After dominating Scottish politics for so long, the SNP is even struggling to manage its own decline

What a year this has been. A year of political turmoil and turbulence. And for Scots a year marked by the ongoing psychodrama that has become the SNP. A year in which a change of first minister returned a man to frontline politics who had previously risked taking the party to near electoral oblivion 20 years before.

And while John Swinney may well be considered a unifying force, the fact he was the only choice only helped to cement a feeling that the party that has dominated Scottish politics for so long is now struggling to even manage its own decline.

A year when despite claims to the contrary, all was not well within the SNP. That the much-lauded unity was in fact a sham. That the Bute House Agreement forged with the Greens and claimed to be “worth its weight in gold” was, in reality, an Achilles Heel that would end Humza Yousaf’s short reign as first minister and cost the country dear. A year when even the cause of independence appeared to be sidelined.

And when the chickens came home to roost for a party of government that thrives on grievance but was exposed as the architect of its own political misfortune for not listening when it came to issues like the gender recognition reforms, the deposit return scheme and its own record on delivery.

And it is the SNP’s fall from political dominance that is the story of the last year and, if pushed, I would say the whole debacle surrounding the Michael Matheson affair was emblematic of the party’s inability to get on top of a crisis and revealed just how far it had come from having its finger on the country’s political pulse.

And with a snap election called on the very day that the SNP had taunted the prime minister on being “too feart” to call one, and in the face of its bluff being called, resorted to its typical grudge, complaining about the timing being a snub to the Scots, falling as it did during the Scottish school holidays. ‘What about the weans?’, they ingloriously cried. This was, literally, for the playground. Their confected outrage for the birds. 

You didn’t need a crystal ball to see the direction this election was headed. From its inauspicious start with Rishi Sunak standing on the steps of No 10 getting drenched while in the background the unmistakable sound of Labour’s 1997 signature campaign tune could be heard, leading to the inevitable ‘Things Can Only Get Wetter’ headlines, through to its inexorable and humiliating end.

It was perhaps only natural that the then prime minister would find himself on the campaign trail standing under a Morrisons supermarket sign with his head obscuring the ‘ris’. It later emerged the image was doctored, typical of a campaign where it was hard to distinguish parody from fact. When even a flock of sheep run the other way as you try to feed them, it was perhaps only a matter of time before the hapless Tory leader was pictured under an ‘exit’ sign. And he was.

The SNP too had its share of campaign gaffes, amateurish social media messages and cringeworthy picture opps involving hen night paraphernalia and silly props, but nothing could disguise the fact that there was no clear message. That this was a party that had run out of ideas but still had its head in the sand. It would be alright on the night, the SNP hoped.

And while the parties themselves may have been slow to recognise the scale of what was coming, after 14 years of the Conservatives in power at Westminster and 17 of the SNP at Holyrood, both met their reckoning on 4 July when the voters made their feelings clear.

The SNP has 18 months ahead of the 2026 election to put the brakes on a momentum that appears to have swung against it. And according to the latest Scottish Social Attitudes Survey, in this, the 25th anniversary year of devolution and ten years on from an independence referendum that in its wake delivered a general election result for the SNP of 56 MPs out of a possible 59 and now been reduced to just nine, less than half of Scots trust an SNP-led government to deliver “always” or “most of the time”.

And while the party may take succour from the fact that trust in the UK Government, was even less than that, the salutary lesson to take is that the Tories have just been kicked out of power. 

And no wonder trust in politicians is at an all-time low. Within short order, two prime ministers, two first ministers, a live police investigation into the finances of the SNP, arrests, allegations of all kinds of sexual impropriety, fraud, lies, cover-ups, defections and with the short tenure in office of one prime minister even likened to the shelf life of a lettuce. The country has felt in free fall.

We are living in serious times and our politicians have just not been serious.

The country faces a cost-of-living crisis, children growing up in poverty, educational standards down, energy prices up. And everywhere you look across the country’s public services – be it in a housing emergency, an NHS waiting list crisis, prisons at bursting point necessitating emergency policies on early release, record numbers of drug deaths, and a spiraling violence against women and girls – we see the tragic consequence of political inaction and wrongdoing. But they weren’t listening.

On the night of the election, and as the catastrophe for his party unfolded, the SNP’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn valiantly claimed that when you get knocked down, you get back up again. He was right. But your stance must surely be changed by the tumble or else you are simply heading for another fall.

This article appears in Holyrood’s Annual Review 2023/24