Calling the tune

ACCORDING to Google, the most searched-for phrase halfway through Britain’s televised election debate on April 2nd was “Nicola Sturgeon”. The combative chief of the separatist Scottish National Party (SNP), though unfamiliar to many English voters, was making light work of the leaders of their main political parties. By the end, “Can I vote for the SNP?” was also trending—further evidence that she had impressed many south of the border. So has Ms Sturgeon any plans to put forward candidates in England? “Despite the temptations and encouragement, no,” she says, seated in a box-room at the SNP’s functional headquarters. Not even to mark the 700th anniversary of the siege of Carlisle, in 1315, a famous Scottish assault on the English border city? The normally rather flinty leader emits a sound that is almost a giggle: “Don’t tempt me.”

On the shelves behind her are mementoes of the SNP’s remarkable rise—from an irrelevant party in the 1960s, to one that may soon be Britain’s third biggest—and her own. “She’s got Scotland’s oil” reads an old SNP advert, depicting Margaret Thatcher as a vampire, the black stuff dripping from her teeth. It is a reminder of what Ms Sturgeon calls the “disgust at what the Thatcher-led Tory government was doing” that first recruited her to the party.

Everywhere, leering from books and photos, is also the image of Alex Salmond, the former leader of the SNP, with whom Ms Sturgeon has had a sometimes vexed relationship. She was expected to become leader in 2004, after Mr Salmond’s first crack at the job; then he suddenly fancied another go at it, and shunted her aside. Ms Sturgeon, who grew up in a working-class family near Ayr, on Scotland’s west coast, then served as his deputy for a decade. She got her chance after Mr Salmond again stepped down last September, having led Scotland closer to independence, at the referendum held that month, than even the SNP had previously considered possible. And that dream is not dead. Ms Sturgeon has presided over an astonishing surge in support for the party, making her Britain’s most powerful female politician.

Crazy paving

Nothing about the SNP’s recent rise, including the brush with national dismemberment it occasioned last year, was inevitable. It was chiefly a product of its leaders’ passion and cunning. That is how, back in 2011, the SNP won a shock majority in the Scottish Parliament (under an electoral system designed to preclude this), which triggered the referendum. By building a sprawling army of activists, it then took the United Kingdom to the brink: the pro-union campaign won by 55% to 45%.

The SNP’s latest achievement is to have retained much of the activism and mass enthusiasm it worked up during the referendum campaign. Its membership has ballooned from 26,000 to over 100,000 in six months. “People don’t want to go back to the days, pre-referendum, when the Westminster establishment sidelined and ignored Scotland,” its leader explains. SNP gatherings, such as its spring conference on March 28th at which she was introduced as “the only party leader in the UK who people actually like”, resemble rock concerts. Polls suggest the party could increase its share of parliamentary seats in Westminster from six to over 40 at the election on May 7th, sweeping to victory even in generations-old Labour Party strongholds like Glasgow (see chart). It may well hold the balance of power in the next British parliament, in which no one party is likely to hold a majority. Having lost the referendum, the SNP has won its aftermath.

Ms Sturgeon says she wants to use this influence to “pave the way” for Ed Miliband, the leader of the same Labour Party she hopes to annihilate in Scotland, to be prime minister. This means her MPs will oppose any Tory bid to form a government—a retort to their Labour opponents, who tell left-wing Scots that a vote for the SNP helps the Conservatives. “If the SNP and Labour combined have more seats than the Tories do,” Ms Sturgeon insists, “we can prevent David Cameron from getting back into Downing Street.” Her party will even seek to do so if Labour is the second-largest party, she adds.

For this assistance, she would extract a leftist price. Ms Sturgeon envisages her MPs (led by Mr Salmond, who is standing next month for parliament in Westminster) “perhaps forcing” Mr Miliband to avoid spending cuts, opposing the renewal of Britain’s nuclear deterrent and closing the National Health Service (NHS) to new private-sector providers. “We won’t vote for Labour policies that we think are just carbon copies of Tory policies,” she says.

SNP involvement in the next British government, Ms Sturgeon suggests, could form part of “a process in Scotland of people gaining more confidence, of questioning why we should be at the mercy of Westminster”. But might a Scottish-flavoured administration in London, dealing with nationalist grievances about austerity, NHS privatisation and the like, in fact make the union look less lousy? Not necessarily, she replies: “I can’t tell you when there’ll be another independence referendum. I think there will be one and I think there will be a ‘yes’ vote.”

Given that independence is, in fact, the SNP’s raison d’être, some suspect it is secretly rooting for the Tories. On April 3rd Ms Sturgeon faced claims that she had confided in the French ambassador to Britain that she wanted Mr Cameron to remain prime minister. Both she and the diplomat deny this; but the SNP could undoubtedly gain from another Conservative-led administration. Opposing a Tory-led government, which would probably contain few, or possibly no, Tory MPs in Scottish seats, would afford the SNP an endless opportunity for nationalist grandstanding.

The referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU Mr Cameron has promised, in the event that he remains in office, could be a more specific boon for the separatists. Scots would not vote to leave; if Britain does, the SNP will naturally demand another independence referendum. Ms Sturgeon acknowledges this. Britain leaving the EU, she says, would mean “an awful lot of people in Scotland saying that we need to look at independence again.”

Ms Sturgeon’s claim that she most wants a Labour government may be sincere. But her suggestion that Scotland’s move towards secession is out of her control is wrong. Whether Scotland holds another referendum, as she well knows, will be heavily influenced by her leadership, and she is playing a long game. If a majority of Scots still don’t want independence, the SNP’s formidably impressive leader is happy to wait. As her unionist rivals discovered on April 2nd, they underestimate her at their—and the union’s—peril.

^{A full transcript of our interview with Nicola Sturgeon and a separate video appear on our online election hub, along with regularly updated analysis of the campaign. See: www.economist.com/UKelection2015}