Lack of leadership or bold approaches to revive the ideas at the core of their existence means SNP has only questions and no answers says Jonathon Shafi

This article was originally published on Independence Captured

The SNP’s performance at the general election concluded at the grimmest end of polling projections. Retaining just nine seats, the party’s presence in Westminster has been reduced to a rump. To rub salt into the wounds, key figures from the referendum’s Better Together campaign won their contests. This includes the likes of Blair McDougall and Douglas Alexander. The latter returns to frontline politics after losing out to Mhairi Black, then emblematic of a new generation of post-2014 activists, in the general election of 2015. Crucially, the SNP lost across Glasgow, Dundee and other heartlands seized from Labour. Overall, the party lost at least half a million voters compared to the general election of 2019. In less than ten years, the SNP has descended from the heights of electoral success, armed with a disciplined organisation and untouchable leader, into a much-diminished party which appears lost.

Already beset with something akin to a funding oblivion, the SNP stands to lose around £1 million in short monies due to the number of lost MPs. Yet finances and an electoral downturn represent only two of the problems which face the party. The following prognosis argues the SNP is undergoing a more profound crisis than the expected effects of political gravity can account for. This also means registering that the post-2014 era is now firmly over as we enter a new chapter in Scottish politics.

There is no single reason for this calamity, but at the forefront is the national question. Independence has deformed from a powerful mobilising issue and source of identity, into a quagmire of confusion and contestation. As reflected in my column written during the election campaign, independence is no longer a “safe political space” for the SNP. Under Nicola Sturgeon, the party could tempt voters with the lure of a referendum. But the Supreme Court misadventure, a predictably ruinous tactic, meant that neither Humza Yousaf nor John Swinney had this luxury. The approach adopted during Sturgeon’s reign – to repeatedly promise a new referendum – collided with structurally imposed limits. The SNP has yet to find a means to respond to this new environment.

Under Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership the reaction to the court’s verdict was to advocate for a “de facto” referendum at the general election. This was conceptually and pragmatically flawed. In the years prior, the SNP leadership had no interest in establishing the infrastructure around the independence cause required to generate the energy, ideas and organisation to attempt such a manoeuvre. Instead, the party had sought to cannibalise the movement of 2014, centring its hopes and ambitions primarily through one person: Nicola Sturgeon. It is worth recalling how embedded the cult of personality became. Even as late as 2020, The National made the following call to its readers:

“Now, with the FM approaching her 50th birthday, Scots have the chance to show their appreciation. The National is inviting readers to submit their birthday messages, which will be printed in the paper on Saturday ahead of the FM’s big day. Thousands of Scots are also planning to mark the occasion with a nationwide round of applause. People across the country are being urged to get out on their doorsteps clap at 8pm on Sunday to give Nicola the ‘full regalia’ on her 50th. Almost 8000 people have signed up to the Facebook page for the event, Clap for Nicola.”

Perhaps this was to be expected given the political leanings of The National. Yet there is a wider story about media interactions with the SNP at their height. Across the Scottish press and commentariat, there were few voices of opposition and a notable dearth of discerning analytical pieces. Many columnists only began to write more critically around the time of the arrests of the former First Minister and Peter Murrell. This is partly why the longer term problems that had been developing over a period of years appeared to tumble out at once, leading to a rapid demise in the public sphere, including sections of civic Scotland and the coterie of professional networks around the orbit of the Scottish Government.

Alongside the politics of personality, the SNPs internal structures were defanged. Policy making was outsourced to the corporate lobby while conference decisions were routinely ignored. The SNP leadership shunned demonstrations for independence, though not the street mobilisations against Brexit in London. Here, shoulders could be more comfortably rubbed with Britain’s liberal establishment. Any number of half-baked independence initiatives failed to materialise, and amounted to shell campaigns, as David Jamieson writes of the launch of “Yes” – a deliberately hollow imitation of Yes Scotland:

“In 2019 another funding and data-mining campaign was launched, again on the false pretence of an independence campaign. This time, the deception was even more callous. The new website was called ‘Yes’ – an obvious attempt to stoke nostalgia for 2014. Though the small print informed the careful reader that this too was an SNP front (‘you are donating to a political party’) everything about the website was designed to give the impression that it was the resurrection of the 2014, cross-party Yes campaign, a huge decentralised movement with great emotional resonance for tens of thousands of people.”

