No matter how heavily it snows today nothing will be as frosty as Pete Wishart’s resignation letter. The senior SNP MP has exited the front bench following the coup that replaced Ian Blackford with relative newcomer Stephen Flynn.
Blackford is an ally of Nicola Sturgeon and discontent had grown in the party’s Westminster group of MPs about his perceived lack of independence from the leadership in Scotland. Flynn, who at 34 only entered Parliament in 2019, is expected to put distance between his Westminster group and the SNP government in Edinburgh. As MP for Aberdeen South he is seen as less hostile to the North Sea oil and gas industry than Sturgeon, a recent convert to the climate cause.
This outbreak of heterodoxy is unprecedented in the modern SNP. This is a party where discipline is so iron-tight that the Scottish government suffered its first backbench rebellion last month — after 15 years in power. There has been an attempt to put a brave face on the Flynn coup but Wishart, a 21-year veteran of the SNP Commons contingent, has put paid to that.
In a missive so icy that you need antifreeze to read it, he quits as environment spokesperson, telling Flynn:
‘I remain bemused as to the reasons why you felt it was necessary to seek a change in our leadership, particularly when we see yesterday’s opinion poll, which shows support for independence at a near all-time high and support for the SNP at Westminster at an unprecedented 51%. Usually change of this significance accompanies failure, whereas we are looking only at sustained and growing success as a movement and party.’
Here is where the tone goes sub-zero:
‘I am sure that this is something that will become apparent to me during the course of your leadership. I also look forward to learning at first-hand what you hope to do differently in the day-to-day management of the group.’
Wishart, who is also chair of the Scottish Affairs Select Committee, says Flynn has his ‘full support’. It sounds like it.
Joining Wishart on the back benches is Stewart McDonald, who has also quit as the SNP’s defence spokesman. His resignation statement is less snarky but this departure is more significant. While McDonald is close to Sturgeon, at 36 he belongs to the same generation as Flynn, making it harder to dismiss discontent as the old order bemoaning uppity Young Turks.
McDonald has also been pivotal in building the SNP’s reputation at Westminster as a serious party, particularly in the area of defence, where he has taken the lead since 2017. The SNP came out early and squarely in support of Ukraine and has been raising the alarm over Russian aggression for several years now. McDonald has involved the party in various international forums and events where it could sharpen its policies and positions and make rigorous, substantive contributions to Westminster debates on defence capabilities, procurement and national security.
As anyone familiar with the SNP will know, this evolution in the party’s position stands in contrast to both the pre-2015 SNP and a significant segment of the grassroots. What little time the old SNP spent on defence or international affairs was seldom spent well, and saw it oppose Nato and the independent nuclear deterrent. It was reflexively hostile to whatever happened to be the position of the UK or the United States and tended to be strident when it came to Israel. Notoriously, it opposed Nato’s intervention to stop the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo Albanians, calling the aerial campaign ‘unpardonable folly’. Some of those views remain — not least opposition to Trident — but they have been afforded less emphasis of late.
In his statement, McDonald argues that the Nationalists ‘are at our best when we collaborate as a united party and sell a modern vision of what Scotland can still achieve’. That is the dilemma the SNP now faces. It has never been in a better position in the polls, but can it fend off disunity between the factions and soothe the impatience of its membership? The only people who can hurt the SNP right now are the SNP, and some of them are determined to give it a go.
Comments