A sporting look at the Scottish National Party manifesto

In the last of our series looking at the manifesto pledges around sport and recreation in advance of next month’s General Election, James Allen looks to the Scottish National Party and its plans.

In 2010, I didn’t read the SNP’s election manifesto. To be honest, I didn’t really need to, given the fairly limited number of seats the SNP was likely to win, and the relatively limited impact that the party was likely to have on UK politics. How times have changed – allegations, counter allegations and positioning about the level of impact that the SNP would have in Westminster are currently dominating the election. The SNP are now openly talking up their influence, not only in Scotland but “to help deliver positive change…across the UK”. In terms of the narrative around the election, they are serious players and depending on what happens on 7 May, they may well be for the next five years too.

My first reflection on the SNP’s manifesto today (as someone who has had to read lots of these in the last week) is that it’s mercifully brief. The second is that I can see the clear appeal of this document to much of Labour’s core vote both sides of the border – many commentators have suggested that SNP policy is reminiscent of traditional, dare I say, ‘old’ Labour documents. My final observation is that this is, disappointingly, probably even lighter on core issues around sport and recreation that the collection of last week’s manifestos.

The two highest profile and most talked about pledges – highly trailed of course in the leadership debates and elsewhere are scrapping Trident and an “end to austerity”. This manifesto pledges spending increases, including to the health service to continue to deliver a high quality, free at the point of use, health system. In common with other parties, a very positive mention of increased attention from mental health issues aside, it does feel a bit like there’s a wasted opportunity to talk more about early intervention, prevention and increasing activity levels to help the long term viability and success of the NHS.

There is one reference to the power of sport in tackling inequalities, including in health, where Scotland suffers some of the most serious levels of ill health and health inequality in Europe and a commitment to “promoting more active lifestyle(s) through sport”, including through linking this to reduced consumption of alcohol and tobacco.

The manifesto calls for free to air broadcasting of major Scottish sporting events too, but aside from this it’s really a very light read in terms of what would happen to our sector and how the SNP might exert their growing influence to tackle issues around inactivity and harness the power of sport and recreation for social good across the UK.

There is a promising sounding reference to a Land Reform Bill, with the stated aim of “improving transparency and accountability of land ownership and ensuring Scotland’s land reform debate focuses on how Scotland’s land can best be managed in the public interest”. We will await more detail on that with interest.

That’s the last of our manifesto blogs for the moment – but we will be providing more comment and analysis throughout the election campaign. The focus of our work immediately after the election will be on making as much progress as possible in getting key measures from our Ministers’ To Do List implemented.

Read our blogs on the other manifestos here.

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