A summer of silence and heid scratching won't cut it for the SNP

Keir Starmer has produced a King’s Speech with 40 proposed new bills including rail nationalisation. It could all run aground very fast but meantime looks energetic and purposeful. “New” policies to achieve “national” renewal are everywhere. And the mainstream media perception of a “left-wing” prospectus is also everywhere.

Donald Trump is on the ascendancy after surviving an assassination attempt.

Joe Biden’s grip on the Democratic nomination remains gey wobbly.

And Ursula von der Leyen may not get her second term as European Commission president if Italy’s Giorgia Meloni blocks her in a key vote later today.

It’s busy and eventful everywhere – except Scotland.

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It’s all quiet on the northern front. Real quiet. Too quiet.

Of course, that’s inevitable given early summer holidays which put Scotland’s parliament into recess weeks ago.

And agreed – change for change’s sake is unwise. Plus, we’re all still recovering from the General Election shock.

Perhaps the lack of new projects and big announcements may feel vaguely comforting to an indy movement and SNP membership partly on holiday and mostly still reeling from non-stop change.

But beware.

This quiet summer looks like more of what’s got the SNP into such deep trouble.

Inertia and complacency.

And I’m sorry because I know everyone’s knackered. But the antidote to electoral poison had to be rolled out on July 5.

Where was it and where is it now?

Delegates at the SNP conference

Against a backdrop of change, newness, policy innovation and fresh starts after surprise resignations, the watchword in Scottish politics is … steady as she goes.

It’s not enough.

Last year, the SNP’s chief executive Murray Foote said he would ensure the indy movement and SNP groups were involved, not priced out of the next conference after a corporate first era presided by Peter Murrell.

But on the party’s website there’s still no special rate for indy groups. Sure, there are lower prices for charity and community groups – £3000-plus for a stall (roughly £2000 for community groups) and £1600 for a one-hour fringe event.

Do constantly fundraising groups like Common Weal, Young Scots for Indy and Believe in Scotland qualify as community groups? I’ve asked the conference organisers but no reply.

If they don’t and must cough up commercial rates (£6000 for a stall), we will witness another SNP conference where vitally important issues for this country are debated through the prism of wealthy London-based think tanks while hard-working indy groups are effectively side-lined.

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Is that OK? Does that suggest a party that knows it must sincerely and dramatically reform to re-engage with a membership that’s simply been telt for years?

And if stalls and fringe meetings seem like kinda small beer, look at the agenda. I’ve had emails aplenty from folk with adventurous, well-thought-through motions, one in particular connecting decentralisation to land reform, a land tax and the long-promised Council Tax reform.

Rejected.

Now, I’m not a member of the SNP, but the situation is far too urgent to sit back and let the August conference become a vaguely commiserating, vaguely backslapping non-event.

Public tolerance of timid policy-making that changes little but hogs power is fast evaporating. The Scottish Social Attitudes Survey (SSAS) reports that just 47% of people trust the Scottish Government to work in Scotland’s best interest most of the time – the lowest proportion on record and down from 61% in 2019. Of course, this Scottish “low” is still more than double the trust people feel in the UK Government (21%).

The survey also found that 2023 was the first year since 2005 with people more dissatisfied than satisfied about the running of the Scottish NHS. Not even Covid provided a lower score. And while the pandemic may still be cramping the health service, citizens are less inclined to cut the Scottish Government any slack.

Scottish First Minister John Swinney speaking to the media at The Port of Leith Distillery in Edinburgh (Image: Jane Barlow)

And remember the data published this week was (weirdly enough) gathered last October. So, who knows how opinion might have hardened with a health-weaponised General Election and the advent of a new Labour government.

What those stats should be doing in Scotland is shouting danger, danger, danger.

More of the same isn’t good enough. And a summer of heid-scratching also won’t cut it.

Take housing. A housing emergency was declared eight days before the General Election was announced. Back then, there was a rushed, four-minute speech by Housing Minister Paul McLennan and a radio interview of the same length in which he basically said a 9% capital funding cut by Westminster inevitably meant less cash for housing. Now, we all ken. Holyrood must operate a balanced budget and cannot create money the way Westminster can. But still. It was a housing emergency with no feeling of urgency, no new ideas, no nothing.

And one General Election campaign later, with eight weeks to devise something, that minister was on the airwaves again this week with the same basic script.

Even though, according to the BBC’s Philip Sim, “devolved income taxes brought in more revenue than forecast in 2022-23, which means the net position for ScotGov’s 2025-26 budget is £447m better off”.

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This may be o’er simplistic.

But the affordable housing budget shortfall is about £200 million.

Why not announce that half the extra cash will restore that housing budget cut?

Now I’m not advocating change for change’s sake. Or unconsidered new policies just for the sake of newness.

I am suggesting no news is not good news, especially when it contrasts starkly with the fresh starts erupting all over Britain. Yip, some of that is superficial, pointless without funding and unlikely to fix deep structural problems. But it’s eye-catching and shows willing.

In Scotland, there’s next to nowt.

The public needs to know the SNP leadership heard the message they sent on July 9 – by voting Labour at the ballot box and staying at home in their droves.

They need – we all need – evidence that the SNP leadership knows more of the same won’t save the party or bolster independence in the 2026 Holyrood election. Evidence that John Swinney accepts that fresh, truly expert eyes are needed within government.

If that doesn’t exist within the MSP cohort, then it’s time to replace existing special advisers with experts in housing finance, renewable energy contracts, health service operations and decentralisation. They exist. They are ignored.

Fundamentally, there are far too few insightful, confident, imaginative ministers or civil servants with their hands on the tiller of Scottish governance. Their lack of expertise breeds a timidity in policy direction which results in gumming problems, not fixing them. All the while, power is retained in Holyrood, while skilled, dedicated folk in councils, public services, businesses and community organisations must stifle their own initiative and follow minutely specified guidelines from a central high command that simply doesn’t know best.

This must change.

The resignation of Labour’s Vaughan Gething in Wales is causing some (well-deserved) nippy jibes at Anas Sarwar. Where’s your call for a fresh election noo? In fact, though, it should be a cautionary example for us.

The headline on an excellent article by Professor Richard Wyn Jones reads: “A jaded electorate, muted General Election result and [party] divisions could soon spell trouble.”

It’s about the prospect of defeat for Welsh Labour in 2026, but could equally apply to a turgid, problem-denying SNP unable or unwilling to renew themselves.

That fate can still be averted.

But let’s call a spade a blinking spade now.