Where stands the SNP and independence?

The SNP conference met in Edinburgh over the past weekend. It was an understated affair compared to the huge gatherings in the years post-2014. The mood was not surprisingly of a diminished party in numbers, appeal and rationale – but at the same time less demoralised and defeated than might have been expected.

Rather party members at least on the surface appeared to still have some spirit and energy. This begs the question were they just putting on a brave face, do they have an inner core of faith and strength which can stand shocks such as the recent election defeat, or are they so used to winning that they are in a sense of denial? These are complex questions to which only time will fully have the answer. For now, let’s ask what does all this mean for the future of the SNP and independence?

The SNP are now stuck singing the same old tunes. ‘Independence is the route to a fairer Scotland’; ‘Westminster is denying Scotland’s democratic right’; ‘Labour are just the same as the Tories’; ‘Tory austerity and Labour austerity are the same’ and several more. These might be self-evidently true to the dwindling tribe of SNP activists and independence supporters, but are not palpably self-evident, do not have cut through with voters, and are mostly about people talking to themselves.

Beyond these worn-out tropes, are a host of comments from members which reveal a degree of resignation bordering on pessimism about the party’s prospects and popularity. A regular line now to explain away the choices of voters is that people in the recent Westminster election ‘were voting on devolved issues’ and that ‘the distinction between Scottish and Westminster elections needs to be restated.’

Apart from the obvious point that any confusion might be partly the fault of the SNP, this line is eerily reminiscent of how Scottish Labour members used to talk when they ran devolved Scotland and were slowly on the way down. Its logic runs: ‘people are voting on the wrong criteria, don’t realise all our achievements, and that failure is nothing to do with us.’ This is only one soundbite away from blaming the people for not realising how marvellous, first, Labour, then the SNP have been.

This chimes with a SNP which seventeen years into office has run out of steam, ideas and is exhausted at the top level. It has told Scotland a set of self-satisfied mantras over that period: ‘we are building a fairer Scotland’, ‘look at our social contract’, and ‘we should celebrate our magnificent social democracy’ which have become increasingly hollow compared to the reality of modern Scotland. This is what happens to all political messaging and stories: they become self-serving, people fall for their own hype, they become detached from reality, and then voters stop believing them. A huge part of Scotland has been bored with the SNP for quite a while and not surprisingly many have stopped listening.

The SNP under John Swinney’s Leadership

John Swinney’s keynote speech talked of independence as the way to address the challenges Scotland faces. This is obvious to SNP members but does not deal with the day-to-day reality of how you govern Scotland, the stories you tell, and the Scotland you are trying to advance in the here and now. On this the SNP are mostly silent.

Swinney reminisced at length about the summer of 2014 and the ‘optimism and hope’ of ten years ago – from equal marriage to the Commonwealth Games and Ryder Cup – all leading up to the September indyref. This was the politics of nostalgia and looking back rather than forward; the glory days and moments of independence and Scotland basking in the sun of the world’s media attention. What Swinney could not do, given he is an interregnum leader, is use the ten-year anniversary to park the idea of independence as a continuous process from 2014: the road of Sturgeon and ‘Are You Yes Yet?’ which ultimately took people into a dead-end.

The post-mortem on the SNP’s election defeat was mostly a subdued, thoughtful affair. Swinney said that the SNP had in July lost 250,000 voters to Labour and another 250,000 voters had stayed at home. But this understates the scale of SNP decline – from 1,454,436 in 2015 to under 724,758 in July, and hence ignores one-third of the losses the party has endured. The party is aware it is increasingly losing middle class support to Labour and that failing public services and levels of taxation are cutting through.

How can the SNP renewal happen? Some think by focusing on ‘delivery’ in the 20 months to May 2026; others that they can go hell for leather on Starmer and Reeves and the shortcomings of Labour in office. No one seriously thinks the ‘Programme for Government’ announced this week will be the answer or have cut through. Some in the Kate Forbes wing think the answer is the SNP equivalent of ‘cutting the crap’, talking of the need to dump ‘far-out progressive policies’ and ‘woke tyranny’: codes for the fall-out from the trans debate and a stance, that if taken further, will even more alienate some of the younger SNP members.

The State of SNP Scotland

The state of Scotland seventeen years needs explaining. The scandalous number of drug deaths aided and exasperated by SNP cuts to services which they were warned about at the time; the threadbare nature of local government services after more than a decade of Scottish Government cuts and successive council tax freezes cannot go indefinitely.

