Another day, another drama – and this time it’s the SNP in the spotlight. Ex-Edinburgh MP Joanna Cherry has taken to the august pages of Scotland’s only pro-indy newspaper, the National, to urge her party to take a long hard look at itself after its electoral wipe-out this month. Though she has insisted she ‘intends to remain a member of the SNP’, Cherry has pulled no punches in her criticism of her colleagues. It’s quite the read…
Blasting the ‘culture of hate’ that the party has ‘allowed to flourish…against those who dare to disagree’, Cherry has lamented the ‘”no debate” mantra’ coursing through the current iteration of the party. Going on, she raged:
I find it profoundly depressing to see where we are now. The positivity is gone and some people within our movement feel they have licence to attack those with whom they disagree in the most unpleasant terms. No wonder we are putting voters off. Back in 2014 had I foreseen the level of abuse and harassment I would have to endure as an SNP MP, simply for daring to question the direction the party was taking, I would never have left my legal career to enter elected politics.
The SNP needs urgently to address what has gone wrong and what led to this huge drop in our vote, or we will suffer another rout at the 2026 Holyrood election. I don’t sense any great appetite on the part of the leadership of the party to do this properly… The party also needs to look at its internal culture and the poison that has been allowed to spread because of the “no debate” mantra that was imported from identity politics and allowed to seep through the party into everything we do. Sadly, this culture has also damaged our parliament and other public institutions. It is not just the SNP which needs reform.
Ouch. And Cherry didn’t stop there. Nodding to internal politics that she claims are to blame for changing party rules to work against her, the nationalist politician added:
I would have liked the opportunity to be part of an SNP government but as everyone knows, the SNP’s rules were changed in 2020 to make it as difficult as possible for me to make the move from Westminster to Holyrood. I will be pleased if recent reports are correct, and that petty and unprecedented rule change is consigned to the dustbin of history. But without reforming the NEC and some serious changes at the heart of our party that sort of convenient rule tinkering can easily happen again at another time for other reasons. I could not countenance standing for Holyrood as an SNP candidate unless the party addresses the culture of bullying and harassment of those who dare to put forward ideas or question policy. I know many women (and some men) who feel the same.
Talk about scathing…
The SNP ended up with just nine seats in the general election – a spectacular fall from grace after winning in all bar three of Scotland’s constituencies in 2015. The 2026 Holyrood poll is less than two years away and with a number of disgruntled ex-MPs milling around, nationalist MSPs are getting increasingly worried about their own futures in the party. Will the infighting worsen? Watch this space…
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