Unless the Scottish National Party fundamentally rethinks its aims and policies while implementing long-delayed internal reforms, it will lose the next Holyrood election, senior politicians have warned.
However, some expressed doubts that party leader John Swinney was strong enough to bring about the necessary change.
Ahead of the SNP’s annual conference in late August, the Guardian spoke to more than 20 influential voices within the party, including current and former Scottish government ministers, senior activists and those forced out of the party in its disastrous general election defeat in July. The SNP shrank from 48 MPs in 2019 to nine as Labour won a landslide victory across the country.
Many predict that the SNP, which has enjoyed tremendous electoral success over the past decade, will suffer defeat in the 2026 Scottish Parliament elections as the Scottish Labour Party will benefit from the British party’s victory at Westminster.
“As things stand now, we are in danger of not winning in 2026,” said one senior MP. “We need to change course and John needs to be decisive.”
Stewart McDonald, a former MP for Glasgow South who vacated his desk in Westminster before July 4 because he was so sure of defeat, said: “What does an SNP that has learned its lesson look and sound like? I don’t think you can overstate the scale of the challenge we face as a party.”
Almost all argued that it was “incredibly difficult, if not impossible”, as one former MP described it, to get Labour’s message of change across to voters desperate to get the Tories out of Downing Street.
It is also widely acknowledged that voters have been put off by the police investigation into the SNP’s finances, during which former party leader Nicola Sturgeon was arrested and her husband and former chief executive Peter Murrell was charged with embezzlement, and by the recent expenses row over former Holyrood health secretary Michael Matheson’s £11,000 iPad bill.
“I suddenly found myself standing on the doorstep trying to put one scandal after another into context,” said another former MP, adding that voters had told a number of candidates: “We expected more from you.”
SNP supporters were left homeless and disappointed by the loss of integrity and the impasse over a second independence referendum, exacerbated by an unfocused campaign in which “the message changed every 20 minutes”, as one former MP put it.
But the defeat was looming longer than six weeks in the summer.
“We have not learnt the lesson of Rutherglen,” said one former MP, referring to Labour’s landslide victory over the SNP in the Central Belt by-election last October. “For several years we have appeared vain, complacent and out of touch with voters’ priorities. Yes, independence was a key manifesto point, but we have not put forward a credible plan for implementing it.”
Now there are fears that the party will waste its time thinking, or that any debriefing at next week’s party conference will degenerate into internal power struggles and “give the broader electorate the impression that we are now in a state of chaos,” as one former minister predicted.
Morale among Holyrood backbenchers is said to be “very low”, while other insiders speak of a party “exhausted” by government. The pervasive concern is that there simply is not enough time to turn the party’s fortunes around.
If this is to happen, the focus must urgently be on implementation before 2026.
A key event will be the government programme, says another senior SNP politician: “For 2026, we must first run on a skills programme that will then reinforce the independence message.”
The challenge of being minister will be enormous. “After 19 years, it’s hard to present yourself as someone who offers something new and different. We have to choose three or four things that we want to fix and do them well,” said another former minister.
There are also some fears that there could be a “clash” between current MSPs and the sizeable group of recently deposed MPs over the selection of Holyrood seats.
In addition, a change in behaviour is required – respondents repeatedly stressed that the SNP must return to its previous discipline and seriousness to be successful.
“The Scottish Government still has time to turn things around,” said one MP. “But it will take courage at the leadership level. You have to stop believing you can sit out every problem, you have to accept that you have to sack people and enforce discipline – the party has to be out to win, not to make every member happy.”
Another perennially frustrating aspect is how poorly the SNP has explained to voters what it can and cannot do as a devolved government. “We have spent millions mitigating the worst effects of austerity but we don’t explain it,” said another senior politician.
This will be crucial, with Holyrood’s budget in crisis and the Scottish Government having to make drastic cuts already announced, raising questions about whether Swinney is able to handle this increasing pressure.
As for the party’s founding principle: “Even if the SNP were to suffer a total defeat in 2026, I don’t think independence is off the table,” said one former MP. “But for too long there has been silence on the question ‘what if Westminster says no?’ The SNP needs to start being honest with people.”
Anne McLaughlin, former MP for Glasgow North East, said: “Many people say we have sent the wrong message on independence. But the link between independence and the cost of living crisis is easy to explain. What is difficult is explaining how we can achieve independence with one vote for ourselves when British politics are completely unengaged.”
To learn from these lessons, the SNP needs to ask itself some fundamental questions, according to those who spoke to the Guardian. “The party changed dramatically with its huge increase in membership after the 2014 referendum, but it never answered the question: is it a political party or a campaign organisation?” the SNP MP said.
It is a recurring theme that the party’s organisation at its core is “appallingly bad” and that Murrell in particular “didn’t look after members”. Figures released last week showed the party had lost 10,000 members in the past year alone, with the total halving in the past five years. “After 2014, a huge base of people came to us and we didn’t use that as much as we could have,” said former MP for Livingston Hannah Bardell.
“The Labour challenge requires a psychological shift in the SNP,” McDonald said. “We have behaved as if we are the only electorate that can bring about change because we support independence, but voters no longer see us as a natural vehicle for achieving their aspirations.”
Several MPs have said that even if the SNP narrowly wins the majority of seats at Holyrood, parliamentary arithmetic means Scottish Labour will be more likely to be able to form a minority government – particularly after the breakdown in relations with the Scottish Greens when former leader Humza Yousaf pulled out of the coalition partnership. “Nobody wants to work with us,” one MP said.
Some colleagues remain more optimistic. “If our core electorate is around 30%, that’s a good starting point for Holyrood,” said one veteran party organiser. Younger activists who identify with the progressive, gradualist wing of the party believe it is “an opportunity to rebuild” after the ousting of some of the party’s more polarising figures, including outspoken leadership critic and gender-critical feminist Joanna Cherry.
Some already see a defeat in 2026 as an opportunity. “Would the worst thing be if we lost in 2026?” asked one former MP. “We could spend the time in opposition training our campaigners, strengthening our base, lobbying other countries to accept us, and using the next Holyrood election to make a big push for independence.”
