Author: Tommy Sheppard

On Wednesday it will be 10 years since the referendum on whether Scotland should be an independent country. I woke that morning believing it was going to happen.

In the south Edinburgh Yes campaign centre the mood was buoyant. We knew by lunchtime the turnout was unprecedented. By teatime, people were coming back saying it was pointless knocking up as everyone had voted.

During those 15 hours of voting the people of Scotland were determining their own future. It really did lie in their hands. We felt as if we were standing on the brink of something momentous.

Just after 11pm, I got to Dynamic Earth where Yes campaigners were assembling to watch the count. On arrival, the mood was sober. Exit polls were saying we had lost.

As the Clackmannanshire result was read out, disbelief turned to despair. Soon afterwards, I went home. My mate and I drowned our sorrows with a bottle of 12-year-old malt as the dawn brought no change.

In the 48 hours that followed, a strange sort of telepathic solidarity emerged in the despond of defeat. Tens of thousands joined the SNP.

I was one. We knew that this was not over.

Ten years on, it’s a good point to assess what sort of fist we’ve made of going forward. In fairness something like half of that time has been disrupted by Brexit and Covid, with the execution and aftermath of both derailing and delaying progress.

That said, the report card for the Yes movement is not great. Three things stand out for me. First, the dial has not really been shifted since 2014 with support for independence more or less where it was then.

OK, I know that for periods Yes has been in the lead, even getting over 50% during lockdown.

But for most of the time we’ve been in the minority – and that’s where we are now.

Some will contend that this in itself is a result. After all, these figures have been maintained with little active campaigning and with a hostile and belligerent Unionist opposition. Well maybe.

But is it not strange that given Brexit, war, cost of living crises and the palpable corruption of the British state, more people have not embraced the alternative of independence?

For me this statis suggests that for much of the last decade we have been talking to ourselves.

Time and energy have been expended in mobilising our existing supporters rather than going after new ones.

Even with Brexit we missed the opportunity. Yes, some new people switched to our cause, distraught at the prospect of leaving the European Union, and convinced that independence offered a way back.

But the manner in which we pegged the case for a second referendum on the changed circumstances of Brexit failed to convince most Europhile

No voters and put the backs up of many who just thought we were bad losers. I wonder what would have happened if we had focused on developing a vision for Scotland in Europe rather than becoming fixated on process.

I’m not blaming anyone. I’m as guilty as anyone. I made the speeches, wrote the articles, did the interviews, all claiming the question needed putting again since the goalposts had changed. I’m just saying it didn’t work. And those who do not learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them.

The second big change in the last 10 years is that the character of support for independence has changed. By polling day in 2014, the ranks of the solid quarter of the population who have always supported Scotland’s independence were swelled by hundreds of thousands of people attracted by the possibility of change it offered. It was new and exciting. And they were enthusiastic.

It doesn’t feel new any more.

Now many of the people who tell pollsters they support independence believe it to be desirable but unattainable. They are forlorn and sullen. They blame the SNP and others for not delivering and have lapsed into a fatalism which renders them inactive.

More than ever this movement needs to get its mojo back.

The third – and related – development of the last 10 years has been the deployment of an assertive Unionism determined to reject the very notion that Scotland could be an independent country.

The assault has been both legislative and political. The post-referendum 2016 Scotland Act devolved responsibility without means. The Internal Market Act and others severely constrained the operation of Holyrood. The increasing exercise of Section 35 orders made it clear who is boss.

Perhaps most of all, the Supreme Court ruled that the reserved matters in the 1998 Act meant not only that Holyrood did not have responsibility for the constitution, but that it could not even consult its electorate on changing it.

That has been used politically not just to deny mandates but to create the impression that there is no longer any point in seeking or obtaining them. The right of self-determination inherent in that vote 10 years ago is now denied.

