There is an elephant in the room at SNP conference. Everybody can see it. It is hard to miss. A huge, lumbering, swaying elephant, high as a house, wandering at will around the conference hall.
Delegates are all too aware of the elephant, yet most seem content to let its presence go unremarked. They shuffle their seats to one side to let the elephant pass. They avert their eyes when elephant droppings, steaming and richly fragranced, are shovelled out of sight by SNP interns.
Occasionally a delegate — usually one who joined the party within the past 12 months — will nudge their neighbour hard in the ribs and shout: “Look, an elephant!” But then, taking a hint from the embarrassed silence around them, they will pipe down and try to ignore the elephant, which by this time has found its way on to the conference platform, sniffing out pan drops in Fergus Ewing’s jacket pockets.
The elephant in the room is, of course, independence. It is the raison d’être of the Scottish National party and has been for eight decades. And yet, at the SNP conference this year, it is not an approved subject for discussion. There is no conference motion on independence. There is no debate. Nicola Sturgeon’s pre-conference soundbite was “keep our eyes on the prize”. It might as well have been “keep your eyes off the elephant”. The prize she is referring to is not independence, it is victory in the Holyrood election next May.
This is where the first minister wants her party members — all 114,121 of them — to focus their energy and attention. She does not want them fighting the next independence referendum, or refighting the last one. In her short speech opening the conference yesterday, the watchword was “respect” for the voters’ verdict last autumn. There was no mention of “triggers” for a second go. Independence was only mentioned in order to deflect attention away from it, to send a message — to activists as well as the public at large — that indyref2 is so far off that it is not worth worrying about.
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This is curious, because by the first minister’s own calculations another referendum may be triggered by the UK vote on membership of the EU, which some pundits expect could be held in just 12 months. And yet there is to be no official SNP post mortem on why the party lost the vote on September 18 last year; no attempt to learn the lessons of that defeat so they can be applied to a future campaign.
So what is going on here? My take is that Ms Sturgeon is attempting some social engineering on her party membership, three quarters of whom are newbies. She is trying to take indy groupies, high on the experience of the referendum campaign, and turn them into conventional political party activists. She is trying to switch their primary motivation from achieving independence to advancing the SNP cause.
This could be trickier than it may seem. Politics can be dull, even in a party that’s on a roll. One SNP official told me that delegates had been asking some very basic questions about what was going on. “What’s a fringe meeting?” was one. The intricacies of motions, amendments, remits back and direct negatives are all a bit of a mystery to those whose previous experience of politics has been limited to last summer’s extraordinary, joyous carnival for national emancipation.
Ms Sturgeon is calculating that activists’ adoration of her — adoration is not too strong a word — can form the basis of a new bond of trust. She needs them to trust her when she says she will not let them down on independence. As soon as she believes a referendum can be won, she will call another vote. In the meantime, she has some chores that need done, if they wouldn’t mind helping out.
This is a big ask, particularly because the business of winning a Holyrood election and governing effectively can start to look awfully like an accommodation with the Union. At what point does effective devolved government, making creative use of new powers gifted by Westminster, start to undermine the existential case for independence? Not every Yes campaigner who campaigned for a single moment of transformative change will be comfortable with this.
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For some of the more seasoned activists in Aberdeen this week, the referendum was the culmination of a lifetime’s longing. They took the defeat hard. They know full well that a deep and thorough conversation about the referendum is exactly what the SNP needs. Given how historic a moment it was in Scotland’s story, it is downright bizarre that the party is talking about everything but.
There is much to discuss. But there will be no official debate this week on the SNP decision to share a currency with what remains of the UK after independence, even though that would mean monetary and macroeconomic policy being in London hands. There will be no debate on the contentious decision, foisted on unhappy SNP activists, that a British monarch would be an independent Scotland’s head of state. No debate, either, on why the party had no convincing answer to obvious questions on pensions, energy and membership of the EU last year. To deny SNP activists the opportunity to have their say on these fundamentals is high-handed and disrespectful, bordering on insulting.
Not only is the SNP avoiding the issue of independence, it is avoiding a broader debate about the constitution. Discussion about how to use the raft of powers about to be devolved to Holyrood is minimal. Should an SNP government raise the old age pension? Should it hike income tax for the rich? Should it use new powers to offset Tory cuts to tax credits? None of these questions will be posed, let alone answered.
All of which means the SNP gathering in Aberdeen this week is one of the most discombobulating I have ever attended. It is doggedly and deliberately avoiding the biggest challenges facing the Scottish government, given the powers heading north. It couldn’t care less about what its activists think about the one thing that unites every Scottish Nationalist: the goal of independence. And it is obstinately refusing to face up to the failings of its case to break up the UK.
The elephant has every right to be in the damn room.