‘Bells’, one of the great episodes in the second season of Blackadder, begins with Kate taking notice of her father not being in his altogether best sorts: “Father, I must speak. I can be silent no longer. All day long you mutter to yourself, gibber, dribble, moan and bash your head against the wall yelling: ‘I want to die’. Now you may say I’m leaping to conclusions, but you’re not completely happy, are you?”

Something similar is happening in British politics in general, and in Scotland in particular, as you may have noticed unless you’ve spent most of the last year with your head ensconced in gaffer tape and cotton wool in your ears.

And nowhere are Labour and other unionist parties more vulnerable than in Glasgow. Once the ‘Second City of the Empire’ (a title it contested with Liverpool), it is now the foremost city of the Scottish independence movement. Labour are hanging on by their fingernails here, with Willie Bain likely to be their sole Glasgow MP come May. They won all seven seats here in 2010.

Scotland’s political landscape is changing – and not for the first time.

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George Square, Glasgow, is humming to the frenzy of thousands of protestors and campaigners, waving strange standards that are not the Union Flag. An unpopular coalition government is in power, with Conservatives and Liberals publicly turning on each other, uncertain how to contain a surging fringe movement and prevent wider civic discord.

The backdrop: a European crisis; a fall in living standards and an increase in inequality caused by a deep recession; an unstable and threatening Russia causing widespread panic in Europe and North America; and a public jaundiced by war.

George Square, Glasgow, is humming to the frenzy of thousands of protestors.

The year is 1919, not 2015, and Glasgow is under general strike. The strange flags flying are not the Saltire – there would be nothing strange about that in the streets of Glasgow – but the Red Flag, heralding the nascence of ‘Red Clydeside’.

The ‘40 Hour Strike’ collapsed into a conflict between marchers and the Glasgow Police, with Scottish regiments from outside the city drafted in to maintain order. Political leaders throughout the UK feared the strike would lead to a wider revolution, as it had in Russia just two years earlier.

In the end, the strikers did not secure a 40 hour week, but their hours did fall by a fifth. Electorally, the strike capped a permanent change in Scottish politics. 29 Labour MPs swept into the House of Commons at the next election, whilst the Liberals foundered, splitting into two parties. The ‘Labourisation’ of Scottish politics was to hold for several generations.

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Glasgow once held a unique place in the world. The industrial hub of the British Empire, it provided more than half of the UK’s entire tonnage of shipping at its peak. In the half century leading up to the First World War, it built a fifth of the world’s ships.

In 1901 the city held the second of four Great Exhibitions.

The population surged throughout the 19th century, peaking at one million. In 1901 the city, succeeding recent ‘world fairs’ in the US, held the second of four Great Exhibitions in a showcase of its international importance.

But the decline of Empire, and fading British competitiveness in a modernising world, left Glasgow vulnerable as the twentieth century ploughed on. The city declined much as mining and industrial towns did across northern England and Wales. Glasgow became a byword for welfare dependency, poor health, poverty and sectarianism. Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting – released in 1996, nearly a century after Glasgow’s century-opening Exhibition – was set in Leith, Edinburgh, but could have as easily captured Glasgow at the time.

Whether this portrays an accurate picture of the place is by-the-by. The legacy of this image, and the reality of some of its aspects in particular districts of Glasgow, shapes conversation here. Civically proud yet self-deprecatory, Glaswegians refer to these tropes when meeting outsiders more readily than the outsiders would dare themselves.

Modern Glasgow is bonkers, in a good way. Its subway system represents a mortal threat to anybody over the height of 5’10”; a local resident stared down the Kia I was riding in like it was Balrog run rampant, or some satanic voodoo.

Glaswegians refer to these tropes more readily than the outsiders would dare themselves.

Inside a Tesco, in the build-up to Valentine’s Day, was a display invoking shoppers to treat their loved ones this year. There was a table romantically decorated in pink hearts, balloons and glitter – and passing shoppers’ additions of a bottle of Buckfast, a can of beans, and a tin opener. This could all be observed to the soundtrack of the UK’s only, as far as I’ve ever noticed, supermarket DJ, complete with turntables.

Over the road it felt perfectly normal to wait for unofficial table service at McDonald’s, the joint’s very Glaswegian attitude of “It’ll be alright buddy, we’ll sort you out” reassuring me that I had nothing to worry about. In Glasgow the mad and the mucky barely invite comment. Later that day, a chap, otherwise completely minding his own business, hastily mooned the 19 bus as if he were behind schedule in doing so.

Less charming relics of Glasgow’s past persist and baffle. On several occasions I was briefed on the politics of sectarianism in the city, an alien idea to an Englishman. One woman told me she still had to remind her son to remove his Catholic school uniform before doing his paper round in a Protestant neighbourhood, and the owner of a vintage clothes shop related the inconvenience of the still regular ‘Orange Walks’ by Protestants across the city.

