AHC: Replace SNP with Communists

I just noticed this tweet from George Eaton, saying that at one point the Scottish National Party polled at 0.5% in 1955, the same as the Communist Party. In 2015, the SNP had a 49% polling in the run-up to the general election, and an ensuing electoral landslide.

Your challenge is to make the Communist Party the dominant political force in Scotland in 2015 and receive just as high approval and/or voting intention ratings. Bonus points for them achieving success via the ballot box, double bonus points if you can do it with a minimum of constitutional change to the UK, and hyper-mega bonus points if you can do it with the fall of the Warsaw Pact and the breakup of the USSR as it happened IOTL.
 
Interesting idea.

I haven't come up with how to get things to go this way, but a simple trade of SNP and CPGB electoral stats gets this;

Scottish National Party:

1955: 0.5%
1959: 0.5%
1964: 1.0%
1966: 1.0%
1970: 0.5%
1974 (F): 0.5%
1974 (O): 0.5%
1979: 0.5%
1983: 0.1%
1987: 0.1%

The party formally splits and its modern incarnations are the Nationalist Campaign Group and Democratic Scotland, which are political think tanks rather than political parties.

Communist Party of Great Britain (in Scotland)

1955: 0.5%
1959: 0.5%
1964: 2.4%
1966: 5.0%
1970: 11.4%
1974 (F): 21.9%
1974 (O): 30.4%
1979: 17.3%
1983: 11.7%
1987: 14.0%
1992: 21.5%
1997: 22.1%
2001: 20.1%
2005: 17.7%
2010: 19.9%
2015: 50.0%

In 2015, the Communists finally achieve a majority in the popular vote and command the bulk of Scottish seats.
 
Not sure if vanilla Communists could do it, but I do have a scenario for a far-left party with Communists in it achieving the SNP's breakthrough in Scotland.

Basically, we wank the Respect Party.

Firstly, they are able to work out a pact with the Greens, which keeps Monbiot on side and gives them a stronger degree of starting credibility than OTL (which isn't saying much).

Secondly, instead of just Galloway, a whole bunch of Labour leftist (say about 10) decide to jump ship to Respect. This gives them a better starting position and prevents the party from becoming Galloway's personal vanity project.

Over the next decade the party is able to slowly carve out a space for itself on the fringes of British politics, mostly focusing on local politics, but maintaining a small presence in the commons (between 8-12 MPs). They are able to benefit from some of the vote share that IOTL went to the Lib Dems and Greens during the Blair years.

Over time the party serves as a lodestone for the various fringe far-left parties to rally around, ultimately absorbing all but the most stringently sectarian leftist parties (coughSPGBcough). In addition their electoral alliance with the Greens evolves into a full affiliation/merger. Basically they are something like a cross between a British Syriza and a more effective version of TUSC.

Overall their impact on British politics at a national level remains fairly negligible, however, and things mostly go as OTL. The exception to this is in Scotland, where Respect has been able to fully colonise the political landscape to the left of Labour. As a result the SNP don't shift to the left, and instead try to present themselves as a centrist catch-all party that is all thing to all people, a tactic that causes Labour and the Lib Dems to accuse them of being cynical opportunists and Respect to accuse them of being little better than Tory separatists aping Blairism.

2010 rolls around and the coalition government is formed. The Lib Dems back-stab their student constituency by reneging on their commitment to opposing a rise in student fees (no points for guessing who I wasted my first vote on). Respect vocally condemn them for this and pledge to abolish student fees entirely if they were elected. During the AV referendum Respect campaign in favour, whilst also making it clear that they support a fully PR voting system, although the vote goes the same as IOTL in the end.

During the independence referendum Respect throw their support in favour of independence. Due to a number of scandals and high profile defections to Respect, the SNP rapidly begin to lose what influence they have, and Respect are able to position themselves as the party of anti-establishment politics. Despite this the referendum goes as IOTL.

The 2015 election rolls around and British politics is thrown into chaos. The Lib Dems take a massive beating, whilst Labour under Ed Miliband is unable to inspire the confidence of the electorate. The two biggest winners are Respect, who take all but a handful of Scottish seats, make inroads into traditional Labour heartlands in the North and Wales, and are able to take a chunk of the left-wing Lib Dem vote due to their prior commitments to PR and free education, ultimately catapulting them to the third largest party; and the Tories, who benefit massively from the split left giving them a 50ish seat majority.

In the 2015 Labour leadership election Corbyn fails to gain enough nominations to run (he barely got through IOTL, mostly as a token candidate), and as a result Burnham wins after several rounds. With Benn dead and the old left completely locked out of the party machine, the last remaining Old Labour lefties make the jump over to Respect, taking a small handful of MPs and councillors and a large influx of party activists.

The end result, Scotland is dominated by a hard-left party with a strong Communist/Trotskyist wing, with no changes to the British constitution and the USSR still consigned to the ash-heap of history.
 

shiftygiant

Gone Fishin'
Obvious issue would be that in 1955, the Communists were running, nationwide, 17 Candidates with 33,144 Votes. So that makes up about an average of 1,946 votes per candidate. SNP were running 2 candidates with 12,112, with average of 6,056 votes per candidate. The Communists were spred out across the country and only took in 0.1% of the national vote, whilst the SNP were only in Scotland and 0.1%. The SNP saw an overall vote increase, but so did the Communist Party. But the Communists also increased the number of seats they were competing for, whilst the SNP remained static with 2.

Why did the SNP surge? Partially it was to do with the Unionists folding into the Conservatives. With a distinctly Scottish party no longer, well, Scottish, the SNP were able to expand into this empty space and make headway. Note that in 1966, following the merger, the SNP gained 0.5% of the popular vote and ran 23 Candidates, coming fourth in overall vote, and then in 1970 doubles their total votes and won a seat.

The SNP had an advantage thanks to the dissolution of the Unionist Party and merger into the Conservatives. They are a regional Party, so their lower vote share is explained by them running a campaign in which the number of needed voters is very small to make a big impact (as would be seen in Feb 1974, when they won 7 seats with 2%, and later in 2015 when they won 56 with 5.6%). The Communist Party, on the other hand, were party competing across the nation, not in Scotland and Scotland only.

The Communists couldn't replace the SNP, to be blunt. The SNP were localized and used this to their advantage. The Communists ran nationwide. The SNP had the advantage thanks to the Unionists leaving a void, whilst the Communists were often tarred by the actions of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact (notably the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, which saw membership drop to a third). Scotland is also not a communist nation waiting to happen; as a Scot myself, I find the notion a bit funny.

Can a Communist splinter in Scotland achive some success? Yeah, a Party like the SSP are reasonable to wank into Minority Governments in devolved Scotland and a significant amount of Westminster Seats. But to have the same unexpected and unprecedented success of the SNP? Yeah, no that's not happening without a major shift in Scottish, British, and global politics.
 
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