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Professor John Robertson OBA
It’s probably not in your nature. It’s not in mine and of all the large parties in the UK, it’s not in the spirit of the SNP.
We want to campaign with a positive message and we have a lot to be positive about in our achievements, in reducing poverty such as with the unique, world-leading Child Payment, in providing universal benefits such as those for prescriptions and tuition, in the lowest crime levels in the UK, in increased attainment by pupils in schools, in the best paid and most numerous doctors, teachers and police officers, in the most affordable housing, in the lowest council tax, in the safest roads in the UK and in the most generously subsidised ferry service in the developed world, with the lowest prices and serving the smallest of communities. I, you, could go on.
I’m not saying that it would be a waste of time to keep on telling voters about these but all the evidence, sadly, is that it’s not a winning hand on its own without giving voters a reason to vote not just for us but against someone else. It has long been said that many Tory voters did not know what they liked but they damn well knew what they disliked – Labour.
In addition to telling voters about what we are for and have done, we have to acknowledge that negative reasons to not vote for our opponents are more important, if we want to win big.
In a general sense, from US researchers in 2013 in the journal Psychological Bulletin:
There is ample empirical evidence for an asymmetry in the way that adults use positive versus negative information to make sense of their world; specifically, across an array of psychological situations and tasks, adults display a negativity bias, or the propensity to attend to, learn from, and use negative information far more than positive information. 1
More specifically in the context of elections, summarised by a BBC report in 2015, only a year after the first Scottish Independence Referendum:
So perhaps political rhetoric that provokes fear – emphasising the risks of terrorism, economic instability and so on – can have a subtle but powerful effect on some groups of people when it is used to try and sway votes. Go negative
Other subconscious biases are already exploited by political campaigns. One such effect is the so-called ‘negativity bias’, a well-documented tendency of people to preferentially remember negative information, and allow negative emotions to dominate decision-making. Krosnick’s research suggests that when politicians emphasise the negative qualities of their opponent, it can increase turnout of their supporters. Back in the 1990s, he studied how people’s feelings towards politicians affected their likelihood of turning up to vote. As you would expect, he found that liking both candidates equally affords little motivation to vote. But even if a voter likes them unequally, they still aren’t very interested. Dislike, on the other hand, is a much more compelling reason to cast one’s ballot. “If you dislike at least one of the two candidates, then you really are motivated to participate – so in other words it’s really disliking a candidate that motivates turnout,” says Krosnick.2
The opportunities are everywhere. Tell the voters how Trident and the planned small modular reactors are causing cancer spikes and are almost impossible to shield from terrorist attack. Tell them about the plague of drug gangs from England causing a surge in extreme violence across 50 small towns and villages in Scotland. I could go on.
Why this happens, on an unconscious level, is explained by neuroscience. Summarised in the Conversation of June 2024:
In the past decade, neuroscience has enabled us to identify the parts of the brain that get activated when you watch political adverts. What these results show is that most people are driven by fear and emotion rather than by rational argument in election campaigns. In practice, this means that voters are more susceptible to messages that stress the negative rather then the positive.
Politics is a bare-knuckle fight, and our brains reflect that. Evolution has conditioned us to be driven by fear when we are under threat. We want to survive above all. By playing on our fear and anger, those who devise election slogans are producing – perhaps deliberately – messaging that triggers parts of the brain associated with revenge and pent up rage, including the so-called anterior cingulate cortex (or ACC), deep in the front part of the fissure that separates the two brain-hemispheres.3
Get this on billboards, in Youtube adverts and the sides of buses. It should be short and simple like those adverts the Tories used, of long queues of unemployed (Britain’s Not working) of Alex Salmond in the breast pocket of the Labour Leader or of spending EU money on the NHS. I bet you can think of some slogans for those places in Scotland.
Has this happened much in Scotland before?
Focusing on Alex Salmond’s personality allowed opponents to sidestep substantive debates about independence or SNP policies. By framing him as abrasive or controversial, they could appeal to voters’ emotions rather than engaging with the complexities of constitutional arguments. This was particularly effective in swaying undecided voters during the 2014 referendum.
The demonization of Alex Salmond, locating all of our collective desires within his supposedly ‘divisive’ but admittedly combative persona was a very effective strategy for our opponents in 2014 and after. Thereafter, portraying endlessly Nicola Sturgeon as the champion of the Trans movement and as married to an fraudster, have been very effective in keeping the SNP support low in opinion polls for the last few years. We have tremendous scope to do the same thing back at them with the likes of Jackie Baillie (easy, so easy) and her millionaire leader. Let’s do it. Swallow your embarrassment and think of the prize.
Sources:
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
We should absolutely utilise all of these methods, and loudly at that. It’s so frustrating seeing/hearing SNP voices not speaking out to the usual claims of “ferries, education and the NHS”.
