Corbyn supporters should fear an alliance with Nicola Sturgeon – her SNP is the New Labour of the north

Scotland isn’t particularly left wing. Yes, its voters opted overwhelmingly for Remain – but social attitudes are similar to the rest of the UK

Nicola Sturgeon certainly sounded quite left wing as she launched the Scottish National Party’s manifesto. She said Boris Johnson is “dangerous and unfit for office”. She condemned a “disastrous Brexit deal that will hit workers and living standards”. She attacked the “Tory-Trump trade deal”, and complained that under the Tories “children are forced into poverty”.

And yet again she reiterated the SNP position that, in the event of a hung parliament – and “unlike the Liberal Democrats” – “we will never, ever help the Tories into government”. Instead, she offered the prospect of a “progressive alliance” that would “lock the Tories out of office”.

This is the sort of thing that goes down well in Scotland, which although it is not as anti-Tory as it used to be, is still anti-Tory. But it goes down well in the rest of the UK too, among liberal-left voters. Many of them see her as an inspiring example of what a popular, competent and progressive leader looks like.

When she appeared on the BBC’s Question Time election special last week, there must have been many Labour-inclined viewers who wondered how different things might be if they could exchange Jeremy Corbyn for someone like her. What is really striking about Sturgeon, though, is her appeal to Corbyn’s own supporters. They don’t want her as leader, but they do see the SNP as a model for their radical socialist politics.

When Sturgeon said on Wednesday that many progressives “look to Scotland for inspiration”, she was right. She listed free tuition fees, personal social care and prescriptions as examples, but for many Corbynites, it goes deeper than that. Before Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader, many of the “hard left” had given up on UK politics and moved to Scotland, adopting the cause of independence.

When Corbyn was elected, his supporters dreamed that he would revive the Labour Party in “socialist” Scotland, where the people would be crying out for his kind of politics. But it hasn’t happened.

That is because Scotland isn’t particularly left wing. Its liberal middle class likes to think it is, but social attitudes are not significantly different from the rest of the UK. Party loyalties are different, and Scotland, of course, voted by 62 per cent to remain in the EU, but The Sun is still the best-selling newspaper there. Probably, as a result, the SNP is not as left wing as it looks.

In fact, SNP policies are broadly centrist, more New Labour than Corbyn-style socialism. The record of the SNP government on the NHS and schools is unimpressive: spending is not much higher than in the rest of the UK, the outcomes often worse. Its much-vaunted free tuition fees policy means university places are rationed, and hence are skewed in favour of students from better-off families.

But its manifesto today is not so much about Scottish government policy: for a UK general election, it is about the SNP’s demands at Westminster. And there Sturgeon’s potential partners in a “progressive alliance” ought to be careful what they wish for.

It is not quite clear how this would work, because Sturgeon has said she wouldn’t make Boris Johnson prime minister, so she doesn’t have much negotiating leverage. But her price for cooperation with a Corbyn-led government is a new independence referendum in Scotland.

Corbyn has been a bit squidgy about it, but has in effect conceded that she can have a new referendum after the 2021 Scottish parliament elections. If the SNP won such a referendum, it would make it harder for a Labour prime minister to hold together an anti-Tory majority in the House of Commons. Removing the 59 Scottish seats, the Conservatives would at the last election have had a majority of 19 instead of having to do a deal with the Democratic Unionist Party.

In the end, the SNP is not Labour’s friend.