Such astroturfing is not wholly unexpected. But the SNP’s divergence from street manifestations and other grassroots expressions of the independence movement should not be understated. The growth in the party’s membership came as a consequence of the experience of the “movement of movements” which flourished in 2014, and catalysed a rediscovery of political agency. The SNP skilfully presented their operation as both an extension of this phenomenon as well as its leadership, and in the aftermath of the No vote, its saviour. An academic study exploring the relationship between the independence movement and political parties conducted by Lynn Bennie, James Mitchell, and Rob Johns examined how movement politics generated a new type of party member. In an overview of the research, they report the following:

“Our study of the membership surges investigates why these events occurred. In simple terms, the dramatic increase was provoked by an event, aided by a bandwagon effect and conscious opportunism by the parties (especially SNP headquarters).”

In addition:

“SNP members give the impression of being more committed to their party and to the independence movement. In turn, they are the most likely to see party membership as being part of a movement.”

This party-movement relationship and dynamic had to be carefully and thoughtfully nurtured. While the SNP could secure money, activism and electoral support from the movement, it also set out to control the kind of political energies and demands attendant to extra-parliamentary organising. In this way, the SNP leadership understood that the benefits bestowed by the new mass membership also had to be disciplined and its ambitions tempered. In other words, the new “movement members” should not be empowered with the ability to leverage an ever-centralising leadership.

Former SNP MP, Tommy Sheppard, stood in the Deputy Leadership election in 2016 and presented a programme based on revamping party structures in order to integrate the new membership so that it might have more influence and ownership over policy and strategy. He was defeated by Angus Robertson, who made vague assurances that some of these ideas would be taken up, though this never came to fruition. Speaking to a range of delegates outside the conference hall, many were in support of Sheppard’s proposals but felt a vote for him would be interpreted as slight on the leadership and red meat for their opponents.

As authors Dr James Foley and Pete Ramand reflect:

“The SNP accumulated approximately one hundred thousand new members following the 2014 referendum. It could have been an exciting experiment in mass democracy: momentarily, the SNP seemed to bely the common notion of declining party-political organisation, as suggested by thinkers like Peter Mair. Instead, the influx facilitated extreme centralisation, allowing a narrow clique of insiders — and by narrow, it arguably numbered on one hand — to override internal checks and balances.”

The SNP leadership could only pursue a one-sided, highly extractive, relationship with the movement for so long. Without keeping up their side of the bargain – domestically and in relation to progressing independence – demoralisation would set in and the schism between party and movement emerge.

Passivity, disorientation and leadership churn

To return briefly to the Supreme Court ruling, a deeper malaise around the national question could be measured. Despite the perception that Scotland was having its “right to self-determination” denied, there was a paucity of organic politicisation, self-organisation and democratic radicalisation in the population at large. While the SNP were exposed for their lack of planning around this episode, and indeed for pursuing this course of action in the first place, voluntarism alone could not have easily altered the political terrain and the balance of forces.

It didn’t help that Nicola Sturgeon herself was to step down as SNP leader and First Minister in the months following, leaving a disorientated and splintered movement in her wake. Whatever the reasons, the style and timing of her departure could not have been the desired path her advisors had choreographed. The resignation also came just weeks before the police investigation into party finances broke into the public mind. Any connection between these events is denied. Regardless, reports suggest this has been a regular doorstep issue. That Peter Murrell, the SNP’s former Chief Executive would come to be charged with embezzlement, sharpened the issue. Whatever the legal outcomes, this episode has been critical to the breakdown of trust once so thoroughly invested in Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership, and in the SNP as a whole.