So, it’s not been a great decade. But we are still here. And we know what needs to be done. A reimagining of what independence looks like, a new route map to allow people to choose it, and most of all a reassertion of the Claim of Right of the people of Scotland to determine the form or government they want. The next 10 years starts now.

The mildly irascible Robin McAlpine berates himself for Cassandra-like tendencies as he predicts what’s in store for the SNP. His eve of conference scene-setter is indeed laden with warnings of doom. Not for the first time he exaggerates to make his point. And not for the first time there’s something in what he says.

So, I was keen to catch the mood and tone of the conference to test whether his assumptions were accurate. Is the SNP capable of learning from the bruising experience of this year’s election and making changes sufficient to regroup in 2026?

There’s something of a paradox in Robin’s prescription. He critcises those in the party arguing we need a new charismatic leader, saying that the SNP has for too long relied on able communicators and now needs someone focused on systematic reform of policy and practice. Yet a few paragraphs later “I believe that means changing the leader now to at least try to give the impression that a new generation of the SNP is ready to take over”.

He is right, of course, in saying that parties often react to defeat with denial, citing examples aplenty where those responsible investigate their own performance before concluding that things are basically okay.

But on the evidence of this weekend’s discussion, I’d said that’d be an unfair conclusion to draw about the response of party leaders and activists to what happened on 4th July.

This was a smaller conference than those in recent years. The vestigial delegate entitlement in the SNP constitution from the days before it was a mass party means there’s never a full complement of delegates at these events. But there were fewer than before. Signs that some previous volunteers are demotivated. There were even a few who stayed away in protest at the own goal of a government minister meeting the Israeli government whilst it prosecutes genocide in Gaza (an error corrected by the conference by a robust emergency resolution in support of Palestine).

So, it might be the case that if the people who are most pissed off decline to attend, the mood of those who do turn up might be skewed in a more uncritical direction. If so, that was not obvious on this weekend’s showing.

Conference began with a half day internal discussion on the election. The media and observers were excluded, leaving delegates free to be candid with each other without worrying their every syllable would be misinterpreted by commentators determined to put a negative spin on their narrative.

I expressed the hope last week that we could strike the right balance between a robust, reflective discussion and staying wheest for fear of rocking the boat. That we could find a way to be honest and frank without degenerating into fractious division and taking lumps out of each other. I think we made a good start.

John Swinney struck a thoughtful balance, fronting a collective mea culpa on behalf of the leadership, and eschewing the self-pity that can lead to inertia and inaction. He looked to me like someone who knows things have to change and who is prepared to do it. He might well be the man to perform the role Robin says is now required.

And most of the delegates echoed this frank assessment. Not all, in fairness. A few still clutching on to the hope that it wasn’t really as bad as it looked, that at 30%, our vote share was one of our best ever performances in the history of the party. This is delusional of course and most of the others know it.

2024 was our worst electoral setback ever, and 30% is piss poor when you consider that four out of ten people abstained. Moreover, the people who did vote for us included not a few who had to have their arm twisted hard and who are hanging on to the party by their fingernails. Don’t think for a moment this is as bad as it gets.

In a strange way this collective understanding and admission of defeat created a positive and supportive atmosphere, making the 90th annual conference a weirdly pleasant event to be at. There were packed fringes, energetic debates, and a series of policies adopted reaffirming the party’s social-democratic credentials. So, things are moving, and in the right direction. We shall see if this self-reflection is sustained and if we can go far enough and fast enough.

Various factors make this more unpredictable. The level of distrust and abstention amongst the people, and the ever-increasing transience of their political affiliation mean things happen much more quickly than before. The speed of Labour’s betrayal of electoral promises has taken even its harshest critics by surprise and the disarray and rupture of the right mean that the recent political turbulence is far from quietened.

That will present threats and opportunities for the SNP. But on this weekend’s showing we look as if we might see them coming.

The SNP conference will begin the postmortem this Friday. What just happened is too big to ignore. Things won’t get better of their own accord. We need to put them right. Hopefully, we can have an honest and candid discussion.

