Not even the most sanguine of SNP stalwarts anticipated a win in Rutherglen and Hamilton West, but the scale of the defeat in the long-awaited byelection – “skelped”, as one prominent MP puts it – was bracing.
It is prompting soul-searching across the party and an immediate pushback on leader Humza Yousaf’s plan to put independence front and centre during the next general election.
Yousaf, who began this week gracing the cover of Time magazine as a “trailblazer shaping the future”, has ended it with the clock apparently ticking on his new independence strategy, with senior figures asserting the need for a more gradualist approach, to reflect voters’ immediate concerns.
Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster leader, said the party needed an urgent postmortem to investigate why it had lost so comprehensively and had to respond better to the cost of living crisis – the overarching issue in the byelection. “I don’t think you need to do any focus groups to realise that people are skint,” he told the BBC.
If the SNP downgrades its independence push, as it did in 2017, that would affect the dynamics of Scottish politics. It suits Labour for the SNP to focus on the constitution while conversely the Scottish Conservatives need independence to be front and centre to galvanise its unionist base.
“The worst lesson to take from Rutherglen is that we need to push independence harder,” one senior MP told the Guardian. “The party needs to get real and get back into listening mode.”
This need for a recalibration is sharpened with the arrival of SNP conference in a week’s time, where Yousaf will ask members to ratify his plan: to put independence in the first line of a general election manifesto, claiming that if the SNP wins a majority of seats that would be a mandate to open independence talks with Westminster.
There are already significant internal concerns about the clarity of his plan and doubts about how well it will sell on the doorstep. Activists are weary of endless rewordings of the same promises rendered undeliverable by Westminster’s continuing refusal to grant Holyrood the powers to hold the necessary referendum.
The first full debate of independence strategy on the conference floor for years was always likely to highlight divisions, with leadership critics such as Joanna Cherry and Pete Wishart proposing amendments.
But now other voices are urging Yousaf to pull back on independence. Marcus Carslaw, an MP staffer, wrote on X on Friday: “In 2017, following the loss of 20 or so seats, we hit pause on a push for indyref2. Serious consideration should be given to whether the leadership’s motion on independence is viable.”
Stewart McDonald, an MP who has consistently backed a more gradualist approach, wrote bluntly on X: “We’ve been skelped, and we need to think deeply about why,” suggesting the answers were more fundamental than the Covid rule-breaking of the previous SNP MP, Margaret Ferrier, or the ongoing police investigation into SNP finances.
He wrote: “Let us resist the temptation to rush to a core vote strategy, and instead plot an offer rooted in the future that can bring Scotland behind it.”
Others point to an amendment backed by prominent MPs such as Tommy Sheppard, Alyn Smith and Philippa Whitford, that the election should be fought on a gradualist platform of further devolution of powers on employment rights, green energy and migration. Successful of use of those powers would, they say, demonstrate to voters why independence works.
With the party still reeling and sleep-deprived on Friday, some cautioned against jumping to conclusions about why SNP supporters stayed at home. “A lot of people are projecting their own hobby horses into the result,” said one veteran activist, though the low turnout also raises questions for a party that previously prided itself at listening to people who felt otherwise ignored.
Whatever he decides on independence strategy, Yousaf must also use next week’s gathering in Aberdeen to energise his deflated membership – one consistent problem highlighted during the byelection campaign was the absence of the usual highly motivated activists.
One Westminster group source suggests conference is the ideal opportunity to reinvigorate the membership – “and the best way to do that is by having a tangible debate on independence, which we’ve been shying away from for far too long”.
