As Sir Keir Starmer enters his first week as Prime Minister, north of the border the Nats are facing a moment of reckoning. After the SNP’s bruising defeat on Friday, where the party ended up with just nine seats, a number of politicians have spoken out about what they think went wrong. And it’s not good news for Dear Leader Nicola Sturgeon…
Ex-MP for Edinburgh South West, Joanna Cherry has hit out at her former boss after last week’s rather dire result. Sturgeon owes the party an ‘apology’, Cherry agreed, telling Sky News that ‘I think she does. Nicola Sturgeon was a very strong leader who brooked no debate and no dissent, as I know to my considerable cost.’ Steerpike hears there was a rather lot of frustration in the party after the former first minister appeared as an election night pundit on ITV, frequently referring to her party as ‘they’ and shifting any blame from her door. Former SNP MP Angus MacNeil, expelled last year after a falling out with the then chief whip, remarked that: ‘People have been too scared to speak out against the likes of Sturgeon, John Swinney, Mike Russell and Ian Blackford and now they are at a dead end. It’s time for the pettiness to leave the SNP leadership. That pettiness was brought in by Nicola Sturgeon, who couldn’t cope with a different opinion or learn from another opinion or change her opinion.’ Burn…
While MacNeil called First Minister John Swinney a ‘puppet’ who should quit, former Westminster group leader Ian Blackford was a little more subtle with his criticism: ‘You can’t sugarcoat any of this. It’s up to John what the party does but the electorate have delivered a very clear message to us — primarily they’re pissed off… I don’t think anyone is pointing the finger at John and saying he has to go. He’s inherited this and he has to own it in terms of fixing it.’ Oh dear.
It comes after failed Falkirk candidate Toni Giugliano attacked the SNP’s MSP for the area, Michael Matheson, over his well-publicised £11,000 iPad scandal. ‘Voters have sent the SNP a very clear message to get its house in order,’ the Nat warned. You can say that again…
With a 2026 Holyrood election on the cards, nationalist MSPs are feeling a little twitchy about their party’s Westminster exodus. Party insiders remarked to Mr S that there is considerable frustration with SNP HQ about the failed election result, while one pointed to a rather ‘tone deaf’ email sent around asking for feedback on the campaign. The SNP’s civil war rumbles on…
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