Things did not go, it would be safe to say, as John Swinney hoped they might.
Just a few days ago, the SNP leader confidently explained how the result of yesterday’s general election could hasten the break-up of the United Kingdom. If his party won a majority of Westminster seats north of the border, he’d be empowered to begin independence talks with the new Prime Minister.
John Swinney was a man who seemed convinced he held the very future of the UK in his hands.
Today, Mr Swinney is a spent political force, utterly humiliated by voters, his lifelong dream of Scottish independence in tatters.
And there is already speculation among colleagues that the First Minister – who replaced scandal-hit Humza Yousaf as his party’s leader in May – might have to go.
Nicola Sturgeon looks stone-faced as the exit poll is revealed during ITV’s election coverage last night
What a contrast with 2019, when Ms Sturgeon was pictured celebrating as Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson lost her seat to the SNP
In the 2019 General Election, the SNP won 48 of Scotland’s 59 Westminster seats. Not quite the 56 the party took in 2015 but a solid recovery from a drop to 35 seats in 2017.
On Thursday, Mr Swinney’s nationalists won just nine of – after boundary changes – 57 Scottish constituencies. A recount today in Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire – an SNP seat under previous boundaries – may take the SNP tally to a still meagre 10.
Yesterday’s result was no blip, no mere wobble from which the SNP will easily recover.
Rather, it was the brutally clear verdict of a Scottish electorate failed by 17 years of nationalist incompetence in government at Holyrood. The clear-out of second-raters and talentless troughers from the nationalist benches marks the loosening of the SNP’s grip on Scotland. The idea, once so enthusiastically propagated by populist Scottish nationalists, that failure to support independence makes one somehow less of a Scot is now dead.
The SNP, whose members once prowled the streets of Scotland, intimidating opponents and generally throwing their weight around, is now the leading home for political losers.
The mood among SNP politicians as the full extent of the party’s humiliation became apparent on Friday morning was a mixture of despair and fury.
“We knew things were going to be bad,” says one veteran nationalist campaigner but nobody for a minute thought it was going to be the total disaster it’s turned out to be.
“I thought we might drop back to 20 or less seats, which would have been awful, but nine?
“In any other party at any other time, if a leader turned in that kind of result they’d be out on their backside immediately but we’re stuck with John. He was supposed to be the great saviour and put the party back together. Well, so much for that now.”
Another long-serving SNP activist says Mr Swinney should not be made the fall guy for problems that began under the leadership of Nicola Sturgeon.
“It wasn’t on John’s watch that the police started investigating the party, was it?” says that Swinney-loyalist. “And it wasn’t John who kept pushing gender reforms voters didn’t want.”
As SNP candidate after SNP candidate fell in the early hours of Friday, Ms Sturgeon was appearing on ITV’s election coverage as a pundit.
This was too much to bear for one senior colleague.
“If you want to know the root of all the SNP’s problems just now, it’s the leadership of Nicola Sturgeon. Watching her opining while all these good colleagues lose their jobs because of the mistakes she made was galling.
“She doesn’t have solution to our problems because she’s the cause of our bloody problems.”
For much of Ms Sturgeon’s nine years as leader of the SNP, she repeatedly promised members a second referendum on independence was within reach. The truth, however, was always that she has no authority to establish a second vote on the constitutional question.
For a very long time, SNP members – surely the cheapest dates in Scottish politics – were happy to accept Ms Sturgeon’s reassurances that with one one heave, Scotland would be independent. But, after almost a decade of hollow promises, even the most devotedly loyal members began to question whether they’d been sold a pig in a poke.
Backed into a corner by her own lack of candour with SNP members, Ms Sturgeon announced in November 2022 that she would treat the next general election as a “de facto” referendum on independence.
This wildcat plan stunned colleagues who believed it would throw the independence movement into chaos: the UK Government would not, they reasoned, recognise the proposal, rendering any victory meaningless. However, because politics isn’t fair, if the SNP did not win its “de facto’ referendum, the UK Government would recognise it after all, and declare the constitutional question answered for an actual, rather than an SNP, generation.
One former colleague of Ms Sturgeon’s explains: “The problem with the de facto referendum plan was that the UK Government had absolutely no obligation to recognise it so it was always going to be the case that, even if a majority of Scots did vote for us, we’d have no actual legal authority to hold a referendum.”
Precious few SNP members will now want to see yesterday’s election as having been a “de facto” referendum. As one defeated candidate put it, “If that was a de facto referendum we just de facto lost it”.
In advance of the election, senior SNP figure spent time and effort preparing supporters for a challenging night. The resurgence of Labour under Sir Keir Starmer was always, went the line, going to make things more difficult for the SNP which always benefited from the presence of the Conservatives in power at Westminster.
