Can the SNP save itself from wipeout? Its laser focus on independence won’t help

John Swinney launches the SNP’s Westminster election manifesto in Edinburgh on 19 June. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

Will the publication of the SNP manifesto stop it losing seats on 4 July? Probably not.

But since the party can’t form the next Westminster government, its manifesto would never be a fully costed set of plans for the whole UK. Instead, it is a mix of policies for running Scotland and demands for higher spending by the likely winners at Westminster. It’s. confusing – like all post-devolution Westminster elections – and unlikely to set the heather alight.

So, manifestos don’t really cut it in Scotland at general election time. Allocating blame for service delivery failures north of the border is the name of the game. Is the fault mainly with Westminster or Holyrood? The SNP is trading on its record in Scotland and the stark contrast with British norms that has been revealed in every leaders’ debate.

While the Tories are proposing more benefits cuts and Labour is noncommittal, the SNP mitigated the bedroom tax out of existence here 10 years ago – few Scots realise it still operates down south. The Tories and Labour will maintain prescription charges for England – they’ve been free here since 2011. The Scottish government resolved all NHS pay claims through negotiation while the British government is still battling junior doctors.

Indeed, many of the big announcements daringly revealed by Westminster rivals during various leaders’ debates are already up and running in Scotland: council house building restarted when the right to buy was axed in 2016, and free personal care for elderly people was introduced by a Labour first minister in 2002. All of this has been delivered within the considerable constraints of devolution, with next to no borrowing powers and the legal requirement to deliver a balanced budget.

Westminster politics is so rightwing, adversarial and timorous, John Swinney doesn’t need to be Che Guevara to sound revolutionary. Indeed, at the launch he described the SNP as a “moderate, left-of-centre party”, yet channelled the thunderous fury of a 21st-century John Knox over Labour’s refusal to axe the two-child benefits cap, declaring that it was “a simple test. Are you in government to help kids out of poverty. Or are you so morally lost, that you push more kids into poverty?”

But there’s the rub. Despite a unique Scottish child payment – described by Prof Danny Dorling as the biggest single anti-poverty measure anywhere in Europe for the last 40 years – poverty levels haven’t much shifted. Despite a much smaller private sector in the NHS, waiting lists are still long. Despite a big social rented sector, the Holyrood parliament declared a housing emergency last month.

The question for Scottish voters is who to blame. Is it Tory/Labour Westminster or is it SNP-run Holyrood? Can Scottish leader Anas Sarwar convince SNP voters that a Westminster Labour government will turn the Scottish ship around? Can John Swinney persuade SNP voters that performance problems here largely arise from Westminster-made economic crises and chronically underfunded public services that Labour is unwilling to turbocharge?

The polls suggest a Labour win in Scotland for the first time in a decade but that may not prove it’s winning the argument. Scottish voters may be so desperate to see the Tories out, they’ll back the only party that can oust them. But the Swinney assault on Labour’s adoption of Tory austerity – with the SNP leader in the House of Commons, Stephen Flynn, also joining in – is having an impact, along with the argument that an assured Labour victory across the UK means Scots can vote for an effective progressive opposition instead.

That, of course, raises the question: does the SNP achieve anything worthwhile in a first-past-the-post-constructed parliament, where one of the Big Two wins the most seats by a country mile (with a minority of the vote) and doesn’t have to pay heed to anyone?

The SNP points to its widely admired stance on Gaza, which helped to persuade a painfully cowed Labour party into backing a ceasefire. But that is thin gruel. Some frustrated independence supporters are suggesting SNP MPs should abstain – like Sinn Féin. The SNP has skipped around this idea as deftly as it skips around a clear position on oil and gas licences (issued actually by Westminster) and what “losing” the Scottish election would mean for independence.

Logically, if John Swinney maintains that winning the most seats should allow him to start indyref2 talks with No 10, then losing should mean parking a cause backed by roughly half the Scottish electorate. That could backfire, though it only mirrors Labour’s point-blank refusal to contemplate another poll, whatever the election outcome.

Now it’s on page one, line one of his manifesto (and with the pro-indy Greens and Alba on his tail) Swinney won’t let independence slip. At the manifesto launch, he rebutted the idea that the cost of living crisis or NHS funding are now more central issues: “Never let anyone tell you independence is separate from people’s everyday concerns. It is fundamental to [resolving] them.”

Has the focus on independence been successful? Some voters in the all-important, ex-Labour west of Scotland are disgusted with an SNP-run Glasgow council for planning to lay off teachers because of funding cuts from an SNP-led Scottish government. And few SNP canvassers will be mentioning ferries (delayed and over-budget) on the Hebridean islands. The one thing that hasn’t happened is a collapse of faith in left-of-centre, collectivist, green policies. The question is whether Holyrood or Westminster, the SNP or Labour, will best deliver them.

Some sage heads say two disappointing years of an underwhelming Labour government will help the SNP in the next Holyrood vote in 2026. But whatever the pollsters and manifestos say, the general election in Scotland is still very much up for grabs.

Lesley Riddoch is a writer, journalist, campaigner and broadcaster