I’M not planning to write a book but now that I’m on the other side, I feel I have one within me. So much so that I have started writing this without having made up my mind what I want to focus on.

There is the campaign we just lost, what Labour said they would do, what they missed out, my views on how the new Labour group is shaping up, Jeremy Corbyn’s sensational victory, the decimation of the Tories, where now for independence and – notwithstanding the impact on the hundreds of people who have just lost their jobs – that question about whether or not it is a bad thing for our movement that we lost so many seats last week.

I feel I can’t process much of that until I comment on the fact that some of my former colleagues have been imparting their “wisdom”, asserting what we should have done and pointing the finger of blame.

It reminds me a little bit of every time we build ourselves up to watch the Scotland male football team play and the plethora of Scotland managers-in-waiting afterwards who know EXACTLY how we could have won that game.

The difference with football is that after a while we’re all friends again, all ready to get behind the players once we’ve nursed our wounds – which usually takes about as long as getting over a hangover.

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It used to be like that in the SNP. For most of us, it still is. It’s just that we’re quieter. Those pointing the finger will tell you this is because we are compliant whilst they are brave. Some of those same people will tell you they are victims when the opposite is true.

The reason most of us lick our wounds and then get right back up and continue the fight collectively, as part of the SNP, without running to the press to lash out at individuals is simple and twofold.

First, many of us got involved with the party in the days when we were lucky to keep our deposits. We’re definitely not happy with losing but what we went through as activists and candidates for decades has made us resilient.

I think those who lash out are often those who got involved when we were at the height of our success and their reaction to losing comes from a place of fear. Not winning is a new concept and it can be destabilising for someone used to getting what they want in life.

Secondly, no matter how experienced we might be in political campaigning – I, myself, have nearly 40 years of continuous activism – we are always aware that our opinions on how to do it are just that, opinions. There is no magic formula and even if there was, every election is different.

(Image: Nicola Sturgeon celebrates the 2019 election results)

There’s a cohort in the SNP and the movement generally who “know” exactly how to win every election and gain independence and if we would only do as they say, we’d be there now. They are angry that we didn’t adopt their magic formula and instead of discussing within the party they run to the Unionist press.

Those of us who campaigned during the “lean years” were very used to working our backsides off knowing the best we could hope for was a few more percentage points. We focused on the belief that if we did that, at the next election, we could get a few more percentage points and if we just kept going, one day we would have enough support to get our independence.

So, we got knocked down but we got right back up again and nobody but nobody could ever have said that we were in it for ourselves. If we were, it was an incredibly lengthy game plan.

The work that we did in those decades (and many did so for longer than I) paved the way for those who concentrated on their careers at that time to step in when we started to see success. We created a platform that allowed them to offer themselves as candidates, giving us (in 2015 especially) an incredible and eclectic mix of people and giving themselves a whole new career as MPs.

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I make no criticism of those who established their careers before getting involved but it does give a different perspective and a very different experience.

Most of them recognise and pay tribute to those who paved the way. Some, however, feel they made sacrifices to become parliamentarians. They gave up jobs paying more than the extremely healthy salary MPs get. Certainly, there are MPs in all parties who believe they are doing their parties a favour.

I, along with most of my colleagues, had no big salary to give up, no glittering career to sacrifice and for me anyway the reason was, as friends and family would point out over the years, I put independence and the SNP first above anything else in my life including my “career”. I was far from the only one.

I said nothing of this in my time in Westminster, quickly learning that those with loud voices, often from very privileged backgrounds, would never hear my voice anyway.

So apart from the fact that there’s a cruelty involved in publicly attacking individual colleagues, there’s absolutely no point in lashing out. This is a democracy. People will vote how they vote.

By all means, participate in the review that John Swinney is conducting but let’s all be open to doing a lot of listening to each other and accepting that after 17 years in power, getting 30% of the vote to Labour’s 35% is a more accurate reflection of public opinion than the seat numbers.

(Image: PA)

Finally, do not allow a false narrative to be built around Nicola Sturgeon. She was a brilliant leader of our party. This is an opinion but it’s a widely shared opinion. When we lost the independence referendum in 2014, many thought the SNP would go to ground for years to come.

Instead, because of Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership we, for the first time in our history, won the UK General Election in Scotland returning 56 of the 59 MPs! That is an astonishing result at any time but at that time, it was sensational.

Those of us who recognise what an absolute privilege it was to be one of those SNP MPs should be very glad that she led us to that victory. And it doesn’t matter how good any of us might have been at what we did, we won under an SNP banner under Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership.

So some of those attacking her now need to remember that if not for her, nobody would have a clue who they were and they wouldn’t now have the platform they are misusing to bully her.

Any time I am in her company and people spot her, they are always thrilled and often very emotional to have met her. And they all have stories about something Nicola did or said as First Minister that made a real difference to their lives.

Maybe it’s time for those of us in the SNP who have such stories to start telling them again and stop those louder, entitled voices from rewriting history.