A very interesting press release was issued last night by the SNP candidate for the Argyll & Bute seat in the UK’s May 2015 General Election.
Brendan O’Hara, the SNP candidate was ‘calling on Labour voters to do the right thing’, in response to a claim that some unrecognisable ‘senior Labour figure’ had been advising Labour voters here that, ‘as Labour stood no chance of victory so Labour voters should support their allies in the Conservative Party, in an effort to stop the SNP winning the seat.’
Presenting this claimed strategy as a given allows Mr O’Hara to describe it as ‘one final act of betrayal’ and ‘a piece of staggering hypocrisy’ from a party ‘that now wants the Tories to win in Argyll and Bute’.
What is actually going in here is multifaceted and covertly strategic smearing – and the reverse of what is actually happening in this constituency.
The sitting MP, Liberal Democrat Alan Reid is as like to win again as not. He is no showman but the quiet assiduity in his unstinting work across the constituency can never be dismissed in the fit it has with an unshowy constituency. He is also in a position where he is the only candidate certain to be in a party of government in the event of a hung parliament.
The Labour candidate, Mary Galbraith, Kintyre raised and a change management consultant, selected in 2013 and campaigning hard since then, with focus, creativity, a nose for real issues and a driven determination – is the one who has been making the weather in the campaign.
The Conservative candidate, Islay businessman, Alastair Redman, has not apparently convinced Conservative voters, of which Argyll has a substantial and loyal number. The central party is not funding the local effort and has dismissed hope of taking the seat.
For Argyll has been hearing for some time of Conservative voters who are considering voting for Mr Reid or even doing the unthinkable and voting Labour. Their concern is how best to protect the stability of the Union for which Argyll voted strongly above the average in the independence referendum in September 2014.
The SNP candidate is STV television producer Brendan O’Hara, well known within the party as a long time activist but neither much known across Argyll and the Isles and with limited personal knowledge of what is one of the most complex cultural territories in Scotland. He is also fighting against an earned distrust if the SNP in today’s Argyll and Bute electorate [outside its own core vote].
This distrust is born from the aftermath of the party’s betrayal of its non-SNP supporters in the May 2012 local authority elections, hoping for a better council. Instead we saw the worst performance in living history as the SNP group of councillors abandoned the needs of Argyll and ate each other in a cannibalistic frenzy fuelled by external party pressure for the SNP to abandon power to protect the indy vote. They did – or some of them did; and the vote against indy in Argyll was one of the strongest.
Last night’s press release from Mr O’Hara is a recognition of the extent to which the SNP campaign is afraid of the impact of Galbraith; and the strength of Reid. It’s purpose is therefore singular but three-pronged:
- to prevent Conservatives from voting for Alan Reid by trying to make them think that Labour believe the Conservatives can win the seat;
- to prevent the Conservatives from voting for Mary Galbraith by making them think that Labour believes that it cannot take the seat but the Conservatives can;
- to divert some Labour voters to themselves, the SNP, by trying to sicken them with the claim that the Labour party wants them to vote Conservative.
Anyone who knows anything about this campaign and about the candidates knows how risible this notion is.
Labour have well founded hopes of taking the seat; and no one believes that the Conservative candidate will get anywhere near second place, never mind taking the seat.
This press release is no more more than evidence of the black arts of political campaigning, a disguised device to divert Labour votes in Argyll and Bute to the SNP; and to prevent Conservatives from voting Lib Dem or Labour.
Labour and the Liberal Democrats will find it the very encouraging signal it is.