THE POLITICS OF IMMIGRATION

7. How different was Scotland?
The public desire for a ‘Goldilocks’ debate on
immigration
There was no single British General Election result in 2015.
Only the Liberal Democrats achieved a consistent performance
– albeit an abject one - across England, Scotland and Wales, as Professor
John Curtice has noted. There were two big winners of the General
Election, though with contrasting methods of victory: an SNP avalanche
that tore up the election record books and rewrote the Scottish political
map; and the precision targeting which saw the Conservatives pick off the
seats they needed for an overall majority.
Labour did remain ahead in Wales, where an unusually distinctive
election result has gone almost unremarked outside the principality.
Labour won its second-lowest post-war share of the vote (36.9%), with the
Conservatives enjoying their best performance for thirty years (27.2%),
and UKIP taking 13.6% of the vote to knock Plaid Cymru, the party of
Wales, into fourth place on 12.1%.
Scots had previously treated different elections as distinct contests
- backing Labour in the 2010 Westminster general election before
awarding the SNP a majority for Holyrood in 2011. That changed in 2015,
with the SNP winning nine out of ten votes from those who had voted Yes
to independence, and one in ten of those who had voted no.
Figure 15: How Scotland Voted: General Election 2015
SNP
50% - 56 seats
Labour
24% - 1 seat
Conservative
15% - 1 seat
Lib Dem
8% - 1 seat
UKIP 2%
Greens 1%
Others 0.3%
How different is Scotland?
While Scotland has a distinctly more welcoming political
and media discourse on immigration, it was not the SNP’s inclusive,
welcoming and (moderately) positive approach to managed migration that
won popular support. This did, however, form part of the party’s narrative,
about a new Scotland, and clearly proved no barrier to an historic
landslide.
The SNP took a measured, pro-immigration stance in its election
manifesto, advocating the combination of ‘effective immigration controls’
while remembering that those who have come to Scotland ‘make a
significant contribution to our economy and our society’. In arguing for
‘sensible immigration policies that meet our economic needs’ the SNP
said its priority would be to seek the reintroduction of post study work
visas for international students.
31 British Future / The Politics of Immigration