The Scottish National Party is not renowned for its calm and considered approach to politics. Like the Highland hordes during the Jacobite rebellions, it tends to alternate between heroic optimism and existential despair. Having been founded in its current form 90 years ago, the SNP is heading for the slough of despond.
After a year of denial following the resignation of Nicola Sturgeon, it is finally dawning on the party that independence is not going to happen any time soon. Mavericks such as former minister Alex Neil are saying openly that there might not be another independence referendum this generation. Even party leader John Swinney admitted at a closed session during this weekend’s conference — which was immediately leaked — that the SNP had, to use a technical term, lost the plot.
‘I’m not standing in front of you in denial’ he said, promising to end the habit of a lifetime. Voters just weren’t getting the message, he conceded, blaming himself for concentrating too much on ‘process’ rather than the merits of independence. The quarter of a million voters who deserted the SNP in July’s election simply wanted to ‘punish them’. And how.
The SNP went from 48 MPs to nine on July 4 — a date Swinney had rashly forecast would be ‘independence day’ for Scotland. The nationalists had been the third-largest party in Westminster; not any more. While the SNP still dominates the Holyrood parliament, polls are now forecasting that it could lose that advantage too. Party membership has halved in the last five years.
SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn blamed the coalition with the Scottish Green Party for much of the lost support. If the Greens hadn’t been shown the door in April, he said, the SNP would have lost even more than 39 seats. That’s hard to believe. But it is a measure of the party’s regret over the power-sharing arrangement which Sturgeon formed in 2021.
We argued about bottle banks instead of public services, said Flynn. He might have added that the Greens’ loathing of the oil and gas industry, which employs 100,000 Scots, was a major factor in Flynn almost losing his Aberdeen South seat two months ago. The Greens were also the driving force behind the Gender Recognition Reform Bill which collapsed after a double rapist, Isla Bryson, was installed on remand in a women’s prison.
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