Regarding SNP strategy they seemed to mostly have been successful with promising a better future to the disfortunate (what Al calls utopia, I would say genuine Social Democracy..), and not with their centre-right voters among the Tartan Tories in rural and small town Scotland, who voted with their wallets.
Its interesting that in Quebec there was a similar phenomenon where Quebec nationalism (which up to 1960 was associated with rightwing Catholicism and the Union nationale etc...) became very associated with the political left - particularly since the PQ under Levesque was very social democratic (in other words nothing like what it is now). After losing two referenda and losing some elections, the PQ started to think they needed a strategy to win over small "c" conservative nationalists in rural Quebec and stop being seen as a party of hipsters from trendy areas of Montreal . The result was the PQ veering off to the xenophobic right and trying to win over rural Quebec by attacking Muslims etc...and also by recruiting ultra rightwing media tycoon Pierre Karl Peladeau to run for them (this would be equivalent to Alex Salmond convincing Rupert Murdoch to run for the SNP) - anyways it was a total fiasco as the PQ turned off its left of centre base and gained nothing in rural areas and got crushed in the election last March.
