Time now for the SNP to turn their focus back to self-determination

That was 61 years ago, and for most of that period there was hardly a day that I didn’t sport a badge proclaiming my membership of the “party of independence”. It felt good to be part of the fight to restore Scotland’s independence. Being a member of the SNP symbolised commitment to Scotland’s cause, even during those times when the demands of family and work made it difficult to play an active role.

It wasn’t all, or even mainly, partisan loyalty. I genuinely felt that the SNP was special. It was different from other political parties. Not least because, as a member, I felt I had a voice. There was always the sense that the party membership was in control.

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We were listened to by a leadership that existed to serve us. Later, as I became more involved in branch work and started attending conference and National Council, first as a visitor and later as a delegate, that feeling of having a voice and being heard was powerfully re-inforced.

Things changed after the 2014 referendum. Alex Salmond resigned as party leader and First Minister to be replaced by Nicola Sturgeon. I can’t say when I first started to notice the change.

It was a gradual realisation. And an even more gradual admission. There was a period of perhaps four years prior to resigning from the SNP in early 2020 when I was increasingly uncomfortable with the direction in which the party was being taken. Most discomfiting of all was the choice to conceal my true feelings and defend both party and leader even as I watched seriously bad choices being made and seriously good opportunities being squandered by a party leadership that was less and less inclined to listen to anyone outside Nicola Sturgeon’s immediate circle.

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I have no intention of going over the old ground of the SNP’s failings and failures since 2015. That has been done to death and, while we must always be mindful of the past, we can’t continue to live there. At some point, we must move on to the next thing. What I want to focus on here is the change in the relationship between members and leaders that occurred over those years.

As stated, I had always felt I had a voice in the party. By late 2019 I had to acknowledge that this was no longer the case. The connection between membership and leadership was broken some time prior to that. But like many others, I clung on convinced that the situation could be turned around. I stuck with the SNP long after others had quit because I wanted to restore the spirit that had been lost and genuinely supposed this to be possible. I was mistaken. I was wrong.

What made matters much worse was that it was not only the connection between membership and leadership that was lost. One of the things I had argued made the SNP different from other political parties – and explained its electoral success – was a connection between party and people. It wasn’t just members who were listened to. The SNP at that time was remarkably aware of and responsive to the public mood. Not being bound by ideological dogma and ossified partisan rivalries, it was able to adopt an approach to policy which I called principled pragmatism. That this principled pragmatism appealed to voters is evident in the party’s rise to dominance of Scotland’s political scene between 2007 and 2015. It has been all downhill from there.

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Nothing illustrates this loss of connection better than the protracted debacle of the SNP/SGP Scottish Government’s catastrophically cack-handed stab at a Gender Recognition Reform Bill (GRR).

Nothing better demonstrates the obdurate unwillingness to listen than the party leadership’s blank refusal to listen to criticism of its self-ID proposals or concerns regarding sex-based rights or warnings about a potential clash with reserved legislation.

The most tragic thing about the ultimate fate of GRR is its obvious inevitability – combined with the Scottish Government’s abject failure to discern this inevitability. Even now, when the bill is unquestionably dead,

Shirley-Anne Somerville refuses to bury it. Like Norman Bates’ ill-fated mother, the corpse is to be preserved and kept on display so that the “debate” that has been the cause of so much harm can rumble bitterly on.

Alex Salmond has provided what should be the epitaph for the GRR Bill. Self-identification was the worst legislation in the history of devolution. It divided the country, weakened the political process and alienated much of the women’s movement from their own parliament.

Now that Scottish Government ministers have been comprehensively outmanoeuvred by Alister Jack and ridiculed in defence of the indefensible, they might reflect that a renewed focus on self-determination for fuel-poor Scots in energy-rich Scotland might be a better way forward for 2024.

Peter A Bell
via email