ReportageThe separatists are aiming for a large victory in the May 6 elections, to demand a new referendum.
Kaukab Stewart did not even think of wearing his SNP candidate’s yellow cockade – the Scottish national Party -, for this meeting on the heights of Kelvin, an affluent district (red stone buildings, classified facades) in the north-west of Glasgow, the economic capital of Scotland. Not that this retired teacher, who ends up taking her badge out of her pocket, is ashamed of her affiliation with the Scottish Independence Party. On the contrary. In this SNP stronghold, this woman of Pakistani origin has every chance of being elected to the Scottish Parliament on May 6.
“I was the first BME candidate [« black and minority ethnic », issue des minorités ethniques] when the Scottish Parliament was inaugurated in 1999. At the time, I was not elected. I might be the first BME MP to join. It only took me twenty-two years! “, jokes this longtime independence activist.
But three weeks away from a historic poll for Scotland and the rest of the UK, Kaukab Stewart is moving forward a bit in the fog. It is not easy to campaign in the midst of deconfinement in Scotland, when only hairdressers and schools have reopened and it will still be necessary to wait until April 26 for non-essential stores to raise their curtains. “Since this morning, we can finally go door to door, but it is impossible to keep our distance in the stairwells, so we will be content to tow”, says Kaukab Stewart.
In the streets of Glasgow, no election poster – the town bans them – no political tag – they are quickly erased. The same goes for Edinburgh, the majestic political capital of Scotland, an hour’s drive east. “We don’t really have the means to know what people think, apart from following the bubble that is expressed on Twitter”, points out Shaun Macaulay, SNP city councilor in Irvine, a satellite town of Glasgow on the west coast.
A resolutely leftist program
Not that there is a lot of suspense: the SNP is sure to come out on top, and Nicola Sturgeon, his boss, almost certain to keep his post of “first minister”. But what his party is aiming for is the absolute majority of seats (65 out of 129), in order to have sufficient legitimacy to demand a second referendum on Scottish independence, after the failed one in 2014 (the no. with 55% of the votes). In such a scenario, many in London and Scotland believe that it will be difficult for Conservative British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to oppose it.
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