Team Leader - Interview with Angus Robertson MP

Angus Robertson, the SNP MP for Moray and party group leader at Westminster, is looking a little shell-shocked. His office in Portcullis House is crammed with familiar party faces; new and old. In fact, such has been the scale of the SNP’s general election success that anyone who has had any previous connection to the party at Westminster has been dragooned in to help show the 56 new SNP MPs the ropes. 

Stephen Noon, the party’s chief strategist and normally based in the Edinburgh HQ, meets me at reception while former special advisors and retired party press officers are milling about waiting to take instructions. “I’m not meant to be here,” says one conspiratorially.

In Robertson’s small office, there are yellow Post-its all over the cupboard doors, clustered in little groups representing UK government portfolios, Westminster committees and other areas over which the SNP now hopes to have influence. These represent Robertson’s mighty task in marshalling his troops into an effective opposition.

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FURTHER READING:

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Robertson and I meet up less than a week after the election result which saw the SNP taking 56 of the 59 Scottish seats, leaving Scotland with just one Labour, one Lib Dem and one Tory MP. It was a political tsunami which turned the Scottish electoral map bright yellow. Since then, Robertson’s conducted 15-minute interviews with each new MP, learning what they might be good at, what they might want to do and is trying to marry their skills with the roles on offer. Quickly. 

So far, the three Post-its labelled: ‘international dev’, ‘foreign’ and ‘Europe’ collectively represent the new role assigned to the newly elected MP for Gordon, the Rt Hon Alex Salmond, who takes Foreign Affairs. This was one of Robertson’s easiest tasks and will put former FM Salmond at the fore of any European referendum debate and in pole position to comment on Chilcot. 

The newly elected MP for Edinburgh South West, Joanna Cherry, a respected QC, has been given home affairs and justice. Stewart Hosie, deputy leader of the SNP, is delighted to continue as spokesman on all things financial. Meanwhile Dr Eilidh Whiteford, SNP MP for Banff and Buchan, and a veteran, having been elected in 2010, has been given the DWP brief. 

For Robertson himself, the dramatic change of fortunes for the SNP group, swollen from six to 56 MPs, puts him in a high-profile role. The SNP is now the third largest party in the House and Robertson will get to ask the PM two questions every week at PMQs. This will make Scotland’s voice stronger [and certainly louder] at Westminster. 

I ask Robertson how he intends to approach the task ahead. He smiles wryly. “The growth from six to 56 members is unprecedented so I don’t underestimate the challenges in making that work optimally, to harness all of the talents, but that is my key focus in these early stages. I genuinely want the entire SNP group to be part of a team effort that brings together all of the talents. Now clearly, the talents of Alex Salmond and the other returning MPs with experience in the House of Commons is a massive consideration but it’s a huge enrichment for the group that we have both that experience and all these new talents – it is a dream scenario. 

“The job is now to make sure that we will take this team approach in policy areas which will include: front benchers, select committee members, bill committee members and deputy spokespeople. Everybody is going to have a role to play that really matters and this is the transition from a smaller guerrilla-style operation, where everybody has to wear five or 10 hats, to a team approach which will include people of talent doing the jobs they are best suited to do but doing it working together.”

Robertson is a master planner. He likes lists and order, but given the newness of the scenario, how much planning had he been able to do to get ahead of the game?

“Look, nobody could have realistically expected to win 56 out of the 59 seats in Scotland, even with the polls suggesting that was possible, even with our canvass returns showing that it was doable – and, by the way, our canvass returns were very accurate indeed – but we did undertake some scenario planning. For me it became obvious, if not probable, quite early on that the SNP would become the third party at Westminster. The polling levels of the Lib Dems and the SNP’s standing after the referendum meant it looked entirely credible that the SNP would overtake the Lib Dems and so following discussions in the House of Commons, I was able to get a better understanding of what that would actually mean, so there has been considerable thinking around the responsibilities that we would have. Yes, done ahead of the election. 