We need to tread a line between indulging in fractious and divisive acrimony and feeling that any criticism and self-refection weaken us further.

This is possible. We can have a robust and serious debate for which we will be the stronger. But we will need to engage with each other with civility and respect. And to accept that no-one is blameless.

There is much to discuss and there is no one reason for the worst electoral setback in the party’s history. But some things are easier to reset than others. We can improve our performance in government. We can develop policy and relate it better to the here and now. We can, with a will, change our organisation.

The hardest part is agreeing a strategic assessment of where we are now and what we need to do to achieve our central aim of leading this country to self-government. This is the most important thing we need to fix, because it is central to winning back the support and participation of those who are already convinced of the merits of the case for independence but refused to vote for it on 4^th July.

To do this we need to go back to first principles. The people who live in this country have the right to decide how they are governed and what happens here. This centuries old notion of self-determination underpinned the Claim of Right for Scotland in 1989. That document, signed by all political parties bar the Tories, provided the ideological backcloth for the campaign for a Scottish parliament.

The right of people in Scotland to decide how they are governed was also recognised by the Cameron UK government when they agreed to the 2014 referendum. Indeed, following the election of a majority in the Scottish parliament committed to giving people a choice on their future, there was no suggestion that the UK should do anything other than facilitate it. And for 15 hours on the 18^th of September that year the people held their sovereignty in their own hands.

That was then. The situation now is vastly different. The policy of the UK government has since 2014 been to deny the right of the people to choose how they are governed, even when they elect a majority of representatives demanding that choice. The UK Supreme Court has determined that under existing constitutional law (principally the 1998 Scotland Act) the UK has every right to deny that claim and the Scottish government no power to press it. Moreover, a majority of people in Scotland have effectively just consented to that interpretation by voting for parties who also now deny that right.

This is the situation we need to change. Some argue that if the right is really a right then we exercise it anyway and simply ignore the Supreme Court and the UK government. The Scottish government should simply pass a bill to organise a referendum. If prevented from doing so by whatever measure then the next election should be fought as a de-facto referendum and if won, Scotland’s independence proclaimed.

I understand why people argue this. Indeed, I have an emotional attraction to it myself. But it won’t work. The first problem is that the right to self-determination is held by the people, not the party, not the government. And the people are very much not on board. It is not what they voted for in 2021, and definitely not in 2024.

But even if we the SNP were to win a majority to declare independence in 2026, the immediate question is us and whose army. Let us not pretend that the agencies of the British state will acquiesce in our enthusiasm. They will not. And they will use the full might of that state to block, and criminalise our attempts to change it, including the suspension of Holyrood and the imposition of direct rule.

Some argue that if we do not reject the authority of the UK in these matters that we are accepting it. That is just not true. It is possible to acknowledge a reality and still wish to change it.

There is a way to achieve self-government by popular consent even if the UK government is hostile to the objective. It means we agree that our central objective is to assert the Claim of Right and that therefore our principal demand is to amend the 1998 Act to remove the reservation of the constitution to the UK parliament.

Amongst other things this is what we should present to the electorate in 2026. If they give us a mandate, we should then build a two-year civic campaign to support the Scottish government when it presses that case on the UK. This is the first stage in a timeline that with a fair wind would take us to a referendum in the early 30s. And to be clear, if a majority are elected in 2026 denying the Claim of Right it will take even longer. No quick fixes. No just one more heave. Serious, determined, patient work.

In less than a fortnight the SNP conference will debate what went wrong at last month’s election. The decks have been cleared for the first half day of the gathering to have an open and private discussion. And the timetable offers opportunities to extend these deliberations throughout the weekend.

So begins the process of renewing and rebuilding. The conference can make a start on preparing a policy agenda which resonates with the Scottish public, and in developing a new strategy for achieving political independence for our country. It would be wrong to seek all the answers at this first meeting, but at least we can agree the right questions.