The Old Firm hatred also surprises outsiders, no matter how famous the footballing rivalry, the recent re-acquaintance of hostilities resulting in a child with a broken jaw, amongst other casualties. Wearing a St Pauli scarf – a German club affiliated with Celtic – led to some interesting conversations. The sectarian element is often overplayed, but the fact it remains at all is a blemish on a fast-modernising city.

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The SNP surge throughout Scotland, and particularly in Glasgow, represents a perfect storm that shows no sign of abating.

The party hold all of the cards in Scottish politics, and the two main parties have nowhere to look but themselves if they wish to know the root cause. A feeling of disenfranchisement dominated nearly every conversation that I had with local voters, the feeling not limited to those who voted ‘Yes’ in the September referendum.

The SNP hold all of the cards in Scottish politics.

An SNP supporter from a family of active Labour members and supporters – let’s call her Sally – spelled out her reasons. “What we are witnessing is a generational shift, a new kind of politics. Labour and Conservative is just one against the other, [both] inherently negative”, a negativity that she felt was carried into the referendum. “In Holyrood we are seeing a different approach that is less antagonistic”.

The modern campaigning style of both Labour and the Conservatives, created out the division sparked by Thatcherism, was sufficient to turn Sally and many other Scots away, as it did in the referendum campaign (although not quite enough – and there is evidence that economic fears saved the Union).

Both parties allowed the SNP to inextricably link independence with positivity, regardless of its implications. As Duncan, a tipsy ‘Yes’ supporter I found myself chatting with at the Ubiquitous Chip, put it: “I voted ‘Yes’, and I didn’t care about the oil, or it being our money, I just felt good about politics and cared for the first time, like I could change things”.

The two major parties’ sclerosis was evident when I chatted to Willie Bain, likely to be Labour’s only Glaswegian MP in May. “However people voted on the constitution in the referendum, in the UK election it’ll come down to a choice between two governments. That’ll either be the Conservatives, or the only other government that can represent change in this election, which is a Labour Government”, he told me.

It’s a dichotomy Labour are convinced by, but it doesn’t seem to be swaying many minds.

It’s a dichotomy Labour are convinced by, but it doesn’t seem to be swaying many.

But when I asked Sally if a more positive campaign would makes her return to Labour, she remained firm: “No. It isn’t just the negativity of Labour in campaigning, or their taking Scottish support for granted. Their policies have been ‘Tory-lite’ for the last few years. Not to forget Iraq and supporting the banks”.

This perception of there being but a hair’s breadth between Labour and the Tories is as widely felt in Glasgow as across the rest of the UK, but Scots here can do something about it: the SNP are now a viable alternative.

Natalie McGarry, the SNP candidate for Glasgow East who’s hoping to defeat Margaret Curran, Labour’s shadow Scottish secretary of state, stressed this when we spoke. “Have the Labour Party been effective in opposition to the Tories? No. They’ve voted with them on [policies such as] benefit caps… they haven’t put forward a strong vision.”

It isn’t merely a sense of Labour complicity with Conservative policy that has wounded the party, but a lack of belief in Labour’s ability to deliver. As Sally put it, “Labour have been incompetent. The SNP front bench in Holyrood has got more done, are more united, [and] have shown a greater ability to push Scotland’s interests.

“In the Scottish Parliament Labour are hopeless, anybody with party ambition seems to go straight to Westminster. Both here and there they stab each other in the back. They can’t even trust each other, whereas the SNP seem to work together, even with two big egos like Salmond and Sturgeon.”

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This image of SNP coherence and competence – in stark contrast to unionist, or ‘Westminster’, parties – was made by several others I interviewed. But despite its ever-growing and emboldened army of latter-day-supernats, not every person voting SNP in May is a committed supporter of the party.

Greg, a student at Glasgow University, is a passionate member of the Scottish Greens, the party closest to his views on NATO membership, nuclear disarmament, the economy and environmental issues. But he is planning on tactically voting for the SNP. “I vote Green in Scottish Parliament elections, but the SNP are the only leftish-wing party that stand a chance this May.”

The vast bulk of SNP support comes from ‘Yes’ supporters.

Aside from the SNP’s broadly left-of-centre manifesto, the basis of its support is independence, another theme expressed regularly by many here. The vast bulk of SNP support comes from ‘Yes’ supporters trying to keep the independence fire lit, even if their politics does not align with Sturgeon et al’s.

There isn’t a road in Glasgow where you won’t still see a blue “YES” poster stuck in somebody’s window, and if the pro-UK parties think the issue has gone away for twenty years because ‘The ‘Yes’ campaign promised’, they are likely to be in for a rude awakening.

Even if only a third of voters in Scotland are committed to independence – a third less than appear to be at present – they will fuel support for the SNP. And ‘First Past The Post’ is now the nitrous oxide fueling the SNP surge. While only ‘half’ of Scots are set to vote SNP in less than four weeks, at least 5 in 6 of Scotland’s seats are likely to turn Nationalist yellow.

There are inbuilt advantages to the SNP’s position in Scotland. In a devolved country, they can not be completely culpable. Until Scotland is an independent state, or has been unequivocally handed ‘Devo Max’, the SNP will not have to face the full force of sovereign scrutiny.