“And yes, I am shell-shocked in terms of getting 56 out of 59 MPs but in terms of knowing what that could mean, no, because we had done some planning. For instance, the knowledge that the SNP will be called twice in PMQ is something we knew would happen and the reason we know this is because it is exactly the same as the third party during 2005-2010 and the House of Commons works on precedent. We’re the third party, we get two questions at PMQs, we will be called amongst the earliest speaker in every single debate and statement, we are automatically on the select committees and importantly, this is in the usual channels in the House of Commons, which means the political parties coordinate who has debates when, which is something we have been excluded from previously, but we are now part of and the Lib Dems are no longer part of. It’s transformational. 

“What will I use my questions at PMQs for? I will use the opportunity to ask questions of the Prime Minister about the issues which matter most to Scotland. I will stand up against austerity, I will champion more powers for Scotland, I will vigorously oppose Trident and when issues emerge where we can use the position in PMQs to highlight the issues or make a case for or against something, we will do that. Incidentally, at a time when the Labour Party will be rudderless, will be inward looking, pulled to the left or torn to the right and unsure of where it’s going to be at, the SNP will be the effective opposition in Westminster. We will use all of these opportunities from PMQs, to statements, to debates, to House of Commons committees, to delegations, which we will become a part of, to stand up for Scotland and to stand up for the interests that we were elected for and with 56 talented MPs, we will have strong voices in all of these circumstances.”

The story of the SNP’s current success, as told by Robertson, is a straightforward one: “We wanted to win and just needed to work out how.”

That watershed moment goes back to 2006, after the disastrous results in the 2003 Scottish parliament elections when, under John Swinney’s leadership, the party lost eight of its seats. Robertson drew up a list of invitees to a meeting at a Speyside hotel, Craigellachie, which included the best of the party’s “next generation”, who now feature strongly in the SNP Government and the wider party machine.

They included Kevin Pringle, former special adviser to Salmond, party secretary Alasdair Allan – now MSP for Na h-Eileanan an Iar, former policy adviser and now chief strategist, Stephen Noon, then head of communications John Fellows and the then newly elected MP for the Western Isles, Angus MacNeil, Richard Lochhead MSP, now Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Shirley-Anne Somerville, former MSP and now deputy chief executive of the party, Alyn Smith MEP, and American, Jennifer Erickson, who formed Salmond’s innovative Council of Economic Advisers. Other group members included academics, marketing professionals, business-people and policy community experts. Salmond, his then deputy, Nicola Sturgeon, and other key elected members were left out of the mix to encourage freedom of expression.

This meeting was to neatly dovetail with a process of reform already happening at SNP Party HQ in Edinburgh at the instigation of party chief executive and long-time friend of Robertson, Peter Murrell, which crucially included the development of the then cutting-edge ‘Activate’ computer-based, campaigning data management system.

The way Robertson tells it, this was part of an organic process rather than there being one specific moment that prompted the gathering but the fact that Robertson, Murrell and Pringle were close confidantes – Murrell and Robertson met when they were 16 and sit on the NEC of the party and Pringle was two years above Robertson at Aberdeen University and also knew Murrell, who was then working for the party in Peterhead – helped things gather pace. Murrell, although not at the Craigellachie Hotel meeting, was integral to all the recommendations that came from the Highland summit.

“There was a growing sense amongst a group of us that Alex Salmond coming back in 2007, the political circumstances being what they were, all of us being of an age where we all want to go on to do things with our lives after we had gone on to achieve the things we wanted to achieve politically, and the fact that we have, unlike certain other parties, an achievable goal, as opposed to a process of improvement or whatever, all combined to make the time ripe for change. So there was this sense that this was the chance, and we called it simply, Conference 2007 and it was absolutely, clearly focused on what we needed to do to win.
“This was about a group of different people who started getting very active and being very focused on 2007 and getting ready to make it happen. So I think that the most important thing that we did was, we asked ourselves a question – ‘Do we want to win?’ 