But there’s something else we need to concern ourselves with. Is the structure and constitution of the SNP fit for purpose? Does it provide for an effective democratic organisation that can mobilise and inspire those who support the idea of an independent Scotland? The answer is not really.

Changing constitutions is a messy and time-consuming process. We haven’t got time for extended navel-gazing. And there are no proposals for change on the agenda at this meeting.

We don’t need to vary every dot and comma of our existing rulebook. Many branches will remember the last rulebook consultation stretching to 40 pages where comment was invited on every paragraph. That’s the last thing we need. But there are some obvious, major changes we could make which would put the party on a better footing within the year.

The conference could agree to instruct the party executive to have an urgent consultation and bring back proposals to a rules revision conference in the spring. For me there are three immediate areas of operation we need to do differently.

First is the conference itself. Many of us will shortly be wandering around the corridors of Edinburgh’s conference centre bearing lanyards with the word delegate. That implies that people are there as representatives. Elected and mandated by grassroots members to speak on their behalf. If that was ever true, it isn’t now.

In fact, not a single branch of the party has held an election for its delegation to conference. Not a single branch will send its full complement. All the “delegates” are volunteers who have been cajoled and persuaded to attend. The reason is simple, the rulebook provides for far more delegates to be appointed than any party branch could ever dream of.

This is spelled out in clause 20.4. “… two delegates for the first 20 members of the Branch; and one additional delegate for each additional 20 members …” My branch is Portobello and Craigmillar. It has 403 members. So, it is entitled to 23 delegates. We are hoping that five will attend.

The reason this has happened is because the rules did not change when the party did after the 2014 referendum. Membership quintupled, and some might have hoped party activity would quintuple too. It didn’t. Most people joined, and still join, to register support, be kept in touch about key events, and contribute money. They have neither the time nor inclination to attend meetings or participate in campaigns.

Membership has declined but is still about three times bigger than a decade ago. In essence, we have two types of members: active and supporting. This is something we should recognise in the rules. If the delegate entitlement was one for every hundred members, my branch might be able to send a full complement. We might even have contest with the branch considering different views on the main topics. Imagine that.

We would also have a smaller conference of people who genuinely represented the wider membership. Counterintuitively that means the conference would have more clout and be better able to hold its leaders to account. It would also cost less.

At the moment, the conference is an aggregate gathering of the most active members. Nothing wrong with that. But it will never have the authority and democratic legitimacy of a proper delegate-based meeting. 

Nor would anyone be excluded. A new class of observer would allow for anyone who wanted to be there to be present at debates and participate in the fringe.

Next thing to change is the NEC. In recent years this has grown into an unwieldy cumbersome body which resembles a mini–United Nations attempting to balance competing interests and sections within the party. This makes it unable to provide the strategic support and direction for the party’s full-time staff which is so desperately required.

We could consult over the winter on the principle of a much smaller NEC with say 12-15 ordinary members directly elected by the conference. These would be joined by a much-reduced number of office-bearers. We currently have a staggering 14 national office bearers – it’s as if any time we felt we needed to do more about something we created an office bearer to make it look like we were. Talk about form over content.

Finally, we should organise branches better. This will require less constitutional change although a fileting of the multiple tiers of organisation to remove duplication would be welcome. We need to re-focus branches on political discussion and action, reaching out for guest speakers and encouraging new members to attend.

In two weeks’ time the conference could resolve to look at urgent but limited organisational changes and to make them within six months. Or we could continue as we are.

This week I want to consider a particular brand of SNP refusenik. They may have voted SNP once. They certainly do not regard themselves as supporters of anyone else. They will tell you they are passionate supporters of Scottish independence and that it is one of the main factors in determining how they vote. And yet, they did not, and will not, vote for the SNP, a party who’s avowed central aim is the furtherance of the thing in which they believe. 

