WI: No Scottish Independence Referendum

Let's apply some hand waving and say the SNP don't get a majority in the 2011 Holyrood elections, they're unable to hold the referendum and don't have the resulting surge in support.

How would this effect the 2015 general election?
 
Likely a hung parliament without English fears of SNP influence and Labour gets more votes, though its likely cameron could still govern with LibDem and DUp support.
 
Well, it doesn't affect the collapse of the Lib Dem vote, which, in a lot of blue-orange marginals, meant that a Conservative vote that hadn't been enough to beat the Lib Dem vote in 2010 was large enough to beat the multiple-ways-splintered non-Conservative vote in 2015. Going by this data, the net gain in Conservative seats came from Lib Dems rather than Labour.

What's difficult to tell is how many Britons in red-blue marginals voted Conservative because they didn't want a party that wanted to dismantle the United Kingdom anywhere near power (in spite of Ed Miliband's assurances that he wouldn't cooperate with the SNP even if it meant the difference between him being Prime Minister and not) and how many voted Conservative because they didn't trust Labour to run the economy, because they didn't want Ed Miliband in particular to be Prime Minister or because of the particular candidates they had rather than national issues. The former would change in this scenario; the latter wouldn't.

Frankly, it's sufficiently difficult to tell this that I don't believe anyone can make any detailed claims on the matter with much confidence. A hypothetical Conservative-DUP coalition at the moment would have 15 more seats than the magic number of 325, which I think is a big enough number that, unless the loss of the SNP factor hugely affected red-blue marginals in OTL, the Conservatives plus the DUP would still have an overall majority; but it would be a slim one and the Conservatives would have to be giving lots of extra money to Northern Ireland for fear of losing the majority whenever the DUP got pissy. It would be a bloody uncomfortable situation for the Conservatives; if at any point before a big vote the DUP said that they weren't very comfortable with it and would need more incentive to vote for the government, the Conservatives would have to give more subsidies to Northern Ireland. Also, Conservative backbenchers such as Cash, Redwood and the Europhobic merry men would have a very strong hand indeed against government policy, which would in many ways drag the government to the right.
 
well labour would probably still lose seats in Scotland, the Scottish labour party has been in a general very slow decline for 20 years or so. Depends on how many seats labour holds in Scotland, but im saying either tory minority government or possible a labour coalition/confidence and supply arrangement with the remaining LD's and the nationalist parties.
 
(a) I disagree that the decline of Scottish Labour wouldn't be seriously affected. Voting 'yes' in the referendum established a huge pro-SNP voting bloc, including plenty of former Labour supporters. Without that I would be exceedingly surprised if the SNP did anywhere near as well as they did. 20 seats? Sure. 30? Maybe. Nearly 60? I'd be shocked.

(b) Whether the Conservatives are in government after the election doesn't depend on how many seats Labour holds in Scotland. In fact, provided that Ed Miliband would obviously break his word and form a deal with the SNP (as everyone realised, hence why giving his word was a bad idea since it was obviously insincere) if it were actually the case that Labour + SNP would have a parliamentary majority but otherwise there would be a Conservative government, the outcome in Scotland is irrelevant to the final outcome. How many seats are held between which member of a possible coalition doesn't determine whether that coalition as a whole has a majority. What matters to that is how many seats the Conservatives get out of the ones that they can realistically get (which doesn't include Labour safe seats or indeed any seat in Scotland except that one eternally-blue constituency in Dumfriesshire).

If, in 2015 in OTL, Labour had won every single seat in Scotland, it would have been irrelevant to the fact that there would still be a Conservative government, just as in the case where the SNP won (nearly) every seat in Scotland.
 
Labour win a lot more seats in Scotland (but still lose some to the SNP) is the obvious one; I'm guessing Salmond would stick around longer, as he hasn't had his big career-defining throw of the dice.

As PA says, we don't know how many people would vote Labour if they weren't scared of the SNP. We could be looking at:

a) Conservatives win but they don't have a majority; they have to buddy up with the DUP and don't have as much freedom of movement.

b) Conservatives get the most seats but they're outgunned by a Labour/SNP/Lib Dem informal coalition. New election comes early (and Miliband likely sticks around because Labour doesn't want a leadership contest rocking their boat)

c) Labour wins but they don't have a majority; they have to buddy up with the surviving Lib Dems or the SNP alternately, depending on the issue.
 
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