“I know it sounds like a bizarre thing for people in politics to think about but you have to be absolutely single-minded about what it is you want to achieve and be convinced that you can do it.”
This fundamental became the starting point for what became known as the Conference 2007 event. These SNP activists were not going to languish in the land of ‘no hope opposition’. They knew that the party’s reputation for whingeing and negativity would never win power. They had to start being positive, professional and get that message across and that was implicit in Robertson’s agenda that weekend.

The group revisited three important points that would become the mantra of 2006: the 2007 election will be a two-horse race; only the SNP can beat Labour; and it is a straight choice between Alex Salmond and Jack McConnell. Those three points remained on the white board of the SNP’s Scottish parliamentary office throughout the election campaign.
Next, a project management process at SNP HQ came up with the famous Campaign Plan which encapsulated five key aims broken down into different areas: Communication, Governance, Message, Organisation and Resource.

These were then measured against: objectives, critical success factors, performance targets, performance measures, benefits and actions.
Timelines were agreed and monitored at weekly meetings ahead of the campaign and then daily during the last weeks before polling. This model was adhered to with military precision.

The idea of campaigning on a ticket of ‘Alex Salmond for First Minister’ also goes back to Craigellachie and Robertson describes it as one of those eureka moments when the group realised that, ‘yes, we can do that!’ That clear and single-minded approach to campaigning resulted in the SNP forming a minority government in 2007, winning a mandate to form a majority government in 2011 and to hold a referendum in 2014.

Robertson’s concedes that after the referendum, where the SNP was on the losing side, no one within the party predicted or planned for what happened next. But, they then had the infrastructure, manpower, talent and strategic intelligence based on past campaigns to harness and ride what he calls ‘the Big Mo [momentum]’.

“Nobody could plan for what happened immediately after the referendum, everybody on the Yes side was totally invested in trying to achieve a majority, which we nearly reached but we didn’t win and I don’t believe anybody could have foreseen the almost immediate resolve from people that had supported the Yes side in deciding that they wanted to keep the moment going and do that by joining the SNP and supporting the SNP.

“People were joining the SNP online, people were tweeting, ‘I’ve just joined the SNP, why don’t you’ and it was like watching something happening that you had no control of. It kind of took a momentum all on its own. …. It was clear that something big was happening and nobody could have foreseen then that the membership levels would continue rising … and break all kinds of records and then lead to the unprecedented SNP success in the General Election but that is what happened.

“This was a grassroots reaction to a grassroots campaign. It was people who had been part of the campaign deciding themselves that having campaigned with these hopes that they weren’t prepared to give up on their hopes. It wasn’t something that was politically directed.

“Then the immediate thing for us was to actually get our candidates for the election selected because we had decided that we weren’t going to go through candidate selection for the Westminster election ahead of the referendum, a) because we believed we would win; and b) because we wanted to win and ensure that all of the SNP’s efforts were focused on campaigning for the referendum rather than being turned inward going through lots of meetings to elect candidates.  

“But after the referendum, we knew that we were going to have to start selecting candidates very quickly and local constituencies were keen to get up and running. There was then a discussion around ensuring people who had been part of the wider Yes campaign could play a part if they wanted to and that involved rule changes in the SNP which allowed people who previously would not have been allowed to stand as SNP candidates, because of lack of longevity in terms of membership and so on, could. 

“Dispensation was given for people to put themselves forward and their application to be considered on their merits rather than length of membership and it turns out there are a number of members in the new SNP group who would not have satisfied the previous rules to become Westminster candidates who now are and I’m delighted that we have that experience, that breadth, in the group.

“You also have to bear in mind of course that at the time these selection measures were going on, membership was going through the roof and the experience of selections in different parts of the country where the SNP membership had doubled, trebled. People were turning up to these meetings to hear all these candidates with amazing backgrounds, that was very unexpected as well. 

“One thing led to another and in politics it’s called the Big Mo, it’s momentum and you know when you’ve got it and the SNP has had it since the referendum and all of these different stages show that that is what’s happened, newer members, being involved in a democratic process, selecting ambitious, attractive, talented candidates who really wanted to continue the work that was done during the referendum campaign.

