Dear oh dear. Just as positive polling had lifted the spirits of the Scottish Nats, news of their membership exodus will bring them crashing down. As revealed by the august paper that is the Scotsman, the SNP has lost more than 5,500 members in six months alone. It’s hardly what you want to hear when you’ve an election to fight in a year, eh?
The Scottish journal revealed that, as of 31 December 2024, the party had just 58,940 members – down from some 64,525 in the summer months. Not that SNP figures are strangers to an exodus, however. In 2019, the party had a staggering membership base totalling 125,000. This decreased to 103,884 in 2021. Then, after the resignation of Dear Leader Nicola Sturgeon and during the rather unedifying leadership contest that followed, another third binned off the party – leaving 72,186 in March 2023. The latest figures will hardly reassure concerned parliamentarians that the party is back on the front foot.
It’s not just members the party is seeing go, either. In fact a growing number of its MSPs have announced they are stepping down from frontline politics at the 2026 Holyrood election. Humza Yousaf, Michelle Thomson and Christine Grahame are among the 14 Nats who have said they will not stand again – alongside Audrey Nicoll, after Westminster leader Stephen Flynn made it, er, very clear he would be gunning for her seat.
Meanwhile Reform UK’s Scotland party is feeling increasingly optimistic about its chances north of the border. The group organiser Martyn Greene told Steerpike that membership figures have increased from around 7,700 in January to 9,000 this month – claiming to have seen, at one point, 50 new sign-ups a day. Could some of these newcomers be disillusioned Nats? It wouldn’t be the strangest thing that’s happened to the SNP…
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