The main devolved powers are not in the most controversial policy areas. Although it is possible for policymakers to make unpopular decisions in any field – as the unpopularity of many local councils demonstrates – it is fair to say that the most complicated choices, on defence, social security, immigration and foreign policy, remain with Westminster.

The main devolved powers are not in the most controversial policy areas.

Even where devolved services are considered to be underperforming – such as NHS Scotland – those in power in Holyrood can always point to Westminster setting the overall budget. The House of Commons also has a more developed level of committee scrutiny than the Scottish Parliament has at present, as Mr Bain stressed in our interview. The SNP are playing with a loaded deck.

These are the SNP’s theoretical advantages. But their strength is tangible. It is made up by a bewilderingly enthusiastic membership. More than half of the prospective voters I interviewed had already spoken to SNP canvassers knocking on doors, whereas not a single one had, as of yet, spoken in detail with Labour, Liberal Democrat or Conservative activists.

The SNP now has more than 100,000 members. More than 10,000 attended a recent rally in Glasgow. In contrast, Ed Miliband has delivered dozens of set piece speeches to little more than a handful of assembled fans and journalists since 2010. Labour’s conference hall was barely full in late September, just after the referendum vote, and quickly emptied when Miliband exited.

At a time when scepticism towards mainstream media is at an all-time high, the Yes campaign, and subsequently the SNP, have taken their message online. Every political party is online, but most simply broadcast scripted and partisan messages to their own activists. None can boast the SNP’s army of tweeters; not that they’ve always helped the party, as last week’s attacks on a BBC journalist showed.

Like the Democrats in 2008, (and to a lesser extent the Liberal Democrats in 2010) the SNP are maximising the politics of the personal in a way that the older behemoths seem incapable of doing. Even if it doesn’t necessarily play out that way in reality, they have successfully made voters feel nearer to decision-making, as Duncan of the Ubiquitous Chip put it.

*

The struggle for independence fuels the SNP, but, in almost every conversation I had, SNP voters were at pains to point out they were not anti-English.

Following the ‘Yes’ campaign, the SNP have managed to steer debate away from confrontational nationalism. But some Scots I spoke to did betray their beliefs. I was told that the English are ethnic nationalists, that they are obsessed with money in a way Scots voters aren’t and that every town in South East England is wealthy. They obviously haven’t visited Medway, my hometown. (Or read May2015’s recent look at the myth of Scottish exceptionalism.)

The SNP have managed to steer debate away from confrontational nationalism.

The Andy Murray joke – “Scottish when he loses, British when he wins” – also came up twice, and was not thought to be a joke. Most of my interviewees seemed genuinely surprised that most English people I knew liked Scotland and wanted the Union to hold. Of course, many people in England feel disliked in turn, particularly post-referendum, further illustrating the divide between reality and perception.

Is this a failure of politics? Perhaps, although there is more to it. Labour mobility between Scotland and England is a quarter of that between the US and Canada. And of the students I interviewed, all had visited continental Europe more times than England, naturally shaping their identities in a new direction. As Greg, the reluctant SNP voter, put it to me, his campaign motto is: “Act locally, think globally”.

As in 1919, the ground is shifting in Glasgow. A city with chronic unemployment and the shortest life-expectancy in the UK is looking elsewhere for solutions. Those in favour of an integrated UK, which includes this writer, cannot wish away the reasons why the referendum was so close, nor why the SNP are gaining so much traction.

As in 1919, the ground is shifting in Glasgow.

Without understanding the causes of resentment, anger and disconnection in places like Glasgow, other parties cannot begin to make new headway in Scotland. Willie Bain told me he has outlined many of the issues in his constituency to Ed Miliband, and that they have been ‘taken on board’.

These problems aren’t unique to Scotland. In the same way that Labour’s once-solid support in Scotland has collapsed, its standing across northern England will soon be threatened by Ukip, who are set to come second in hundreds of English seats next month. The two parties are being fuelled by the same dissatisfactions.

I asked Natalie McGarry if she could see the SNP running across England, especially in its most left-behind towns. I could hear her flinch down the phone. She insisted that breaking up the Union was fundamental to the SNP cause. Although she did add that a loose alliance – the SNP have obviously learned from the Lib Dems fate as a junior coalition partner – could “force the Labour Party into policies which are more in line with traditional areas of Labour concern”.

Ironically, Labour’s collapse in Scotland is not harming their chances of power – as long as they are willing to capitulate to any SNP demands, or can pressure Sturgeon into supporting them without offering any concessions.

The need to keep the SNP on side, for any power-sharing deal would like only be on a vote-by-vote basis, is likely to drag the party to the left, and create the real divide with Tories that many voters – North and South – seem to want.

It’s not clear whether that will make them popular, or actually help the pockets of England far worse off than Glasgow, but the SNP have managed to sell themselves as the moderating influence on Labour that Scotland needs, in a way that the Lib Dems never managed when in coalition. Nothing seems likely to stop Scotland’s nationalists now – at least not until 50 MPs join the House on May 7.