Failing and flailing: The SNP has lost sight of what it is for

It’s no secret that long-standing members of the SNP, including elected politicians and high-profile activists, have left the party to join or support Labour. And with party membership numbers a lightning rod for much wider scrutiny, having already exposed previous internal wrangles and sparked high-profile resignations, the news that membership has halved since a high in 2019, and dropped by 10,000 in just the last year, inevitably raises questions, ignites commentary and makes newspaper headlines.

What is less understood, particularly by the party, is why individual card-carrying members would make such a symbolic and proactive choice as to cancel their direct debit and so end their political affiliation. 

And, interestingly, the SNP never bothers to ask them.

Which is a pity, because as we mark the 10th anniversary of the independence referendum that the SNP lost, as the nationalists chew over a general election result that saw them reduced to just nine MPs, as their policy failures mount up and the excuses run out, another electoral test looms. And while the leadership say they are listening, why someone who had previously been a champion of an independent Scotland would abandon that mission to support a party of the Union is the question that the SNP must wrestle with as its support and membership continue to slide.

And while it is much easier to cynically dismiss such defections as the actions of a political charlatan, I know how passionately some of those so-called renegades once felt about the SNP, the cause of independence, and a belief in a deeper integrity of the politicians they once campaigned alongside and for, to build a better Scotland. They have been left heartsore to see that long-held investment dissipate.

And for someone like me, who has never been a member of a political party and been ambivalent about the constitutional question but always hoped that politicians of any stripe would strive to make life better, not worse, for the people they represent, I sense that deep disappointment felt in a party that members had once held dear. 

Ask the disillusioned the root cause of the SNP’s demise and, surprisingly, some would say that the nationalists should never have gone into government. That, ironically, it has been the taking up of the levers of power to run a country that has sounded the death knell for independence.
I admit this sounds capricious. Surely any political party would want to be in power – how else do you effect change; how else would you secure a legal referendum on the route to independence, and how else do you prove your efficacy to serve? 

However, the SNP’s strength was always in its power to either be, or be perceived to be, a party of insurgents – the rebels that could demonstrate the inherent failings in a structure of power that they believed negated Scotland’s full potential. 

The key to their ultimate success in securing independence would be in arguing coherently and repeatedly from opposition that what we have in the UK is a failed system and that it should be replaced with something better – independence – and not by immersing themselves in that which they criticised.

In going into government, the SNP had to accept and work within a system of power and governance that they had wanted to dismantle. They would be tethered to an establishment and a way of doing things that would lead to them becoming part of the problem and not the solution. Their acceptance of the status quo would see them blamed for policy failings in office that could inevitably lead to their demise. What to me once sounded fanciful as a narrative now feels so prescient. 

And there is nothing more emblematic of the problems that the SNP faced in trying to ride two horses at the same time – as a party of government and a party of opposition – than the Angus Robertson debacle over his meeting with the Israeli deputy ambassador to the UK.

I’ve known Robertson long enough to remember those beauty queen-style ambitions for brokering world peace. I recall in those heady days, pre-the reality of the hard yards in government, his belief that an independent Scotland could become a global centre for peace and reconciliation. That warring nations would find harmony here and our wee nation could be that honest broker. That was to be our USP.

But now in government, where reality meets dreams and ministerial actions can butt up against party members’ disparate views, far from making peace, Robertson stumbled headfirst into a row triggering a sequence of events that has ultimately led to calls from within the SNP for him to be sacked; the family of the Scot, Bernard Cowan, who was murdered by Hamas in the 7 October invasion of Israel, accusing the party of being antisemitic and former first minister Humza Yousaf of “Jew washing”; and a brutal condemnation of the Scottish Government by Jewish leaders in Scotland and across the UK for placing a ban on further engagement with Israel, but not with Palestine. What a balagan.

And like every other mess that the SNP is currently facing, it is all of its own making. Struggling to find relevance, not understanding its own membership, bending to the whims of every minority faction within its ranks, often at the expense of others, and having lost control of even the very route to independence, the SNP isn’t just failing it is flailing. The party has lost sight of who it is and what it is for.

My neighbour died two weeks ago, aged 91. He joined the SNP at 14, was an SNP candidate in the 1979 European elections, and was awarded the rare accolade of honorary lifetime party member. His wife had been waiting for a promised card and some words from the party leader to be read at his funeral last week. It never arrived. When she enquired why, she was told that no one had an address for her husband. A man who had been a steadfast member of the party for nearly 80 years! He would have chosen party over family if it had meant winning independence. And that careless failure to pay homage to a lifelong member at his death is perhaps indicative of how far the party has veered from its course.