WITH the attention of the Scottish political sphere firmly on Aberdeen for the SNP’s annual conference, there has been much talk of the key lessons the SNP needs to learn as it seeks to survive the numerous challenges the party currently faces.

At his first conference as First Minister, Humza Yousaf has had an unenviable task ahead of him, but I’d suggest that some of the key lessons from the past couple of days come not from events happening in Aberdeen or even from elsewhere in Scotland, but rather from the opposite side of the globe.

On Saturday, voters in New Zealand took to the polls for a general election, and while I won’t pretend to be an expert in New Zealand politics, it’s quite clear to me that the vote presents clear parallels and lessons to be learned here in Scotland – lessons that the SNP in particular should be paying close attention to.

New Zealand general elections typically take place every three years, and this year’s was the first since the resignation of Jacinda Ardern as prime minister.

At the previous election in 2020, Ardern’s New Zealand Labour Party won a historic landslide victory and secured an outright majority of 65 seats – the first outright majority for a single party since mixed-member proportional representation was introduced in New Zealand in 1996.

That mixed-member system used in New Zealand is very similar to the additional member system of elections to the Scottish Parliament – the main difference being that New Zealand has just one list for the whole country, versus the eight separate regions used in the Holyrood model.

The voting model isn’t the only parallel with Scotland – from the population (both in the five-and-a-bit million mark) to the parliamentary arithmetic, the similarities just keep on coming.

Perhaps the biggest parallel is that following both the 2017 and 2020 general elections, Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Party welcomed the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand into government with the creation of a co-operation agreement which bears many similarities to the Bute House Agreement between the SNP and the Scottish Greens.

This particular similarity is no coincidence either – the New Zealand model was a significant source of inspiration for the Bute House Agreement, and has been seen by many as a better, more constructive way of doing politics than single-party governments or traditional coalition agreements.

Both the Kiwi and Scottish agreements saw significant commitments in areas such as housing, transport, equalities and social security, and both saw Green Party ministers appointed to government for the first time in either country’s history.

In both the 2020 New Zealand deal and the Bute House Agreement, these ministerial positions were taken on by the Greens’ co-leaders.

In January of this year, Ardern gracefully resigned as leader of the New Zealand Labour Party and as prime minister of New Zealand, and numerous comparisons were made when just a few weeks later, Nicola Sturgeon tendered her own resignation as leader of the SNP and as first minister of Scotland.

While the latter’s resignation was followed by a bitter and drawn-out leadership contest eventually won by Humza Yousaf, Ardern’s successor Chris Hipkins was elected unopposed.

Still, the markedly smoother transition in New Zealand was not enough to save Hipkins and the New Zealand Labour Party from electoral defeat this weekend, with the party losing almost half its seats and being firmly relegated to second place after the centre-right New Zealand National Party.

The result of Saturday’s election will almost certainly set off alarm bells for those in the SNP, with both the SNP and New Zealand’s Labour Party experiencing a tumultuous change in leadership, followed by plummeting polling and an eventual election loss described by many as a “bloodbath”.

THE difference, of course, between the SNP and New Zealand Labour is that the bloodbath for the SNP was just a by-election, and unlike their counterparts in Aotearoa, they still have time to turn things around before the next national poll.

Their absolute thrashing by Scottish Labour in Rutherglen and Hamilton West will have been a major wake-up call for the SNP, and with recent polling showing real potential for a Scottish Labour victory in 2026 – let alone the upcoming Westminster election – the SNP needs to urgently get its act together if it wants to avoid following in the footsteps of New Zealand Labour.

The result in New Zealand has largely been credited to the cost of living and a desire for change, and these issues will be absolutely top of the priority list for the Scottish electorate at upcoming elections.

At both the 2020 and 2023 New Zealand elections the Greens made significant gains, and opinion polling shows the Scottish Greens solidly on track to follow their footsteps in 2026 – both Green Parties bucking the trend that rarely sees junior partners in government succeed.

While this weekend’s election has seen the New Zealand Greens pushed out of government due to Labour’s losses, the 2020 election saw significant gains for both the Greens and Labour, with Labour winning that historic outright majority. It perfectly demonstrates exactly what supporters of the Bute House Agreement have been saying all along: the SNP is the controller of its own destiny, and the polling slump it is currently experiencing is in spite of the Bute House Agreement, not because of it.

When both parties are working together for the benefit of the electorate, both parties will succeed – as shown by the 2020 New Zealand election and consistent strong polling in Scotland for both the SNP and Greens throughout 2021 and 2022.

But when one of the parties is getting bogged down in division and a tricky transition of leadership, or when that party has taken its eye off the ball of key issues like the cost of living, then that party will slump and fall – and not one smidge of it will be the fault of the Greens.