Leading nationalists consoled themselves with what they believed to be the “fact” that voters who might abandon the SNP for Labour at a UK general election could be depended upon to return to the nationalist fold at the next Holyrood poll in 2026.
The scale of the SNP’s defeat yesterday suggests this is an optimistic view, at best.
One former SNP MP says, “I was willing to believe that people would come back to us in to years but looking at the numbers, I’m not sure they actually will. I mean, we’ve lost a lot of people. A lot.”
Those SNP MSPs clinging to the hope that their party’s fortunes will rise again before they have to defend their seats in two years are, I think, doomed to be disappointed.
John Swinney, pictured this morning, has helped to make the SNP the leading home for political losers
The ongoing police investigation – Operation Branchform, – into allegations of fraud and embezzlement involving party funds stands to further damage the party in the months ahead.
The independence movement had begun to fracture long before yesterday’s election. Former SNP leader Alex Salmond’s Alba Party may not have made an electoral breakthrough this time, but the party – along with the Greens – took votes from the SNP. Some senior Nationalists think worse is to come.
“Alba isn’t a major threat just now,” says one former SNP candidate, “But they’re building up their profile. If things get worse for us – and they probably will – then they stand to get better for them.”
Speaking after his humiliation on Friday, Mr Swinney said the election result was “very, very difficult and damaging” and that there would need to be “soul searching” after such a poor result.
Perhaps you recognise a ring of familiarity to the First Minister’s words. He and his nationalist predecessors have all spoken at different times about the need for self-reflection when their secession proposals are rejected by voters.
But the miserable truth is that, for all the fine words of a succession of leaders, the SNP appears institutionally incapable of considering why others might not share its reckless objectives.
When, in 2014, a clear majority of Scots rejected the SNP’s independence proposal, then First Minister Alex Salmond promised he would respect the result. Neither he nor any of those who have followed him into the highest office in Scotland did so. Rather, the SNP quickly established the line that those who had voted No to independence had been conned by a malevolent UK government bent on undermining devolution.
This is hardly, admits one SNP MSP, the most sophisticated approach to campaigning for independence.
“When we lost in 2014, we knew – I mean all of us in the party – that we had a lot of work to do to get independence back on track. Of course in public you’re going to keep defending your position but we knew our proposal had been tested to destruction and that we’d have to go back to the drawing board.
“But there wasn’t much democracy in Nicola Sturgeon’s party so when she just arbitrarily decided that we were going to start pushing hard for another referendum without even bothering to try to answer questions about pensions and borders, we were all tied in to a stupid strategy.
“Instead of actually putting in the time to get those answers we started this gung-ho thing of just demanding we get a second referendum.
“It’s nobody else’s fault we didn’t do the work we needed to, is it?”
The SNP would be in a fair healthier state today if a single one of its recent leaders had possessed the moral backbone to be honest with members about the difficulty of establishing a second independence referendum.
The vote in 2014 was possible only because then Prime Minister David Cameron agreed to it. The power to run a referendum on the constitution has always lain with Westminster rather than Holyrood.
However, despite the law being entirely unambiguous on this matter, Ms Sturgeon, Mr Yousaf and Mr Swinney are all guilty of having led their followers to believe a vote for the SNP this year would progress the cause of independence.
Had Ms Sturgeon, on succeeding Alex Salmond as First Minister almost a decade ago, said that while she understood the disappointment of those who had campaigned for a yes vote, the result could not be changed and no further referendum would take place without agreement between the UK and Scottish Governments, she would have freed herself to get on with the business of improving Scotland’s woefully underperforming public services. With five minutes of honesty in 2014 Ms Sturgeon would perhaps, have improved the SNP’s chances of winning independence.
If, rather than spending the best part of a decade tectchily telling voters they wanted a referendum they’d made clear they didn’t, the former First Minister had spent her time in office concentrating on improving outcomes in the NHS or driving up standards in schools then perhaps the people of Scotland might be more inclined to believe her party could be trusted to make a success of establishing an independent Scotland.
It would be unfair to place all of the blame for the SNP’s current woes at the feet of Ms Sturgeon. Others must share the blame. She did not act alone.
Those closest to Ms Sturgeon throughout her time in office share culpability for the voting public’s swift and unforgiving rejection of so many SNP candidates yesterday.
And nobody was closer to Nicola Sturgeon during her time as First Minister than her loyal deputy. He was right by her side as she made every bad call, encouraging her to focus on interminable, divisive constitutional battles rather than on the pressing needs of Scots families.
John Swinney was never going to be able to save the SNP. After all, he shares the blame for the crisis now consuming his party.