For those who feel Scottish politics has become a little dull of late, fear not: a rebel faction within the SNP is plotting to make things very interesting again. Today’s Glasgow Herald brings the news of a secret summit of top SNP insiders at which plans to remove incumbent party leader (and Holyrood first minister) John Swinney were discussed. The paper says 25 ‘senior’ figures gathered on Monday to consider the boss’s future after the SNP’s surprise defeat in last week’s by-election in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse, a seat they had held uninterrupted since 2011.
‘The Presbyterian schoolmaster might fly in Perthshire, but in the rest of Scotland it just does not land’
The conspirators are reportedly frustrated by Swinney’s moderation on domestic policy and his failure to ramp up efforts to take Scotland out of the United Kingdom. They are said to be giving Swinney two weeks to present a new independence strategy or face a leadership challenge before the year is out. Some of their language is incendiary. An unnamed plotter describes the party’s situation as being ‘like Groundhog Day’, referring to Swinney’s previous, less than successful turn in the leader’s chair between 2000 and 2004. The conspirator charged Swinney with having ‘no energy, no fire, no boldness, no long-term vision’ and said that, when it came to making the case for independence, he had ‘failed on probation’. In an especially cutting remark, the Swinney critic said: ‘The Presbyterian schoolmaster might fly in Perthshire, but in the rest of Scotland it just does not land.’
This is bracing language considering Swinney has been credited with stabilising the SNP’s political fortunes after the chaotic 14-month reign of Humza Yousaf and re-establishing a stout polling lead over Scottish Labour. What he has not done is restart efforts to achieve independence, largely stalled since the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that the Scottish parliament cannot lawfully legislate for an independence referendum without Westminster’s consent. The next generation, who came of age politically during the 2014 referendum, are impatient for a fresh constitutional fight and for their own turn at the top of the party. There are those eager to see Stephen Flynn become SNP leader, though none quite so eager as Stephen Flynn himself, and the party’s most senior figure at Westminster will be standing for Holyrood next year.
SNP gradualists will greet talk of ousting Swinney with horror. Undoubtedly, he handled Hamilton poorly, but he has been a stabilising force and has carefully navigated the party out of the identity politics cul-de-sac.
SNP ministers are at last able to go a day, sometimes two, without talking about gender. Besides, felling Swinney before next spring’s Scottish parliament elections would involve giving the party its forth leader – and Scotland its fourth first minister – in a single parliamentary term. The Nationalists made plenty of noise about the Tories’ ever-changing leaders during the last Parliament. They could expect to be reminded of their own words if they chuck Swinney for someone else.
Whatever becomes of this anti-Swinney plot, all factions of the party will remain bound by a political paradox they would rather not confront: that the voters want the SNP but not the thing the SNP wants.
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