This hurried exit as SNP leader and First Minister precipitated a bruising leadership campaign, in which Kate Forbes ran the “continuity” candidate, Humza Yousaf, to the wire. This process opened up a variety of rifts and divisions on a range of issues, including on Gender Recognition Reform and battles over social attitudes. This jarring experience for SNP members contrasted with the reputation for unity and discipline the party had garnered in its salad years. Importantly, the debate did not seriously address the failures of domestic policy built up during Sturgeon’s premiership, nor did it substantively reckon with the arduous challenges around independence. In previous moments of dispute inside the SNP, a phalanx of intellectuals and cadres were able to provoke and engage with serious perspectives on the central questions of the day and their relationship with party strategy. This was notable for its absence.

Yousaf, who in my view deserves praise for his principled stance on Gaza, was unable to forge his own distinctive leadership early enough, associating himself directly with the tainted legacy of his predecessor. It should be noted that he was not aided in this mission by many of his own colleagues who had grown accustomed to a quite insidious culture of misplaced deference to Nicola Sturgeon. This was personified by Keith Brown, who on behalf of SNP MSPs and in front of the assembled press, sent flowers to her office as a “mark of sympathy” in the aftermath of her arrest and police questioning. This kind of whimsical approach undermined Yousaf, who in return could not exercise the necessary authority required to construct a cordon sanitaire around the previous leadership.

His own period at the helm of both party and government would be short-lived. A sense of churn in an unsettled party, disorientated by Nicola Sturgeon’s departure, had already set in. The way in which the Bute House Agreement came to an end has been attributed to Humza Yousaf’s decision-making alone. Without doubt, the process should have been better executed, though no rules or parliamentary procedures were broken. But assigning sole responsibility to Yousaf is a little superficial, and understates the real tensions between many in the SNP and the Greens. Thus, the termination of the agreement exposed actually existing tensions around how the SNP hierarchy sought to interface with the public, and indeed its own members. Ultimately, any kind of deal with Alba’s Ash Reagan, which may have tenuously elongated Yousaf’s time as First Minister, was a step too far. Again, this served to underline the animosity inside the independence camp, by now a fictionalised and largely inward-looking force, and a shadow of its former self.

Swinney, spin and policy failure

SNP MSPs and MPs heralded John Swinney’s installation as a “reset” for the party. It is true that he offered an experienced hand, and came equipped with an authority which could bring about temporary respite to a party in turmoil. But this was also a forced manoeuvre, even if there were Machiavellian plots to bring him back to the top of the party. Swinney had already resigned as Deputy First Minister in March of 2023, musing that he “had done his bit.” Yet, post-Yousaf, few plausible candidates existed. Many talented individuals were unable to develop and hone their political skills in an atmosphere where critical thinking and debate were subordinate to leadership loyalty. Kate Forbes, although supported by respected figures within the national movement, would have opened up a new round of internal bloodletting had she stood. Upon being offered the position of Deputy First Minister, she instead struck a deal with Swinney, avoiding a contest.

In a column in the days following John Swinney coming to leadership, I wrote the following:

“Having failed to reproduce a new layer of leadership capable of uniting the party and providing direction for a fractured and rudderless independence movement, the company of an old hand has appeal. But the idea that the country has been lifted out of its malaise is, as some have claimed, an exercise in absurdity. After so long in office, with so very little to show for it, you need far more than to rely on the mantra of ‘competency.’ That is the bare minimum anyone should expect from any government. It is not, by any measure, a vision or a strategy for political growth. And it is far from anything approaching an insurgent campaign for independence.”

In reality, the present First Minister is inextricably linked with the sense of decline around the SNP. Not solely as a result of the general election, for which he could be forgiven owing to the deleterious circumstances around the party he inherited. But because as a senior member, he allowed the centralisation of power and the defenestration of its membership and decision-making structures. He presided over the appalling fiasco around school exam results during the pandemic. Despite the SNP drawing its unrivalled dominance from working-class Scots, many of whom were politically rejuvenated by the experience of the referendum, he pursued a timid approach to anything approaching social democratic reform.