There is the coming crisis of arts and culture and Creative Scotland funding. This is a weathervane issue touching wider policy failure and exhaustion. Years of Scottish Government centralisation; faux boosterism and policy announcements which never delivered anything. What has happened to the £100 million extra for arts and culture promised by Angus Robertson over a year ago? No one knows and there is no sign of it. This brings us to ‘three jobs’ Angus Robertson and his contrition on meeting the Israeli deputy ambassador for which he ate humble pie at SNP conference. Where is his apology for the state of arts and culture, lack of funding, lack of imaginative policies, and bogus £100 million announcement?

The loyalist defence of the above states blandly: ‘what would you like us to take money from?’ Leave aside that this is the same conservatism, inertia and defeatism that Labour’s Rachel Reeves peddles as Chancellor, there is a denial of the choice and priorities that even the Scottish Government has with its £60 billion budget. This is a budget in which there are still elements of discretion and underspend, and only this year the SNP administration committed yet another own goal when they handed back £500 million of underspend to the EU four years after formally Brexit happened.

Missing from the SNP, as was true of Labour when it ran Scotland, is any obvious understanding of the distributional consequences of the cumulative public policy and public spending choices they have undertaken. To be in government and elected office is to choose. The nature of devolved government under Labour and the SNP has been mostly to prioritise key insider and stakeholder groups such as public service workers – avoiding strikes unlike England. This can be presented as a success, but again like many things needs proper communication, and an honesty that it comes with consequences elsewhere.

The imminent ‘Programme for Government’ will again duck these questions, as every SNP programme has done – and Labour before them. There is policy and legislative exhaustion at the heart of the SNP. Vague, centrist social democracy only gets you so far particularly when independence is off the agenda. Centralising government is exhausting, and ultimately self-defeating, leaving ministers with no one else to blame but themselves for large swathes of Scotland.

Tackling child poverty should be one of the central missions of government, but despite the success of the Scottish Child Payment, child poverty levels were 24% in 2007 when the SNP came to office and are the same now, so any spin being offered of ‘eradicating child poverty’ must be treated sceptically. Similarly, there are limits to taxing people at the higher rate of tax with fiscal drag resulting in the number of Scots paying higher-rate tax rising from 12% to 22% of taxpayers under the SNP in the past decade.

The Next SNP and Seven Challenges for the Next Wave of Independence

Independence needs, like the SNP itself, a next wave and stage. Just as there has to be post-2026 a Next SNP representing a new era of the party and how it does politics the same is true of independence. Ten years on from Scotland’s democratic explosion in 2014 the road from that point in history is not a continuous path seamlessly leading to the promised nirvana of independence. This is the illusion that Nicola Sturgeon peddled for years and which was deeply deceptive, telling people what they wanted to hear, not facing the serious strategic questions, and ultimately leading to a cul-de-sac.

The SNP are currently treading water and going through the motions. By the next Scottish elections in 2026 they will have been in office for nineteen years. There is to put it bluntly little prospect of the party comprehensively reinventing itself in the 20 months to the Scottish elections, or indeed turning round the numerous policy failures and how the party does government. That is not how politics work.

Related to this, the SNP need not just a new way of doing politics, party and government, they need a new set of stories and messaging which connects not just to real life but also has ambition, aspiration and honesty for how Scotland can become better, fairer, more prosperous, and a land which wages war on ‘eradicating child poverty.’ And to do this requires a new generation of political leaders to emerge out of the shadows of the legacy of the Sturgeon era. Realistically such transformative politics and the passing from one political era to another can only begin after the 2026 elections and the reverses the SNP will then experience.

The Next Independence needs to confront several home truths which have been avoided or fudged in the ten years since 2014. First, the language of independence has to change. In recent years the SNP have slipped into the mantra of ‘Westminster is denying Scotland’s historic right to decide its future’. In part this is understandable as a message: Scotland’s right to decide its own future polls well and has majority support; but there has never been sustained majority support for another indyref post-2014. Similarly, invoking SNP ‘mandates’ in successive Scottish elections do not cut it; mandates are not legal entities, but constructs made and remade by politicians and public in conversation and how public opinion evolves.

Talking of Scotland having its democratic rights ‘denied’ makes no sense outside the indy echo chamber and gives the impression of an internal sets of codes and language which most voters have no real understanding of.

Second, independence supporters must stop putting process ahead of substance: the ‘How’ ahead of the ‘Why’. The former is a question more for the insider classes and anoraks; the latter is the defining, framing issue which can reach out and change minds.