Let’s get stuck in 🏴
Danny Mitchell
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None of the unionist , London -based parties have EVER offered positive reasons to the voters for their support – negative , negative , negative is their approach !
So , time to respond to their constant denigration of everything the Scottish Government has done to improve life – and to mitigate the extraordinary attacks on poor people from Westminster legislation .
”They don’t like it up ’em ! ” as corporal Jones would say .
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‘Britain causes cancer’. A true slogan.
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Tip for the SNP…..
Starmer said this below to members of his party, the Labour party, in relation to his new ‘changed’ Labour party….as in more right wing Labour party and Labour UK government…..
“if you don’t like the changes that we’ve made, I say the door is open, and you can leave”……….
Can the SNP ask if that sentiment as in offer is also available and so applicable to Scotland and the UK….
As many of us here in Scotland “don’t like the changes in the UK” and we also now don’t like this new Labour , as a party and as a new UK government”….
So then could he, Starmer, or members of his UK government keep “the door open” so that “Scotland can leave” via us holding another legitimate and justified Scottish independence Referendum ?
As I think this next time more people in Scotland will now say ‘ Oh FFS YES please’ to independence …..instead of what they said in 2014…..as in NO ‘Thanks’…………..
Liz S
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We can be negative, shouting about all the many dangers of Westminster. But also offer the positive alternatives.
Forgive me, but even the xenophobic “take back control of our borders” trope is available, when people perceive that Westminster has failed to do so.
Westminster is more and more seen as a failed master, a colonial monstrosity , still supporting the obscene waste leftover from empire.
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Can’t agree more…it’s no good telling people what they benefit from because of SNP Scottish parties’ policies, the negative Brit states’ propaganda tops anything positive the SNP says, as has been said before, SNP could pave Scotland’s streets with gold but the ‘media’ would still portray them as useless, pathetic, incompetent, corrupt, working AGAINST you people, so just bad ba bd bad, and well, best vote for er BritNats’ ‘change’. No thanks!
The SNP and other Scottish parties who genuinely want to see Scotland independent, need to tell people how dreadful things really will get should there be a ‘change’ at Holyrood and England takes full control of Scotland’s parliament once again. They need to list the negative damaging disgraceful actions that Labour UK, HQ’d in England, did during their ten years in control at Holyrood, from Labour’s PFI scheme (scam) plunging Scotland into £billions of debt to this day, refusing to invest in crucial infrastructure such as a new Forth road bridge when the old one was no longer safe! Etc. Oh and Edinburgh trams fiasco, costing way over what it should have done! Did the long drawn out investigation held later, lead to any blue tents or sackings of those involved, no but someone made a packet out that fiasco.
The SNP et al need to lay out in plain language exactly what it will mean to have England controlling all policies, all decisions on well, everything from infrastructure, welfare, healthcare, environmental wellbeing, education, poverty, and ‘worse’, workers’ conditions, and wages, etc etc…
The BritNats in London must be chomping at the bit to get their scheming dirty hands on Scottish Water, they’d sell it lock, stock and every damn last barrel and fill our rivers with effluent. They will reverse every single positive socially responsible policy put in place by the SNP, and ‘worse’ to quote Starmer who said after he was elected things would get ‘worse’ multiply that by 100 times should his party or other English HQ’d party take control of Holyrood.
I just don’t have time to keep up with everything even reading this blog and others..right now.
I need to start helping out our SNP in Edinburgh with campaigning as well. So how do we persuade SNP to show people the worst case scenario should they be taken in and conned by the Brit/UK English state…
Let’s all keep on at the FM where we can. Showing people all the positive SNP policies in Scotland, (against huge odds of restraints and constraints imposed by the EngGov) in relation to what could be happening in Scotland in a few months time, (scary face emoji), isn’t going to work on it’s own, hit back, be realistic about the terrible consequences of having the country next door control all of your economic decision making, social policies, and welfare of your people and environment etc.
TELL people about Labour’s terrible wasteful legacy in Scotland, and lay out exactly what Labour/Tory/LibDem/Reform and the ‘Your party’ would mean for Scotland and it would be catastrophic for the people of Scotland, the environment, economy and social wellbeing.
NO THANKS!!
😦
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we can win big,
if Indy supporters vote SNP with their constituency vote,
and Indy supporters vote for the best placed party to win list seats, Green or Alba,
voting this way will ensure the Indy Parties WIN BIG and reduce the London based parties to a rump.
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Would you trust your kids to the care of a Labour Party child crèche?
gavinochiltree
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Perhaps so, but something like Believe in Scotland’s “i-Switch” campaign ticks all the right boxes for me – Gordon’s summary of the ridiculous situation Scots are trapped in over energy was short sharp and very much to the point on the duplicity of successive Westminster governments…
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/dVXmsmUHafg
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