The Scottish National party is described as many things, rightly or wrongly: a nationalist party and movement, ‘separatists’, a one-party state, even a ‘cult’. Missing is the sense of what animates and binds the SNP together as a political force beyond the cause of independence. At its core, the SNP is a tribe underpinned by a sense of community and of being an extended family of sorts. It’s true that this idea of the SNP as a family has provided a modus operandi throughout its history and rise to power. Now, though, this needs to be seen as a contributory factor in the scandals engulfing it.
It cannot be entirely accidental that the two defining leaders of the modern SNP, Salmond and Sturgeon, have both been implicated in major scandals.
The SNP was not always a mass party. When Alex Salmond returned to the leadership in 2004 it had well under 10,000 members (with only 6,536 voting in that contest); by the 2014 independence referendum, it still only had 25,000 card-carrying members. This small membership was bound together not just by shared beliefs in independence but by the scale of their task: to overthrow Labour’s dominance of Scotland which had become entrenched over years. They saw themselves, with some accuracy, as people outside (and opposing) the patronage, favouritism and clientism of the Labour extended state whose reach ran deep into local government, trade unions and the voluntary sector.
The ‘extended family’ of the SNP had redeeming qualities. According to political author Sue Goss it was an ‘open tribe’ as opposed to a ‘closed tribe’, with porous borders which welcomed converts from across the political spectrum unconditionally. It was a family always looking to expand and win over new adherents to the cause, keeping much of this ethos as it expanded to a six-figure membership.
When a friend of mine defected from Labour to SNP pre-Iraq War, a senior Scottish Labour minister said to me: ‘He will never get on or be accepted by the nationalists’. I replied: ‘He will, because they love converts and will use all his skills to the max.’ The point here is that Labour figures in the past (and to this day) did not understand the culture of the SNP and instead believed those caricatures of the party, to their own cost.
The SNP have over the years offered a home, sanctuary and support network to those looking for one. Derek Mackay was a rising star in the SNP, tipped for future leadership, and was finance secretary until 2020 when he had to resign in a scandal where he had been inappropriately texting a 16 year-old boy. Mackay had a difficult background with a violent, abusive father, and regarded the SNP as his own second family, making his resignation all the more painful.
There are upsides to being part of such an extended family: the SNP 2011 manifesto helped the party win an overall majority in the Scottish parliament under the banner of ‘Team, Record, Vision’. Inside the document were photographs of births, deaths and marriages of party figures that had occurred over the past four years since the last Scottish election. The message was clear, powerful – even daring. It offered an allure of intimacy and authenticity. The SNP was saying to Scottish voters: ‘This is who we are. We are not like other parties. We are a genuine community of people who experience important life-changing events together.’
But families also have downsides, and the longevity of the SNP in office and the cumulative effect of the length of their dominance of Scottish politics has come at a cost. There was the presidential style of leadership of Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon resulting in the uncritical adulation of both when in office. The cult of Sturgeon grew up post-2014 after her anointed coronation as party leader, and she oversaw the slow strangling of debate in the party and in government. Unfortunately, being a member of a family can entail not asking key members difficult questions, allowing them to get away with behaviour many think suspect. It can result in not challenging people when they really need to be challenged.
It cannot be entirely accidental that the two defining leaders of the modern SNP, Salmond and Sturgeon, have both been implicated in major scandals. Salmond of inappropriate sexual behaviour when first minister (acquitted in the resulting trial), and Sturgeon of presiding over a party with questionable financial arrangements which were the responsibility of her husband Peter Murrell, the party’s chief executive. Again, it is often the case that families have a propensity to idolise certain members and to do so long after it ceases to be accurate or appropriate. This does seem to have been part of what happened in the respective downfalls of Salmond and Sturgeon and to their reputations.
This is still true of the staunchest defenders of Salmond and Sturgeon who continue to believe in the legend, rather than the uncomfortable truth. At a recent social gathering I attended, several senior elected nationalist politicians quietly talked in corners of how things would turn out alright, despite current allegations, and how Nicola Sturgeon would be able to return to active politics. Such is the art of self-deception in families who can sometimes find it too hard and painful to accept the indiscretions and misdemeanours of their members.
The current causes of the SNP’s fall from grace are interwoven with the culture of the party as a family, as a close-knit community many of whom have spent decades together, and grown up alongside each other through significant milestones personally and politically. Much of how the party has been run – and even the reality of achieving and delivering on independence – has thus often gone unspoken and unsaid. Now the party need to do that most difficult of things: to confront who they are and what they have become. Having to acknowledge that they are a party and organisation in crisis has suddenly revealed that they are not what they thought they were – or wanted to be.
This is a well-worn script – just as it is for the BBC, the Tories and the CBI – and never ends well. It is going to be a bumpy ride for Humza Yousaf and the SNP. Difficult conversations are needed about what has happened, how some of its senior figures behaved, and how they let it happen.
Scotland’s leading party can no longer behave like a family business with its own opaque and idiosyncratic ways of doing things. It urgently needs to finally confront what has happened to it in recent years, namely the abuse of power and trust by its leadership, and to atone for what it has become. We all need families, but when they go wrong – whether it be the Murdochs, Trumps or SNP – it is very hard to put them back together.
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