We don’t know what to do to counter the SNP,” say Labour, “so let’s put up taxes, it’s all we know.”

Labour supporters might feel Davidson’s comments were a bit rich, given it was her party that introduced the spending cuts that Dugdale feels the need to mitigate.

And if the Tories have hoped that new levers over revenue gathering will change the debate, and allow the party to win support with its low tax approach, it is probably fair to say that Labour’s move was, at least in part, also an attempt to shift perceptions of the SNP.

Dugdale’s move seemed to put the SNP on the back foot, allowing the party to revel in the sight of SNP MSPs voting against a tax raise to pay for public services. Labour has long made the case the SNP talks left and acts in the centre – at last there was a chance to prove it. Sturgeon is not as radical as she makes out, they claimed.

Nowhere have calls for more radical action from the SNP been louder than in reaction to the party’s plans for council tax.

Put simply, Sturgeon has been accused of timidity.

The SNP has talked about ending council tax for nearly a decade. The historic Concordat, agreed with local government, which guaranteed councils would not have their funding ringfenced in return for accepting a freeze on council tax, was only ever meant to be temporary.

Nine years on, the freeze will finally end. But council tax will remain.

The plans were unveiled by the First Minister herself. Under the proposals, which would kick in from April 2017, local authorities would have the ability to increase council tax by up to three per cent per year.

If the SNP is elected again in May, people in Scotland’s four highest council tax bands will face higher rates with the average band E household paying £105 more each year, and those in the highest band seeing their annual bill go up by £517.

The 75 per cent of Scottish households that fall in bands A to D would be unaffected, while around 54,000 households living in properties in bands E to H, on net incomes of up to £25,000, would be entitled to an exemption.

Meanwhile, the relief available for low income households with children will also be extended, with Sturgeon claiming that a 25 per cent increase in the child allowance within the council tax reduction scheme will benefit 77,000 households – almost 140,000 children – by an average of £173 per year.

Announcing the plans, Sturgeon said: “Over the past eight years, our council-tax freeze has helped households across the country, keeping bills affordable during difficult economic times while ensuring that councils receive the funding required to provide the services people need. The council-tax freeze will remain in place for 2016/17 – the ninth consecutive year.

“However, the Commission on Local Tax Reform made clear that the present system could be made fairer. We are choosing to do this in a reasonable and balanced way that will also generate £100 million of additional revenue to invest in schools.

“These reforms to council tax bands will mean no change for three out of every four Scottish households, with those in lower banded properties paying no more than they do now.

“Households will also still, on average, pay less than those on equivalent bands in England and less than they would be paying had the council-tax freeze not been in place.”

Sturgeon’s announcement came less than three months after the Commission on Local Tax Reform’s report warned that council tax “must end”. Yet the SNP maintained it. Criticism was swift.

COSLA president, Councillor David O’Neill, did not hold back, calling the plans “an offence against local democracy, local decision making and local choice”.

He said: “They have completely ignored the good work and recommendations of the Commission on Local Tax Reform.

“Having served on this commission in good faith, I am embarrassed about today’s proposals as must be the local government minister.

“What we have before us today is a damp squib. This is nothing more than fairly poor cover for a very crude power grab, they haven’t even bothered to change the name.

“Well, I have an alternative name for them, it should be called the Scottish Government tax because it is now so centrally controlled that to even have the word council associated with it is an insult to councils and disingenuous to communities.”

Opposition parties too questioned the plan. Dugdale accused the SNP of broken promises, using FMQs to throw the FM’s own words – “We’ll get rid, once and for all, of the unfair council tax” – in her face.

Rennie said the policy “falls far short of what is required.” He said: “It is utterly insulting for the SNP to bring forward a policy today that they have had the power to bring in for nine years.”

In contrast, Davidson warned “the SNP’s changes to the multiplier may be too steep to be truly fair.”

Taken alongside John Swinney’s decision to increase stamp duty, she said: “The SNP needs to be careful that, as a result, Scotland does not get a reputation as a high tax country.”

So while the reactions varied, there seems to be a consensus among opposition parties that this will be an election dominated by tax plans. Or at least, they would like it to be.

But tied up in all of it is the debate over independence, further powers, and the constitutional make-up of the United Kingdom. Every party in Scotland is still adapting to the change in landscape brought by the surge in support for the SNP and the delivery of new powers from Smith.

Speaking to Holyrood, Patrick Harvie argued that the change has brought new possibilities.

He said: “What we have got is the opportunity for every party to lay out a stall on economic policy questions that Scottish politics has not really been able to engage with in the past, and that has always been a bit of frustration for us, with strong views on local taxation, particularly given the parliament has had power to do something radical with local taxation since 1999, and hasn’t done it. We are still keen to press that case.

“Back at that point [1999], the council tax wasn’t perfect but it wasn’t a quarter of a century old. It wasn’t the broken system, fundamentally, that it is now.

“I think the case to do something about that is compelling. It is a frustration that we see a government that is riding high in the opinion polls, that has a very popular leader, but isn’t willing to use the strength of that position to do something substantial on local taxation.”

Harvie’s words could probably be ascribed to many of those who campaigned for Yes. Nonetheless, as he points out, the SNP and its leader are very clearly running high in the polls. It brings us back to the one universally agreed prediction: the SNP will win the election.

Scottish politics has undergone tectonic changes since the SNP’s shock majority in 2011. A referendum, a surge in nationalism, and then new powers – only made possible by fiscal framework negotiations concluding on the eve of the election – have changed the nature of the game. A new battleground will mean new battle tactics.

Debate in the Yes movement over strategic use of the second vote has been ongoing for months, while Labour has already learned the hard way what happens when parties underestimate the importance of the list. As the election approaches, the more it appears to be a case of opposition parties fighting over the second vote, in a race for second place.

And yet, despite the debate over how to apply tax and welfare powers, a sense remains that it is independence that dominates the debate, or at the very least lurks in the background. For some, that means how best to trigger, and then win, a second referendum. For others, it is how to stop it.

The SNP and the Greens both maintain their support for independence, while both also seem to accept that the time is not yet ripe for a second vote. In fact, the only party to approach the election so far with an open demand for another referendum on Scottish independence is RISE.

Whether the SNP will include a concrete stance on a second vote in its manifesto remains to be seen. If it does, the debate may well change again. But until then, Scottish politics looks complicated enough.