What will John Swinney hope to achieve from SNP members venting in conference 'post mortem'
The SNP must use its conference as a reset moment after a bruising general election defeat
SNP members have gathered on Friday morning to dissect what went wrong for the party at the general election.
The party suffered a bruising defeat in last month’s election, losing 39 seats and returning just nine MPs as Labour swept the board across Scotland.
Almost all of the SNP’s Central Belt seats fell to Labour, with vote share swings of around 20 per cent - only the old SNP heartlands in the north were able to cling onto their seats.
As the SNP’s annual conference gets underway in Edinburgh, members gathered to examine what exactly went wrong for the party on July 4.
The first day of the conference has opened with a two-and-a-half-hour session private session being led by First Minister John Swinney.
During the session, opinion poll and data analysis was to be presented to SNP members, along with the results of a survey of 15,000 members carried out by the party. The party’s national executive committee were to lead the analysis, before the floor was set to be opened up to delegates.
The analysis has been driven by a series of “feedback” meetings run at local SNP branches over the summer, in events chaired by the likes of depute leader Keith Brown and Justice Secretary and SNP chairwoman Angela Constance.
The media were barred from attending the discussions on Friday morning - but some of the ousted former MPs were spotted going into the venue to take part in the discussions.
The party clearly needs to use this conference as a reset moment. There are now only two years to go until the 2026 Holyrood election, which is not a long time in politics.
Labour has its sights set on winning and becoming the party of government in Holyrood and the latest polling suggests this might very well happen. So what did go wrong?
Well if you ask the party’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn, there are three reasons only eight other SNP MPs are joining him on the green benches in the House of Commons.
A loss of trust, a desire to boot the Conservatives out of Downing Street, and a strong campaign message from Labour are the reasons cited.
Perhaps First Minister John Swinney can be excused for what happened at last month’s ballot boxes, having only been in post a matter of weeks when the election was called. But that won’t be the case in 2026.
He has vowed to stay on as party leader beyond this election, and with two years of premiership under his belt by then, he will need to show he can hold onto the Scottish Government for the party.
How the new UK Labour government performs in Westminster will have some bearing on the election. If families are seeing no real benefits to having a Labour government, the SNP’s message of “it’s Westminster’s fault” might still appeal.
But the SNP cannot rely on that alone. Earlier this week the Scottish Fiscal Commission warned that much of the government’s financial pressures are caused by decisions taken at Holyrood, not Westminster.
Consensus needs to be reached at this post-mortem amongst SNP members if the party is to continue to be the biggest in the Scottish Parliament.
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