"So you now have these constituencies that were perhaps not historically the strongest in the country having electable candidates with ambitions that they actually believed they could win and in all four corners of the country against Labour, against the Lib Dems, against the Tories, and people started working at an extraordinary work rate to try and make that happen.

“It had a momentum that started from the grassroots and of course the SNP has an extremely talented organisational capacity and HQ with extremely talented staff who have now been involved in a series of election campaigns for the referendum and were able to apply all of the winning lessons from these past campaigns into a Westminster election campaign.

"So it moved from selection procedures, to selection meetings, to selections, to national campaign committee that started meeting every week and gearing up organisationally to help direct all of that energy, effort, enthusiasm and optimism in the most likely way to guarantee success and that’s exactly what happened. 

“Hindsight can play tricks with you but I also don’t think anybody could have seen the Nicola phenomenon and it is just that, it is a phenomenon. It’s a conjoining of a number of different factors, it’s firstly, her great talents, which everybody in politics in Scotland has known for a long time, with her taking office at exactly the right time for her with her very particular communication skills, style and empathy, which I think has connected very powerfully with the electorate and at the same time, after the shock of Alex Salmond demitting office, him pretty quickly thereafter confirming his likely candidacy for Westminster.

“And then there were the hard politics of an election campaign with the SNP representing a certain position; carving out a strong message on austerity, on standing up for Scotland, on delivering Scottish powers, on non-renewal of Trident, then there was Nicola Sturgeon’s outstanding performances in the debates, both UK debates and Scottish debates, and her becoming even better known and allowing people to come to the decision that the SNP does reflect their hopes and ambitions; all in exactly the right time to break a whole series of political records.

“In some respects, we found ourselves in the perfect circumstance of the SNP doing the right thing, Nicola Sturgeon doing amazing things and the other political parties performing appallingly. Perfect storm – in a good way.

“I’ve always believed that political planning is an important part of the work of any political party or movement but unless the elements of the political priorities and the team of people who are representing that and the vision that you are trying to move towards are the right thing, you can have as much planning and direction as you like, you are not going to have tremendous success and you’re certainly not going to win almost every single seat in the country and secure unprecedented levels of the vote and mandate from the people. So planning is important but the alignment of the planets started way back, as you say, with Craigellachie and then with the momentum from the referendum campaign and the grassroots reaction that emerged from it, which then, with the help of some planning and direction and the participation of record numbers of supporters and volunteers and a very talented range of candidates in the election, all helped the planets be in alignment.”

And does this take Scotland closer to independence?

“Westminster is going through culture shock and coming to terms with the fact the SNP has done so well in the election. A large number of London-based journalists are also gradually coming to terms with what it really means, and many covered the election campaign and were in Scotland and they know this election was not a mandate for independence, nor for a second referendum. At the same time, the fact we are here in such strong numbers, elected as people who support independence, is also not lost on people. We will never tire of saying we are democrats that respect the referendum result of 2014 and we were elected to pursue an anti-austerity agenda, more powers for Scotland, a non-renewal of Trident and a whole series of other issues and that is what exactly we will do.”

Is there any sense of regret that the success of the SNP has all but wiped out the other parties in Scotland and that we are, effectively, living in a one-party state?

“Democracy also needs strong oppositions, it helps keep governments in check, and ensures the parties are as thoughtful as they need to be about what they do and how they do it. In that sense, I wish colleagues in other parties well but this is a situation of their own making. The Tories made themselves toxic in Scotland in the 1980s and have never recovered, the Labour Party developed a sense of entitlement and forgot where it represented some time ago and they are now being punished for that and the Lib Dems sold their soul to the Tories to go into coalition. All of these circumstances are the making of those three political parties and they are now reaping the wins of those circumstances. It is a salutary lesson to every political party including the SNP to make the right decisions, which is what we intend to do.”