On Thursday many Scots will vote Labour for the first time or, for the more seasoned, the first time in a while. And for many of them a big reason will be Fomo.
For anyone who does not keep up with the fast-moving argot of 21st-century English, Fomo is an acronym for “fear of missing out”. People want to be part of history. They want to be instrumental in bringing down this Tory government. Change is coming and people want to own it.
At one and the same time voting is a solitary act — a person holding a pencil in the privacy of the polling booth — and an expression of communal will. When we mark that “X” on the ballot paper we are both alone and together.
The feeling of being part of something bigger than ourselves is an underappreciated factor in how people make decisions on how to vote.
Which is why I believe Thursday’s election augurs a fundamental shift in the mindset of the Scottish electorate, a change more consequential than the final reckoning in the small hours of Friday morning of Scottish seats won and lost.
Advertisement
I am talking about who we mean when we use the word “we”. I believe this election has the potential to restore Scotland’s sense of common purpose with the rest of the United Kingdom, a sense squandered in the past 14 years when our two governments have been Tory and SNP.
• Tactical voting set to propel Labour to victory in Scotland
For almost a decade and a half ministers in Edinburgh and London have nurtured acrimony. Grievances have been nursed and wounds kept open. Neither government has seen any political advantage in rapprochement. Rancour may be a lazy and shortsighted way to fire up SNP diehards and the Tory core vote, but it works. A cross-border sense of “us and them” has been dominant.
Here I hold my hands up. People like me may be part of the problem. I am of a certain age. My political outlook was forged in the fight for a Scottish parliament. Once won, devolution was my focus. It still is. Every Wednesday here in The Times I bang on about Holyrood and its machinations. Inadvertently I may have contributed to the sense that Scottish and UK politics are two distinct entities.
I may have to change my ways. In the meantime, I have some predictions for the weeks and months ahead.
Advertisement
I believe that for many Scots, the idea of thinking about Britain as “us” will start to feel less weird. Dividing walls within our politics will become more porous. A commonality of purpose will emerge, initially on energy and poverty.
Change will make its presence felt through language, tone and accent as well as ministerial action. Scots will see Whitehall run by men and women with backgrounds and life stories not unlike their own. The English accents on the TV news will be from a different England, a nation socially diverse and culturally rich. There will be fewer sightings of the narrow, arid, exclusionary social caste from which the UK cabinet has largely been drawn in the recent past.
Let me be clear. I am not suggesting a sudden Scottish enthusiasm for Westminster and all its works. Trust in all politicians remains low. Nor do I think Sir Keir Starmer enters Downing Street on a wave of Scottish love. No one is under any illusions here. Much Scottish support for Starmer is transactional: he is the most effective means of ridding ourselves of the Tories. That is all. Any greater degree of trust will have to be earned.
Much has been made of the dour, downbeat tone of the Labour campaign, under-promising because Starmer simply does not believe that grandiose offers will be believed. Starmer promises only that recovery will be long and hard. The SNP in particular has been critical of what it sees as Labour’s caution.
And yet dour and downbeat is the Scottish way. The Reverend I.M. Jolly will forever occupy a nook in the national psyche. Our innate scepticism is a product of our history, drawn from the Reformation and the Enlightenment. Scots are not unfamiliar with the concept of the struggle. The struggle is an old friend. Arguably this was the flaw in the Yes Scotland campaign in the 2014 independence referendum: the SNP insisted secession would be easy.
Advertisement
In the months to come there will be those who do not want us to get comfortable with a new sense of being British. The SNP will try to drive a fresh wedge between Scottish and UK politics, substituting Labour for the Tories. Nationalist politicians will amplify any difference between Edinburgh and London. They will deny Starmer any benefit of the doubt. The idea that Scotland and England are morally incompatible is too central to the mindset of the modern SNP, too useful to a separatist mode of thinking, to be abandoned without a fight.
But be in no doubt: a challenging time for the SNP lies ahead. If Scots begin to feel the British government is simpatico with their instincts, the salience of Scottish independence will be further diminished. This will force the SNP to choose whether to double down on indy rhetoric or advance the Scottish national interest in other ways, within the Union.
It feels so long since Westminster and Holyrood were pulling in roughly the same direction, it may take some time to adjust. Muscle memory may perpetuate the bad habits of the past. But the days of the old divides are numbered. A new definition of “us” is almost here.
