The City should not dismiss the SNP as a single-issue party

Michelle Thomson is a member of what the Scottish National Party describes as the “new breed” of party members who was not politically active until the build-up to the independence referendum.

With a wide, toothy grin on page 12 of the SNP general election manifesto, Ms Thomson points out that her background is “not in politics but business”. A check on LinkedIn shows that the candidate for Edinburgh West ran IT projects at Standard Life, then became a programme manager at Royal Bank of Scotland; since 2009 she has been a property entrepreneur. A Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama graduate, Ms Thomson was also a professional pianist.

The politics seems to have started about three years ago, when she helped found Business for Scotland. This unashamedly pro-independence group believes that secession would mean that, as Ms Thomson puts it, “Scotland’s economy, our business community and nation as a whole would be better off”. The group argues that Scotland’s economic ability to go it alone is shown by a range of statistics, from generating more tax per head than the UK as a whole to exporting 40 bottles of whisky every second.

Edinburgh West’s previous incumbent, Liberal Democrat Mike Crockart, who led the parliamentary campaign for the crackdown on PPI-type nuisance calls, faces a tremendous struggle to hold on. Paddy Power currently has Ms Thomson at 1/2 to take the seat, with Mr Crockart at 4/1.

The outsider image that the SNP is trying to cultivate here is a little disingenuous: in her candidate’s statement, Ms Thomson points out that she joined the SNP as a 16-year-old in 1981. An endorsement from the Scottish parliament’s Children’s minister, Fiona McLeod, points out that Ms Thomson has been “a committed SNP member for many years” – it was more that she became “prominent” during the independence campaign.

Still, Ms Thomson does possess the wide-ranging CV most voters would like to see from the leading lights of the Conservative and Labour parties. There are too many former special advisers, not enough who spent their twenties and thirties in real work – or, at least, in parts of the country other than Westminster.

Ms Thomson’s presence also challenges the sweeping assumption that business is anti-independence. Among larger, cross-border conglomerates that is clearly the case – but business is about more than the blue chips who are worth more than most small nations anyway. As well as a cheesy photo of one of their own in Ms Thomson, people in small and medium-sized Scotland- focused businesses will find plenty of persuasive policies in the SNP’s manifesto.

For example, the SNP wants the employment allowance trebled to £6,000 per year by 2019-20, thereby reducing the cost to business of creating jobs. The SNP has also pledged to abolish air passenger duty eventually, when control of the excise is devolved to Holyrood in the next parliament – which is good for business as it will encourage more direct flights to Scotland.

Bigger businesses should also note that the SNP will push for gender equality on executive boards in all major UK companies, not just those in Scotland, and increased paternity leave. These are highly unlikely to be among Ed Miliband’s “red lines” should Nicola Sturgeon find that Labour begrudgingly accepts a loose offer of voting support in order to take power.

But what remains most interesting to business is an older policy that won’t be enacted any time soon – but could prove an ultimate safety policy for the City years from now. The “double majority requirement” demands that all four constituent nations of the UK would have to vote for withdrawal from the EU, so that, say, a huge majority in England could not override the wishes of the Welsh, Northern Irish or Scottish.

This is a fairly meaningless policy in 2015, because, should the Conservatives somehow cobble together a coalition or minority government, the 2017 in-out referendum is a pledge as good as written in blood. Should Labour get in, there won’t be a referendum anyway.

As Tesco’s chairman John Allan warned The Independent on Sunday at the weekend, big business could flee the UK over the uncertainty surrounding Britain’s membership of the EU.

City executives have been critical of Labour in recent months. But, should Mr Miliband get the keys to Number 10 with SNP support, executives might do well to suggest that he accepts the double majority requirement and enshrines it in law as soon as possible. Even if he gets to Downing Street without the need for the SNP, Mr Miliband could still try to get this on the statute books, to help scupper any further attempts at an in-out referendum.

Denying a simple vote with a straight majority in what, after last year’s independence failure, is still a United Kingdom might not be the morally right thing to do. But as a political tactic, “double majority” could placate the City.

Ms Sturgeon has been, by a distance, the star of the election so far. But it is still far too easy for those of us south of the border to dismiss the SNP as a one-issue party with the loudest campaigners. The manifesto shows that the SNP also possesses plenty of business savvy, both in its candidates and policies.

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