The SNP needs a clean break from Sturgeon if it wants to survive

The SNP meets in Dundee this weekend for a special conference on independence. Four months since Nicola Sturgeon resigned as leader and three months since Humza Yousaf narrowly became leader and the police investigation into party finances began, it’s fair to say that the party is in a confused state.

The mood is febrile. Some think that normalcy will return; others that the independence project can triumph in the near-future by some miracle fix. Many cling to the wreckage of Sturgeon, while a few still yearn for the return of the emperor over the water Alex Salmond. What is missing is an honest assessment and understanding of where the SNP is, the deep hole it occupies (much of it of its own making) and how it can begin to get out.

The SNP still has numerous advantages. It has been in office for 16 years and is still the current Scottish government (albeit propped up by the Greens). It has a proven election-winning habit, a cause and a divided and until now, inept, opposition. 

Despite the obvious need for the party to reunite in the wake of the last few months, it is not clear what the Dundee gathering is for — rather than just another ploy to convince members that there’s progress. One long-standing member not going to Dundee summed up the leadership’s likely rationale: ‘We’ll have a conference to ask the members if they have any wheezes to get us out of the dead end we’ve driven us all into.’

The state of the membership is brittle and fractious. There is still a degree of loyalism in the ranks, some of who have seen previous hard times and think people should buckle down and focus on campaigning and leafleting. ‘They think we should all be out chapping doors — while the rest of us think we have nothing to say when the door is answered,’ said a senior activist in disgust.

Then there is the ‘believe in Nicola’ group who still cling to the memory of the once glorious leader. ‘I love Nicola Sturgeon,’ a female friend of mine (not in the SNP) suddenly announced over lunch when the current troubles began. ‘No, you don’t,’ I instantly replied. She reflected for a moment: ‘You’re right — but I believe in her.’ This was not a romantic nationalist, but instead someone imbued in social policy and legislation over decades who still clung to an old image, before it was tarnished by ongoing events.

Then there are the crackpots, cranks and malcontents who make waves and noise, but go nowhere. They are a symptom of the lack of leadership, drift and the ‘not standing up to the bams’ — troublemakers — over many years under Salmond and Sturgeon, as one SNP member described it. 

But the largest group in the Scottish National party, with a wider, deeper sense of betrayal and anger at Sturgeon and the leadership, feel personally let down by a leader they once trusted and felt connected to. There are numerous reasons why the spell has been broken: feelings of a directionless government, controlling leadership, incompetent governance, ignoring the concerns of party members and the perceived mishandling of specific policy areas such as the gender bill. This constituency has grown in size dramatically since Sturgeon announced her resignation. One activist accused the former SNP leader of ‘dumping us in it, walking away, but not completely walking away’.

And of course a major legacy of the Sturgeon leadership is a party that has forgotten how to debate or to keep their political antennas sharp. One longstanding party member told me: ‘I can’t think of a single thing the SNP could have done that differently in office.’

This is a party whose members have been taken for granted, manipulated and treated with distain. Examples include Sturgeon closing down debate on the party finances in the NEC which recently became public and questioning the motives of those who raised such issues. Worse: some of the leadership, true believers and cheerleaders outside the party still buy into it all. ‘What do you mean Nicola Sturgeon treated the members with contempt?’ a leading light of the Scottish commentariat asked me the other week, genuinely confused.

Nicola Sturgeon presented herself as an omnipotent leader, but her main characteristics were short-termism, party management and control. In this she has similarities with former Labour prime minister, Harold Wilson, a master tactician (ironically one of Alex Salmond’s favourite politicians), and Labour’s former first minister from 2001 to 2007, Jack McConnell, who personified an unimaginative, cautious, managerial politics —  and eventually lost to Salmond. Wilson’s reputation has risen over the years since he was premier; Sturgeon’s from this vantage point looks like it can only sink, such is her lack of a positive legacy.

The SNP have morphed over 16 years in office into a court party. This is a political group that embodies the insider class. It is a far cry from the nationalists’ self-belief that they have been the traditional outsiders taking on the all-powerful establishment. Now they exhibit the same characteristics as Scottish Labour did when they ran things, and yet many SNPers still don’t quite see what their party has become.

Any real philosophy of government and independence is at best threadbare —  a defensive, empty social democracy and self-congratulatory Scottish nationalism. The latter is meant to be one of the great virtues of Scotland and the SNP, but it isn’t that simple. First, nationalism the world over is never enough as a guiding light even in more black and white circumstances. Second, Scottish nationalism does not actually belong to the SNP or independence.

All Scotland is shaped by Scottish nationalism. 2014 was a contest between two competing nationalisms: the Scottish variant, and unionism. The latter is arguably a form of nationalism — British state nationalism. This underlines that the pluses and minuses of Scottish nationalism (seeing Scotland as a distinct, semi-autonomous nation with some supporting full independence) will not be the decisive set of ideas which shape the country’s future. More is needed from the SNP and the unionist parties.

The SNP has exhausted itself and faces challenges internally — in government and on independence — and externally in the form of Keir Starmer and a prospective Labour government next year. This means that the leadership and members have to move on from the same old tunes. The party will face some tough times and reverses from voters, but this is an opportunity to break with the mythologies, delusions and illusions of the recent past and the Sturgeon years. 

If it wants to survive and prosper, the SNP needs to change gear. It needs to listen to its members, get serious about government and its core areas, and remake its politics and raison d’être. It has to create a version of independence which avoids quick fixes, process politics and fantasies, and instead embraces heavy lifting, hard work and honesty. That may take a while — and another SNP leader — but rest assured the party is not going to go away. Not while the appetite for independence in Scotland remains.