Third, independence will never win as an abstract and principle. This version of independence – shorn of any detail about a future Scotland – only speaks to a minority of voters, maybe 20-25% of Scots. This constituency includes a huge part, if not nearly all, SNP members and independence supporters, but a different vision to the one which mobilises them is needed for the Scotland whose interest in independence is contingent on detail.

Fourth, the Scotland beyond independence in any shape and form is critical to the future. It is one of the many conspicuous failings of the Sturgeon leadership that with all the political authority and capital she enjoyed she failed to reach out and engage Scottish voters who support No. There are many shades of No, as there are many shades of Yes. Just as not all independence supporters are not nationalists, so not all pro-union supporters are unionists, and this needs to be recognised.

Fifth, the nature of the union and Scotland’s place and position needs wider comprehension. ‘Why will they not let us go?’ is a common lament among independence supporters. This ignores that the British establishment believe in Britain as an idea including Scotland as part of the union. They see the whole community as part of a collective ‘we’ not about ‘they’. The British establishment is also not entirely an alien entity but has its Scottish element; the idea of Britain which people believe in is not solely about establishments and elites but has popular support and expression which should not be dismissed.

Sixth, while the SNP and independence are not synonymous, they are linked. The SNP in the ten years post-2014 have failed to do heavy lifting on independence. There was no 2014 post-mortem; and the Sturgeon leadership deliberately went out of its way to stop institution building beyond its control. Ten years on there is no ecology of sustainable independence institutions, something urgently needed for any Next Independence. This would include think-tanks, research agencies, centres of expertise and authority, all with funding and business models to sustain them. In short, this is ‘movement building’ and tragically the SNP post-2014 invoked the rhetoric of being part of a movement while using the practice of a party to close down and control things. Realistically any real impetus on the above will only begin post-2026 after the SNP reverses of that election.

Seventh, independence has to address some of the big questions facing Scotland, humanity and the planet. These include how to strengthen and widen democracy, the nature of government, what to do about capitalism, corporate power and inequality, and the climate crisis. This means plugging Scotland, academics, thinkers, intellectuals and campaigners, into global debates on these and more. But it is damning that post-2014 the SNP have, for example, had nothing of note to say about democratising Scotland or the nature of political economy and capitalism.

Underlying all the above independence has to have an awareness of timescales of change; recognising the need for short-term and longer-term aims. The pretence by the SNP leadership post-2014, heightened post-Brexit vote, that an independence referendum was just around the corner, was not just a politics of deception but of control, told to stop people asking questions.

Two concluding observations. The SNP and independence are living post-2014 with the consequences of top-down political leadership for nearly a decade and the deliberate absence of any political culture encouraging wider discussion, dissemination and political education which could have informed, sustained and strengthened that wider movement. It is a damning indictment of the SNP, its leadership and Sturgeonism that in the aftermath of 2014 and the greatest democratic explosion in our history, they not only failed to build on this, but deliberately reverted to the opposite.

This is the SNP, Scotland and politics of independence we find ourselves in ten years on from 2014. Some still want to cling to illusions and the broken records hoping it will all turn out alright if only they believe in their leaders enough. Surely the politics of true faith and believing in fairy tales have been revealed as empty promises?

The SNP will face a difficult next couple of years. That is the nature of party politics. But some could have been avoided with a more honest, confident leadership post-2014. Too many parts of the SNP and independence have fallen for their own hype and myths and ended up divorced from the realities of modern Scotland. In too many respects the SNP have ended up reproducing the same sort of conceits and language that Labour did when it ran Scotland and that should be a wake-up call. The SNP have become, like Labour before them, a court party hoarding power and patronage.

The SNP, and even more independence, need to embody a road map from present day Scotland to a future Scotland which has the honesty to face difficult choices, and where that version of the future is being encouraged every day and aided into being. We are far removed from that kind of politics in the present, and despite appearances at the SNP conference more and more people including at senior levels of the party recognise they have got themselves into a bad political place, but need to follow that up with words and actions.

The first stage in the Next SNP and Next Independence is recognising the scale of the problem, talking about it, and beginning to embrace a course which sets a very different direction. These is no real gain in the SNP and independence continuing the same course of the past ten years, but realistically fully embracing that change will have to wait until 2026 and the reverse the SNP will inevitably experience then. But politics and public life abhors vacuums and drift, and people could dare to start taking the first steps in preparing and creating that different Scotland and future now.