Nicola Sturgeon once referred to John Swinney as “the most important person in my adult life outside my husband and family.” As far as influence is concerned, he was one of a handful who had any. Loyalty is important in politics. Too often backstabbing in the name of careerist advancement can undermine public faith in political institutions. But loyalty should also allow for disagreement and debate. This seems to have been anathema, resulting in a defective policy platform, a drifting membership and dislocation between the party and swathes of its post-2014 base.

Winning independence is no easy task. But the failure to maximise use of devolved powers underlines the seriousness of the SNP’s predicament. Governance in the Sturgeon era prioritised a sprawling spin operation over policy delivery. It is worth cycling through a few examples. The National Energy Company was shelved and scrapped. The Scottish National Infrastructure Company ground to a halt. The National Care Service hit the rocks. The Scottish National Investment Bank turned into a corporate stitch up, rather than a strategic asset. Ferries were left unbuilt, while Ernst and Young pocketed £560,000 to produce a report geared towards their privatisation. The Scottish Government signed up to Freeports, representing the most Thatcherite incarnation of Brexit. Promises of a childcare revolution never materialised, and the council tax was never replaced. Radical rhetoric around land reform failed to come to pass.

Meanwhile, Scotland’s wind power was privatised and sold off at rock-bottom prices to the likes of BP and Shell, representing a loss of billions to the public purse. This, apart from anything else, sorely undermines the economic base required for establishing a fully-fledged Scottish state.

Even plaudits won during the pandemic evaporated after revelations around deleted communications and mismanagement around care homes.  The consolidation of decision-making, mostly shaped through the lens of public relations and corporate outsourcing, elevated headline-grabbing above rigorous policy development. Many of the policies the SNP could point to were in fact drawn from pre-referendum period, while conference decisions were routinely ignored or countervailed. Spin can get you so far. But when a crisis hits, and there is no foundation from which to mount a spirited and meaningful defence, things can unravel. For the time being, they have for the SNP.

Conclusion: Scottish independence in theory and practice

All of the above matters, but the core of the issue for the SNP is philosophical and ideological: are the SNP themselves sufficiently confident in their own case for independence? This question is rarely asked, in part because Unionist opponents have an interest in rendering the SNP as “independence obsessed” at the expense of the “day job” of devolved government. But it does bring to light important dynamics that are far more troublesome. Beyond the mechanics of a referendum, or winning Scots in their majority to the idea of Scottish autonomy, leaving the UK is rich with the kind of complexity and conflict the SNP leadership are politically allergic to. Independence, including economic control, necessitates a break with a series of interconnected and powerful institutions: financial, political, military and diplomatic. This, from the perspective of the SNP, must be negotiated in a process of acquiescence and permission-seeking, rather than defiance and confrontation.

The result is to produce a certain framing for independence as a concept, which has the effect of removing its purpose in the first place. On the economy, the Bank of England would retain monetary control for an indefinite period. On the European Union (EU), the SNP seek membership and all that should entail, including adopting stringent deficit reduction policies. Here there is an emphatic contradiction, given membership of the EU requires a country to possess its own, independently run, central bank. On foreign policy, the prospectus advocates full and enthusiastic integration with NATO, but also favours nuclear disarmament. Again, this is incongruous. The incoherence across a range of vital areas stems from the SNP’s own commitment to the existing order, and an unwillingness to challenge it. In the eventual analysis, the comfort zone for the SNP leadership is to balance independence as a platform for electioneering and political mobilisation against it being put to the acid test. As outlined in previous sections, this formulation is no longer effective, since the referendum ruse has been removed for the foreseeable future.

