SNP need to redouble efforts to win disillusioned voters back

It’s usually a milestone where a new administration can point to immediate achievements and exciting plans for the future – a chance to remind the public of the differences from the past and how right they were to make the change.

Dear oh dear. I don’t think anyone could have thought it would be this bad. As MPs shuffle back to Westminster after a dismal round of party conferences, they’ll find a government elected with low expectations has driven them down further. Things can only get worse now the official mantra.

Labour’s fall from grace has been spectacular. Elected with just over a third of the votes in an abysmal 60% turnout, it has even fewer supporters now. Keir Starmer is less popular than Rishi Sunak was when he called the election.

Most of this is of Labour’s own making. Inexplicably, the first two targets were low-income families with more than two children, and the majority of pensioners not on income support. With the first, at least they promised no different.

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Labour were clear they were going to keep the Conservative two-child benefits limit. It was a different story with pensioners – there was not a peep about cutting the winter fuel allowance before the election.

To compound matters, these choices are defended with a bullish machismo that exudes arrogance by the governors and contempt for the governed. Cabinet ministers behave like Masters of the Universe and dissident voices are trampled and marginalised.

Anyone hoping for at least a more enlightened foreign policy stance will be equally dismayed. Starmer doubles down on support for Israel, even after a year of continuous slaughter of innocent civilians, as they are portrayed as the victim, not the occupier.

For a government elected on a slogan of change, they have remarkably little appetite to make any. Expect it to get worse as austerity formally returns in the Budget.

Labour loyalists, what few remain, insist they have no choice, that the economic rules dictate how they must act. This is nonsense.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer (centre) and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves (right) during a visit to a manufacturing facility in Chester. (Image: Darren Staples) Always has been. It is not a rule that rich people cannot pay more tax, it’s a policy. It is not a rule that Covid debt must be paid down over a fixed term, it’s a policy. It is not a rule that a country cannot borrow more for public spending, it’s a policy. The sad truth is that Labour is making the same choices as the administration it replaced.

This matters. Real people will suffer real hurt. But the effect on the general psyche of the public will be even worse. Trust and confidence in politics was already at an all-time low in the run-up to this year’s election. Instead of addressing that alienation and disillusion, Labour are making it worse.

I worry at the effect of this in England. If what was once the mass party of social democracy fails so badly, what comes next? The far right is better organised, funded and supported than it has been for a generation. They are waiting to capitalise on Starmer’s inability not just to change things, but also to offer hope and inspiration that it might even be possible.

Here in Scotland, disaffection with Labour has seen their support drop and the SNP recover its position as the country’s most popular party. Whereas a year ago the party was losing council by-elections, now they are winning the latest crop created by Labour councillors heading to Westminster. Suddenly all bets are off on Labour winning Holyrood next time round.

READ MORE: Keir Starmer out of step with Labour voters on Israel stance, poll suggests

The problem is that all this represents is movement within the two-thirds of the electorate who could be bothered. It shows some people who switched allegiance from the SNP to Labour in the forlorn hope that we might get a change have switched back again. And that’s not enough.

The pro-independence voters who held their nose and voted Labour in July were part of the reason for the SNP’s massive defeat. But not the main part. far more important were those who had voted for the party before and decided to just sit this one out.

To get them back we can’t just wait for Labour to fail and hope people will pick us by default. We have to be better than the least worst option. So that means all the hard work we talked about in the election aftermath is still to do.

We need to get better in government, picking things where we can deliver and rebuilding confidence through competence.

We need to re-imagine the case for independence and illustrate what it means by pointing out the constraints of devolution which prevent Holyrood delivering what people want.

And we need to re-assert and widen the consensus behind the principle of the Claim of Right: the Scottish people’s right to choose their own future.

This gives us the framework on which to build for the 2026 election. Most of all it means re-asserting the hope that things can get better if we take control of them ourselves.