As the SNP gathers for its conference in Edinburgh this weekend, its membership nearly halved from a peak of 125,691, there is a palpable sense of confusion and drift, laced with anxiety for the future. ‘Horsed’ is how the former SNP MP Stewart McDonald describes the SNP’s likely fate at the 2026 Holyrood election unless something serious is done to arrest the party’s electoral decline. But the SNP is without answers and most importantly without a credible leader after last month’s general election disaster. How, after losing 39 of the 48 seats it won in 2019, is John Swinney still in charge?
The SNP makes no apologies for overspending
McDonald says the First Minister, who took over in April after Humza Yousaf resigned, needs to be a ‘ruthless bastard’ if he is to turn the party around. But Swinney isn’t a bastard, as even his enemies admit. He is well liked but just not the kind of leader to impose his authority. Anyway, the party is so hopelessly divided that it would probably fracture altogether if he tried to throw his weight about. By mutual consent, the warring factions seem to have decided that it is better to have a nobody leading them right now rather than a somebody.
The alternative to Swinney would be a contest between the ‘socially conservative’ deputy leader, Kate Forbes, who is loathed by the nationalist left for her views on transgenderism, and the more conventionally-radical former Westminster leader, Stephen Flynn, who is hated by the green left because of his defence of the oil and gas industry. Too much blood would spill. The party doesn’t want to go there.
But just having an empty space in Bute House is not going to save the SNP. The latest Norstat poll indicates that the SNP is on course to lose its majority in Holyrood elections in two years’ time. That doesn’t necessarily mean it will lose office, but it does mean forming a coalition with another party – or governing as a minority as Alex Salmond did with some considerable success from 2007-11. But the dirty little secret of that arrangement was that it relied on an informal ‘understanding’ with the Scottish Conservative leader, the redoubtable Annabel Goldie, that the Tories would not bring about an election by voting with the other opposition to bring down Salmond’s administration.
Swinney is no Alex Salmond. The First Minister demonstrated his lack of leadership skill over the attempt to unseat the SNP External Affairs Secretary, Angus Robertson, earlier this month after he held talks with the Israeli deputy ambassador, Daniela Grudsky. Pro-Palestinian activists want Robertson’s head and are not going to remain silent during this conference. Swinney’s cack-handed response to the meeting, which he knew about and endorsed, was to recklessly sever diplomatic relations with the West’s key ally in the Middle East, and then to hold a purely performative meeting with a representative of the Palestinians. That is unlikely to prevent the activists turning Robertson’s appearance on Sunday into a mini-intifada.
Nor will the party’s vociferous left wing allow Swinney and his Finance Secretary, Shona Robison, to get away with swingeing cuts in public services. Robison had already effectively admitted that the Scottish government is so overdrawn that it can no longer authorise any increased spending on public services. The Scottish government is warning Scots to expect ‘painful cuts across the board’ in a speech from Robison next week. The money’s all gone, largely into the pockets of public sector workers who’ve been getting more generous pay deals than their counterparts in England. Another billion is going on the Scottish Child Payment and the Council Tax Freeze, according to the Scottish Fiscal Commission which warned against blaming Westminster for decisions taken by the Scottish government.
To govern is to choose and the Scottish government chose not to ‘mitigate’ the Scottish pensioners for the loss of the Winter Fuel Payment, blaming ‘Westminster austerity’ even though the current austerity begins at home, and even though Scotland enjoys higher spending per head than England. But fear not, they say: Nicola Sturgeon’s ‘Baby Box’ – the hamper of free maternity products that the former FM says is one of her finest achievements – will remain.
The SNP makes no apologies for overspending. Stephen Flynn insists it was all worth it to avoid strikes in the hospitals and railways. On the BBC, he chastised the UK government for not increasing taxes on the better off apparently forgetting that the SNP has full control over income tax and could raise them further if it wished. It won’t because the last round of tax increases, including the new 42 per cent band on Scots earning over £75,000 yielded only £82 million, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. This figure is enough to run the Scottish NHS for less than three days.
This weekend marks the 90th anniversary of the creation of the modern Scottish National Party. Most of the battered faithful gathering in Edinburgh this weekend realise, privately, that independence for Scotland, that looked a real possibility only a few years ago, is now off the agenda for a generation. The SNP is not only ‘horsed’ in the electoral race – the old nag could be heading for the knacker’s yard
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