CANNOCK, ENGLAND — “People are genuinely worried,” says Amanda Milling, the Conservative candidate in the Cannock Chase parliamentary seat narrowly won by her party in 2010 after giving absolute majorities for Labour in the three Tony Blair elections of 1997, 2001 and 2005. “There’s a real risk that money will go north of the border” — to Scotland — “and not to the West Midlands and Cannock Chase. And because of people who six months ago didn’t want to be part of the country.”
Cannock, about 10 miles north of Birmingham, is one of those industrial towns in England whose industries declined in the 1970s and 1980s, but which has grown more recently with white collar businesses and outflow from the larger metropolitan area. It looks not bedraggled but pleasantly up to date. (Cannock Chase, the name of the parliamentary district, was one of King Henry VIII’s many hunting grounds; the Brits give their districts not numbers, as Americans do, but picturesque names.)
In the chilly early May mist, Miling is wearing trackies and a Barbour jacket, armed with leaflets going door to door in a new subdivision. But while she’s clearly been drilled on details of the local hospital — Britain’s state-run National Health Service means hospitals are local issues in many districts — her reference here is to Scotland, more than 100 miles to the north, which has become a central focus of the campaign for the May 7 election, even though it contains just 8 percent of the United Kingdom’s population. And because the Scottish National Party, which won only 1.7 percent of UK votes in 2010, now is projected in recent polls to win almost all of Scotland’s 59 seats in the House of Commons.
Up through the 1970s, Scotland voted much like the rest of the UK, closely split between Conservatives and Labour. But the decline of heavy industry in Scotland plus the free market and anti-union policies of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative governments in 1979-90 made her party anathema in much of Scotland. And Tony Blair’s decision to create a separate Scottish parliament in 1999, with power over many domestic policies (including the ability to raise taxes), created a venue where the Scottish Nationalists could pursue their goal of independence for Scotland. In 2011 they won a majority in the Scottish parliament and SNP leader Alex Salmond pushed successfully for a referendum in September 2014. Spirits were high: Scot Nats leaders and followers spewed venom toward England and compared Scottish opponents, including Labour party leaders, to the Norwegian Nazi collaborator Vidkun Quisling. Queen Elizabeth II, coming out of church in Scotland shortly before the vote, said “people should think very carefully” about the subject. Independence lost, but by only a 55 to 45 percent margin. Salmond resigned and was replaced by a more attractive spokesman, Nicola Sturgeon (both have surnames redolent of fish, curiously).
A 45 percent minority was not enough to prevail in the referendum. But in Britain’s single-member districts, it’s enough for a sweep, and polls have shown Labour trailing in Scotland by margins suggesting they will lose most of the 41 seats they won there in 2010. That means that Labour will be hard put to reverse the Conservatives’ lead in seats, but they could govern with the support of the Scots Nats. Which is a point Sturgeon has pressed home eloquently in televised debates, embarrassing Labour leader Ed Miliband. The Scots Nats program calls for even more spending than Miliband’s Labour (which has effectlvely repudiated Tony Blair’s New Labour) and also renews calls for independence for Scotland.
Conservatives like Milling have hopped on the issue. The Scots Nats are likely to win only 4 percent of the UK’s popular votes, but if they win the projected 50 seats they could provide essential support for a Labour government — and, Conservatives charge, would maneuver to impose their program on the nation. High-minded opinion writers talk of the danger of the Scots Nats maneuvering Labour into supporting and framing a referendum to make Scotland independent and split the United Kingdom. Candidates like Milling — and Conservative billboards — make the point that a Miliband government dependent on Scots Nats votes would ship money from England, and from relatively prosperous but far from rich places like Cannock Chase, to north of the England-Scotland border.
Does the Scots Nats issue have the potential to swing this election? Polling shows the two major national parties running roughly even, with Conservatives a bit ahead, but by a smaller margin than their popular vote margin in 2010. And the current districting plan, based on the 2001 and not the 2011 Census, puts the Conservatives at a disadvantage to Labour, which wins many population-declining industrial districts with many fewer votes than Conservatives win in fast-growing suburban areas. Conservative strategists clearly want to hold onto Cannock Chase; they have sent in Prime Minister David Cameron, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne (three times) and London Mayor Boris Johnson in to campaign for Milling. But their real ace in the hole here, and perhaps in England generally, may turn out to be Nicola Sturgeon.
