THE SNP have entered a period of soul-searching after their defeat in Aberdeen.
The Tories managed to turn that by-election, caused by Stephen Flynn swapping Westminster for Holyrood, into a de facto referendum on oil and gas.
But are the SNP right to switch their stance on fossil fuels – or just moving to the right?
Some in the party frame the move on energy as essentially “pragmatic” and one senior official said they took “umbrage” with the characterisation of its position becoming less progressive.
Others, including their main rivals for the pro-independence vote, such as the Scottish Greens, view the party as abandoning its principles in what they see as a confused quest to recover its popularity.
Energy is not the only issue on which the SNP have sought to distance themselves from the “very progressive vision” of Nicola Sturgeon. The former first minister was an outspoken advocate of trans rights, throwing the party headlong into the fraught battle around self-ID.
As far as the SNP’s current leadership are concerned, it is one fight they could do without.
One former party official told the Sunday National: “It does seem to be totally off the agenda, I think that’s a result of the Supreme Court ruling on that.”
The Scottish Government, under Sturgeon’s and then Humza Yousaf’s leadership, suffered two high-profile legal defeats on gender issues.
First, its Gender Recognition Reform Bill – which passed Holyrood with a majority of 86 to 39 votes and had the backing of MSPs from all parties – was blocked from becoming law by the Scotland Office in 2023.
Two years later, the party was defeated in the Supreme Court when judges rejected the Scottish Government’s attempts to define who was entitled to sex-based rights by gender identity rather than biological sex.
Since then, the SNP have quietly parked their trans rights crusade.
Their perceived difficulties on energy also came from the late Sturgeon era.
Many within the SNP blamed the words of the Scottish Government’s draft energy strategy. Less strident than its gender position, the paper had proposed a consultation on whether it should adopt a policy of a “presumption against” new oil and gas exploration.
While couched in the terminology of policy wonks, those two words were enough, according to some in the SNP picking over the Aberdeen South defeat, to make voters in the energy capital of Europe feel the party was not on the side of Scottish jobs and industry.
Others argue that the policy was not fatal to the SNP but provided a focal point for those opposed to the party to rally around, which they did with gusto and delivered Douglas Lumsden a 6050-vote majority for the Tories in Flynn’s former seat.
In the wake of that defeat, the SNP have signalled an end to the party’s opposition to new oil and gas exploration.
Jack Middleton, the MSP for Aberdeen Central and a former special adviser to Yousaf, announced last week that he was backing Rosebank and Jackdaw, two controversial fossil fuel projects in Scottish waters.
Middleton’s intervention was presented as him breaking ranks with SNP ministers, but the Scottish Government's official response was hardly at pains to contradict him.
The oil and gas fields could be opened up for development if Ed Miliband gives the go-ahead, an outcome many view as unlikely given the Energy Secretary’s commitment to net zero.
Party insiders view the SNP’s shifting stance on these two issues as indicative of them taking a more “pragmatic” approach.
One MP, who appeared to see the SNP’s newfound ambivalence on trans rights and its flirtation with the “drill, baby, drill” agenda as attractive to voters, told the Sunday National: “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar.”
They said that the party had been freed up by the end of its power-sharing deal with the Scottish Greens, the Bute House Agreement that Yousaf once hailed as “worth its weight in gold”, and that this new flexibility was more suited to the requirements of the SNP working as a minority government in Holyrood.
Another said that the SNP “always adapt to the new realities we find ourselves in”.
Elsewhere, the ex-party official said that the SNP had to adapt to the changes which have gripped the world since the Sturgeon era.
They said: “The world’s changed. We’ve got an ongoing war in the Middle East, an ongoing war in Europe that won't be coming to a close anytime soon.
“So I think you also have to respond to that and the realities of that. I think it’s right, actually, that the SNP look afresh at their energy policy.”
Another senior source told the Sunday National that changing its stance on oil and gas put the party not only on the same side as most Scots but also on trade unions and “many people on the left”.
They pointed to a poll published earlier this year which found that 58% of Scots supported new North Sea drilling with just 13% opposed.
This stance also helpfully allows the SNP to put clear distance between themselves and Keir Starmer’s deeply unpopular government.
But while the party seem confident that their new direction under John Swinney will lead it to recapture at least some of the 7.2% of the vote it has lost since its high water mark under Alex Salmond at the 2011 Holyrood election, others are unsure.
There are some within the party ranks who fear the SNP will lose their appeal to young voters who care deeply about the climate and trans rights.
According to former Scottish Greens co-leader Lorna Slater, that is already happening.
The Edinburgh Central MSP, who unseated SNP big beast Angus Robertson at the May poll, said: “We clearly saw at the election that the general drift of the SNP away from the very progressive vision for Scotland that was championed by Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf has absolutely allowed the Scottish Greens to gain ground, because we’ve absolutely stuck to the same values that we had during the Bute House Agreement, the same values that we’ve always had in terms of supporting LGBT+ people and supporting action on climate.”
She added: “It is a shame because I think both Nicola and Humza both had a really clear vision for building a different kind of Scotland.”
Referring to the Aberdeen South defeat, Slater said that the SNP were using the by-election as an “excuse to accelerate” a move to the right but warned: “I think they’re actually moving away from where most people in Scotland are likely to be.”
The former minister added: “A lot of people are horrified by the idea, we see around the world big companies, countries, rolling back their climate commitments and to watch the SNP join in on that is extremely disappointing. I think what people are wanting is politicians of vision, not politicians of cowardice.”
