In the 1990s and 2000s, as social and economic barriers for Scottish Catholics disappeared and the SNP morphed into a left-of-centre party seemingly more in tune with traditional Scottish Labour voters than the Labour party itself, so the SNP started to make serious gains among the Catholic working-class electorate. Catholics began to see Scottish nationalism as something which embraced rather than excluded them. The narrative of the SNP championing the underdog citizen and the underdog nation is one to which all Scots, regardless of religious affiliation, can subscribe.

Equally important has been the declining importance of the Church of Scotland in both Scottish religious and political life. As a Calvinist national organisation the Church of Scotland is ecclesiastically unique, but before devolution it too held a specific duty as the seat of Scottish nationalism. The Kirk’s debates were relayed live on BBC Scotland, as moderators and elders were naturally assumed to be articulating the concerns and views of the Scottish nation. Unlike the Church of England, no one questioned whether it should be meddling in politics.

It is partly for this reason that Mrs Thatcher’s speech to the General Assembly in 1988 (in which she proceeded to lecture the Kirk on the true meaning of Christianity) proved so explosive. It was a complete affront to Scottish (religious) national identity. But, paradoxically, while the speech helped further alienate an already anti-Thatcherite Scotland from the Conservatives, it also signalled the last days of the Kirk at the centre of Scottish national life. Within ten years its role would be replaced by the Holyrood parliament while it witnessed a near-collapse in its membership. Part of the reason the SNP are such a confident and pervasive political force is that their support lies not in an ageing, devout population but in a younger, less religious electorate. While its strength can be attributed to secularisation, its rise cannot be understood without reference to the decline of old religious-political bonds.

Politics in Scotland are not complicated by a multi-faith electorate, but south of the border they certainly are. But although Jews, Hindus and Buddhists may form only a tiny fraction of the electorate, but the opposite is true of the British Muslim community, which currently makes up a third of BMEs and 4.8 per cent of the population. Between 2001 and 2011, the number of Muslims in England and Wales rose from 1.55 to 2.77 million. This naturally translates into electoral power: 26 parliamentary constituencies are now 20 per cent Muslim, while YouElect has estimated that Muslim votes have the potential to influence the result in 32 constituencies.

The legacy of the War on Terror, however, has meant that Muslim affiliation to the Labour party is no longer guaranteed. In both 2005 and 2010 a proportion fled to the Liberal Democrats; in 2015, many are undecided voters.

The main issue when speaking of the “Muslim vote” is not who they will vote for, but whether they will vote at all. Muslims in Britain are more disinclined to vote than any other minority group (an apathy which predates the War on Terror). In 2010, just 47 per cent of Muslims voted, compared with 65 per cent of the general population. If the Islamic community feels disenfranchised and victimised, then voting must be encouraged as a way of overcoming this.