This is not to say that SNP leaders don’t support the idea that Scots should make the decisions about what happens in Scotland and that it should be an independent nation on the global stage. But the truth is the prospectus doesn’t amount to this in practice. The alternative, independence with any meaning, involves too many wicked issues to traverse and take responsibility for. In this sense, audacious and innovative leadership matters. But so too must there be a prepared and committed populous willing to drive such an endeavour through to its conclusion, including a period of instability.

In a similar vein, the impact of Brexit has rarely been suitably interrogated from a pro-independence perspective. It has been interpreted as an event which compels voters towards independence. Yet it has arguably induced the opposite effect. Brexit, and the fractious disentanglement from the EU, has further spooked the SNP leadership. Perhaps they could feel more at ease with their project if the European bureaucracy could be relied upon as a clear and unambiguous ally in relation to independence. This was always naïve, as Jim Sillars points out in his autobiography:

“Such has been the hollowing out of the intellectual capacity of the party membership, none seems to realise that for all the adulation of the EU – the many visits, kisses and hugs to the EU mandarins and the attempts to keep the UK in the EU, by subverting the 2016 referendum – there has been absolutely nothing in return. The position of the EU towards Scottish independence remains as it was in 2014.”

When the effects of Brexit are compared to the potential political crisis a vote for independence might trigger, the SNP leadership argue that Scotland leaving the UK would be a more seamless affair, armed with a well-thought-out and deliverable plan. It is clear this doesn’t exist in the SNP’s official White Papers. But even if it did, the implementation of such a plan assumes the compliance of the British state, the financial institutions and the European Union, during the process of leaving the UK. To repeat, this is why the SNP’s prospectus is based on immediate capitulation around currency, with the unspoken irony that Sterlingisation results in a net loss of sovereignty for Scotland. 

As intimated by Sillars, no matter how many MEPs say they back a future independent Scotland joining the bloc, the European Commission is naturally opposed to internal fragmentation. It prefers an evolving relationship with the UK as a whole and militates against the unravelling of national questions. Not least the relationship between Spain and Catalonia. Finally, the SNP were major supporters of the “People’s Vote” campaign for a second referendum on leaving the EU. This means the same cannot be opposed after a future vote for independence with any credibility, as SNP MP Pete Wishart warned at the time.

Alex Salmond has called for a redrafting of the prospectus to fit the challenges of a changed world. This should be a statement of the obvious. But it is also the case that the 2014 White Paper contained similar antagonisms. As Neil Davidson, author of Origins of Scottish Nationhood wrote in June of 2014:

“…in economic terms, the SNP is committed to the neoliberal agenda – it is almost entirely in social terms that it has deviated to the left. This means that the SNP is presenting a highly contradictory programme: on the one hand arguing for an Irish-style ‘competitive’ tax regime for the corporations, while on the other claiming that it will be able to provide a Scandinavian-style welfare state. Nor is this the only contradiction: the SNP is committed to removing nuclear weapons from the Clyde, but also to remaining within Nato, positions which are likely to conflict with each other, to say the least.”

These issues formed the basis for a left-wing critique of the official position proposed by the SNP during the referendum. More broadly, the independence movement as a whole represented an eco-system of often competing ideas. This was promoted as a strength of the campaign. But the outcome of the referendum blunted criticism and independent thinking in favour of a regimented turn to the SNP leadership, further denuding the cause of the ability to iron out programmatic discrepancies.

In essence, the SNP lack a theory for the meaning, practice and implementation of their own raison d’etre. As such, the case as it exists today cannot withstand mild scrutiny and is not ably defended even by elected members, far less promoted with vigour and verve. Lacking a foundation in domestic policy, suffering through the various scandals afflicting the party, and without a new raft of leaders, the intellectual collapse and confusion at the centre of the SNP represent a multi-dimensional crisis. The period of silence which seems to have struck the party leadership since the general election result indicates the scale of the challenge it faces.

If you enjoyed this article, please subscribe to the Independence Captured Substack, and get every article straight to your inbox.