The only evidence that I can offer I fear is the huge effort that the Tories (and Tory press) put behind the 'vote Labour, get the SNP card' - almost to the exclusion of any other argument. Grasping, manipulative but not (entirely) stupid - I'd suggest that they wouldn't have done this if they didn't think it would play to their advantage?
Yes, back again. I'm genuinely sorry if it looks like I'm unfairly jumping on your post. That's not my intention. But there was something about your second paragraph that was bugging me, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. I kind of alluded to it in my previous post; but it's definitely worth its own post.
Firstly let me just say that just because a political party thinks a certain strategy will play to their advantage, does not mean it actually will. History is littered with bad campaigns that backfired badly.
Much more importantly though... I've realised that your argument basically runs like this:
The tories campaigned, partly, using a "vote Labour, get the SNP" strategy (to use your words). As I've argued already; there is no evidence that had a significant impact on the English vote. But let's say for a minute that there was. Let's imagine that a post-election poll suggested that large numbers of would-be Labour voters in key Tory/Labour marginals were influenced by that campaign.
So because of the Tory "SNP campaign" the UK now has Cameron as PM.
Except, even that does not demonstrate (or even imply) that the SNP are the cause of that vote transfer. It demonstrates that the tory PR / propaganda was successful. It says absolutely nothing real about the SNP, unless you want to argue that Tory advertising can be considered generally truthful?
To make a very relevant analogy, drawn from the same election... much of the UKIP campaign used "immigrants" as a bogeyman in much the same way the Tories used the SNP. Right? Does that say anything truthful or relevant about immigrants? Or does it speak to the nature of UKIP?
