Thousands of independence voters rejected the Swinney/Sturgeon legacy

Those who have led the SNP since 2014 and taken it from 56 seats in 2015 to 9 now should hang their heads in shame.

In keeping with the weather, a bitter destructive wind of change swept through the ranks of the SNP’s Westminster candidates yesterday.  Have some sympathy for those no longer holding the title of MP, for it was not they who were judged by the people.  The guilt lies squarely on the shoulders of john Swinney.  His pitch to the voters that if SNP won a majority of seats he would seek to start independence negotiations was always ludicrous.

Looking at recent local government by-election results where the SNP got hammered, and with that trend consistently confirmed by opinion polls, showed how ludicrous a proposition that was. Only a man intellectually and politically bankrupt, would grasp at that straw.

Independence was never on this election agenda. The people had other priorities, and Swinney never understood that. This election was in fact a referendum. Not the one the SNP leaders have called for. But one the people held on the Sturgeon/Yousaf/Swinney Scottish government in Holyrood.

The Scottish component of the election in the island of Gt Britain was fought on different political grounds from that south of the border. Sunak and Starmer were themselves candidates defending or attacking policies that sit within the competence of the Westminster parliament.  Not so in Scotland. Here the SNP campaign was led by non-candidates: the First Minister and Deputy First Minister, with only bit parts for those actually standing for election. The Swinney/Forbes  debates with other parties were on education, NHS, housing, poverty, income tax levels, ferries, the A9, Matheson, safe spaces for women, all the responsibility of the devolved Scottish government.

It wasn’t Stephen Flynn and his MP group who were judged and found wanting.  It was John Swinney and the Sturgeon legacy of incompetence, mess, failure and the level of mediocrity in the cabinet that was on trial.   Being asked to vote SNP was being asked to endorse that lot in Holyrood. Thousands of independence voters, rightly, refused to do that.  The arrogance, complacency, and sense of entitlement that has been a hallmark of this SNP administration needed to be exposed and condemned to a degree that even the most purblind loyalist cannot ignore. And that is what the people delivered.

The result didn’t surprise me. I told my unionist journalist friend Alan Cochrane a week ago that my forecast was only 12 seats or fewer for the SNP. My reason? Talking and listening to people over the past year and picking up that first they were scunnered by the performance of the Scottish government, and then more recently that had turned to anger and a determination to punish it by either staying at home, or voting Labour. Exactly what has happened.

Those who have led the SNP since 2014 and taken it from 56 seats in 2015 to 9 now should hang their heads in shame. Grandstanding, fixation with their own image, promotion of the cult of personality, disdain for anyone who dared to disagree with them, and failure to govern on the basis of the people’s priorities, that is the toxic mix that has brought them low, and damaged the idea of independence.

For decades, the SNP led by people of my generation and the Salmond-MacAskill generation, often facing defeat after defeat, persevered in promoting independence and built the party as the instrument to take us there.  The SNP and independence were interlinked in the public mind. So, this shattering defeat of that instrument will understandably be taken by many, and certainly by the unionist on both sides of the border, as the end of our dream.  That is the wrong lesson from this election.  I would wager that the next opinion poll will show support for independence at around the same level as in 2014. 

But where do we independence supporters go from here?  Can we expect the present SNP leadership who have wrecked the party,   to be the ones  capable of rebuilding to a point where its reputation is restored in time for the next electorate test, the 2026 Scottish parliament elections?  I don’t think so.  The  Sturgeon/Swinney clique is still in ministerial office, so we have  two more years of incompetent government to come, during which  people will suffer from the consequences of the deep cuts in education and housing, and the unsolved crisis in the  NHS. Come 2026 the people will deliver another devastating verdict, and the SNP’s claim to be the leader of the independence movement will receive another blow that could be terminal for it as a party in whom independence supporters can invest their hopes.

Is there an alternative to the SNP?  ALBA? Afraid not.  The derisory votes it received is an inescapable message of its irrelevance.  Alex Salmond is one of Scotland’s tragedies, a politician of the first order,  found not guilty of the criminal charges against him, but scarred beyond repair by what was revealed at his trial. The asset he brought with himself to ALBA is out weighted by the liability. I don’t say that with any satisfaction. It is simply the reality.  So, the independence movement will be adrift for some time to come, and will remain adrift until someone from somewhere within the SNP membership can sweep from its decks the  mediocrities who have brought us to this pass. I. and others, had high hopes that Kate Forbes weas that someone.  But in rejoining the government she is now getting tarred with the Swinney brush, defending the indefensible, slipping into the persona of a party hack. Surely she will not be another Scottish political tragedy in the making: outstanding able, but fatally compromising with patent failure.

A word if I may to Labour. Enjoy the feeling of victory, but don’t misread the meaning of this election. You have a majority with 33.8% of the vote, the lowest percentage any incoming government has had in modern times. . Your power base is inadequate to see you through hard times.  At best, you are on probation.