13 June 2025

Inside the SNP civil war

With Labour on the march, the knives are out for John Swinney.

It’s a statement of the obvious that politics requires resilience. You have ups and downs. You win some, you lose some. If you’re really good, or just lucky, the former might outweigh the latter. When you’re down, it’s essential, in Scottish parlance, to keep the heid.

When I spoke to Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, this week he was understandably still cock-a-hoop at his party’s surprise victory in the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election. He was full of praise for the ground campaign, which he described as one of the best he’s ever seen – an aide told me Labour knocked on something like 8,000 doors in just a few weeks. But then Sarwar is reliably upbeat. Even during a tough past 12 months he has never wavered in his belief that Labour will win the next Holyrood election. Even as the polls pointed to a catastrophic collapse in Labour support, he kept beavering away, meeting, talking, listening, plotting.

Now, suddenly, his party has momentum again, thanks to victory in Hamilton. The narrative has changed from an expectation of almost certain defeat next May to one of there being all to play for. That’s politics for you – stay resilient and the wind might just change.

On the other side of the aisle, John Swinney is suddenly having a harder time. The SNP was widely expected to retain the seat – including by its own leadership – but lost out. The First Minister’s judgement has been called into question due to his decision to frame the contest as a two-way battle between the Nats and Reform. The supposed steady ship that Swinney has been running now looks to be in choppy waters.

He is facing a barrage of hostile questions from the doubters on his own side. Why isn’t he talking more about independence? Why would anyone vote for a party that has gone quiet on what is, in effect, the sole purpose for its existence? How is this newly moderate, middle-of-the-road, and arguably quite boring government going to inspire voters to grant it a third decade in office? Where’s the beef?

It’s fair to say that the nationalist movement in Scotland is undergoing something of an existential crisis. Indy ultras have lost patience with an SNP that has been in power for 18 years without taking the nation any closer to leaving the UK than it was at the point of the 2014 referendum. Past strategies are brutally critiqued; roads not taken are held up as missed opportunities. Ministers in Swinney’s government are accused of enjoying office for its own sake – they have grown soft and self-indulgent in all that feather bedding, the argument goes.

In a video published on social media in the days after the by-election, Swinney sought to reassert his commitment to independence, stating that “the best way to harness Scotland’s wealth and build a fairer future is with independence. The hope in our politics comes from Scottish independence.”

That won’t be enough for the critics – nothing ever is – but it did suggest that the SNP, after downplaying indy for months – is thinking a bit harder about how it can harness the power and drama of its foundational idea while making incremental changes to public services through the levers of government.

It’s an odd combination, and not an easy task. Scotland, or large parts of it, remains thoroughly cheesed off with the constitutional ding-dong that dominated its politics for more than a decade and at the cost of substantive action on many of the issues that affect voters’ lives the most. I’m not convinced that a return to banging on about independence is a strategy that will win hearts and minds in middle Scotland right now.

Instead, large, intractable problems keep on arriving at Swinney’s door. Following the row over the closure of the Grangemouth oil refinery, it emerged this week that the totemic bus manufacturer Alexander Dennis is to shut its Falkirk plant and consolidate its operations in Yorkshire, with the loss of 400 jobs. Not just shuttering its Scottish operation, but moving it to England. Ouch.

Swinney sought to divert attention from a hard few days by undertaking a reshuffle of his government. It didn’t amount to much – Mairi McAllan, returning from maternity leave, has been appointed as Housing Secretary, and a few other portfolios have been shifted around. The Nats have never really done reshuffles, even when there has been obvious mediocrity in senior jobs, an approach Swinney seems to have embraced. If this was a dead cat, it didn’t bounce.

The extent of internal unhappiness became evident when the Herald reported this week that 25 hardliners, including some “senior” figures, had met to discuss the prospect of replacing the First Minister. There was a demand – issued anonymously, of course – for a new independence strategy within the next fortnight, or John was for it.

I doubt this threat will amount to much, and nor should it. The SNP has given the Scottish people three different first ministers in three years, which is quite enough. Sacking the party leader less than a year away from the next election would only send a message that the party, and the independence movement, has thoroughly lost its way, and its nerve. It would be unserious.

Swinney is in some senses a curious type to be leading a party that wants to break up Britain. Both Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon were tub-thumping, heart-on-their-sleeve orators, angry sorts who showed their passion for the cause at all times. The current First Minister, in contrast, is a cautious man, a limited public speaker, more of a convener than a leader. He believes in independence every bit as fiercely as the other two, but displays it in less fire-breathing ways. He is an unlikely radical.

He therefore certainly has the resilience to ride out the current unrest, and it’s worth remembering that, according to the polls, there is still a better-than-even chance that he will win the next election. It’s also worth remembering that the battle for independence has been a long game, requiring patience, strategic nous and political smarts. Many in his party and the wider movement seem to have forgotten this. They want “independence this day”, even though there is no prospect of that happening, now or in the foreseeable future.

Swinney might not be the leader they desire, but he is the one they have, and will have to do for now.