SNP goes back to basics as it charts path to recovery

Good morning from Edinburgh, where the Scottish National party has completed an electoral post-mortem at its annual conference.

Stage centre-left

During August, the conference venue was a festival hotspot hosting shows including Trainspotting Live, a theatrical adaption of the classic tale of heroin addiction in the capital’s slums.

Like author Irvine Welsh’s characters, SNP members appear trapped in their own vortex of doom.

On July 4, the electorate damned the SNP’s Scottish government for what they regarded as poor delivery during 17 years of power in Holyrood. Members also fret about the failure to capitalise on independence over the past decade given surging support in the wake of the lost 2014 referendum. Then there’s the heavy anchor of a police investigation into SNP finances.

But the autopsy on the disastrous election defeat in July, when the party succumbed to a Labour surge to go down from 46 Westminster seats to nine, passed off relatively smoothly. The roughly 1,500 attendees — from a membership of 65,000 — seemed to welcome the cathartic discussion led by First Minister John Swinney.

The veteran SNP leader, in power only since May, heard how the party had lost 250,000 supporters to Labour while another 250,000 stayed at home. Middle-class voters switched to Labour and young people deserted the nationalist cause amid heavy unionist tactical voting.

The answer, he suggested, was public service delivery before the May 2026 Scottish parliamentary elections that, if polls were to believed, could oust the SNP from government and, according to grandees, freeze hopes of independence for a generation.

Swinney’s game plan will be telegraphed on Wednesday, when the SNP administration unveils its programme for government at Holyrood, which will focus on the “people’s priorities” of eradicating child poverty and delivering net zero in a growing economy.

Going back to the basics of moderate centre-left politics has been Swinney’s calling card since the downfall of his predecessor Humza Yousaf, who was ousted after he scrapped a power-sharing agreement with the Greens. Busy with electioneering over the past couple of months, Swinney and his deputy, Kate Forbes, now have the chance to govern.

The idea of jettisoning far-out progressive policies is popular among SNP figures who question the wisdom of further taxes on the richer earners who helped fund Scotland’s spending on public services and benefits, such as free university tuition fees.

“The reality is we have stopped becoming a vehicle for people’s aspirations,” said Stewart McDonald, who lost his Glasgow South seat on July 4. “Services are insufficient for the tax people are paying.”

Swinney’s conference speech said independence would ameliorate people’s daily struggles, characterising UK chancellor Rachel Reeves’s plan to tackle a £22bn fiscal black hole as Labour delivery of Tory austerity.

But that narrative will be challenged tomorrow, when the Scottish government unveils its own cuts to balance its UK-funded budget in line with Reeves’s demand for departmental restraint to fund public sector pay rises.

The independent Scottish Fiscal Commission, Edinburgh’s answer to the Office for Budget Responsibility, has said both the UK and Scottish governments bear responsibility for the predicament of public finances.  

The economic blame game resonates both sides of the border.

Edinburgh’s China dilemma

Away from the electoral autopsy, a diplomatic snafu at the conference has laid bare concerns about the balance between Scotland’s economic relationship with authoritarian China and solidarity with democratically elected Taiwan.

Tensions boiled over when the Chinese consul general refused to enter a diplomatic reception where his Taiwanese counterpart was present. The Chinese representative has since written to Swinney, who met both diplomats, to express his displeasure.

The spat on the opening evening of the conference comes amid calls for Scotland to de-risk its exposure to Beijing as other western allies, sometimes under US pressure, decouple technological and supply chains links.

To balance their squeezed finances, Scottish universities have become increasingly reliant on overseas students, of whom Chinese form the largest cohort. Chinese companies have been welcomed into Scotland’s growing offshore wind industry.

The Scottish government says it must be realistic regarding China’s global influence, while also respecting Taiwan. The UK is on top of any security concerns regarding supply chains, it adds.

The debate came into sharp relief earlier this year when Edinburgh’s city council abandoned plans for a friendship agreement with Taiwan after the Scottish capital’s leading business interests, including the university and airport, lobbied against the move, citing concerns about blowback on to their bottom line.

Now try this

A highlight of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe last month was Emma Sidi’s hilarious portrayal of Sue Gray. The interactive character comedy show is moving to London’s Soho Theatre for a week this autumn.

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