To be clear I’m not talking about people who support independence but consistently vote for another party; the Greens, SSP, or even perhaps a unionist party (there are still some). Nor am I talking about those who have never voted for anyone, believing the bourgeois electoral process to be part of a global conspiracy to deny expression. 

The people I have in mind are amongst the half million or so voters who voted for the party in 2019 but declined to do so last month. Some will have voted for Alba. Some may have spoiled their ballot paper. Most simply stayed at home. 

The SNP needs to find a way to get them back. Two caveats. I’m not suggesting this is the most important group the party should concentrate on. More of a priority is winning back supporters who switched to Labour, or indeed to winning new supporters in the first place. 

I’m also not sure how many there are. In the absence of a proper survey, we have only anecdotal and piecemeal evidence to go on. But the numbers are significant. Besides, these people are amongst those who ought to be the core support of a party which aspires to be the political expression of the aspiration for Scottish independence. 

So why aren’t they? 

By and large because they have lost faith in the party to deliver on its – and their – central objective. In the many doorstep conversations I had about this there were several variations on this theme. Some believe that the party is no longer committed to securing independence. Others accept that independence is still the objective of the party but argue it does not have a viable strategy to achieve it. And some will tell you that party leaders have betrayed the cause by failing to discharge the mandate it got in 2021. Now, I don’t agree or sympathise with any of this, but it is real, and it would be folly to ignore these attitudes in the hope they will disappear of their own accord. 

These views are built upon a lot of understandable frustration at the lack of progress towards self-government which has metastasized into anger and alienation. The blame has been directed internally rather than focused the government and agencies of the British state which denied the democratic expression of Scottish opinion. This is reinforced by continuous attacks by our opponents in a compliant media which exaggerate the perceived failures of the party in government without context or qualification. And by divisive internal splits over policy and the occasional spectacular own goal. 

The process of party renewal which should consume all of us in the next eighteen months must include trying to win people back. To instil once again trust and confidence in our collective ability to change the way our country is governed. Maybe some will be lost to the ranks of conspiratory theorists, but many people could be persuaded if we apply calm, thoughtful, and persistent argument.  

Some of these arguments are the same ones we need to win over those not persuaded of the benefits of independence in the first place. We begin by having a strategy which explains the necessary steps to achieving independence making it clear that there is no quick fix and no shortcut to popular consent.  

Step one requires a fresh approach to what we are doing in the Scottish parliament, highlighting the constraints and limitations of devolution, and explaining how the power of independence removes them.  

Step two will be drawing up a campaign plan for 2026 based not just on celebrating the Scottish government’s achievements but articulating a demand for specific new powers to allow it to go further. In essence, seeking a mandate to demand that the UK government introduce a new Scotland act to increase the competence and remit of Holyrood. 

Step three will be to insist on the right of the people of Scotland to decide their own constitutional future and to remove the barriers which the Supreme Court confirmed exist to their elected representatives in the Scottish Parliament discussing the matter. This should be central to a new suite of powers devolved to Scotland and ought to be the focus of a broad-based civil society campaign for democratic reform. 

Step four would be to win an election on this basis and build a wide political consensus in Scotland for these changes which would force the UK government to respond. 

None of this is easy. None of it is quick. It will require patience and persistence. But it offers a route forward for anyone who wants to get on back on board.  

I’ve been taken to task over my criticism of Believe in Scotland’s report on a Scottish Citizens Convention. Gordon McIntrye-Kemp tells me I’m wrong to suggest that the report was written prior to last month’s election defeat. I stand corrected. 

It is indeed an impressive feat to turn around a document of such scope and length within days of July 4^th. But also worrying that a major report about the direction of the independence movement takes so little account of the fact that the principal party advocating that cause has just suffered its worst defeat since 2010. 

Gordon seems to downplay the significance and consequence of that defeat by suggesting that the election wasn’t really anything to do with independence. He claims that whilst formally the first line of the SNP’s manifesto, the party never really fought on the issue during the campaign.  

That’s just not the case. Every piece of paper I put out (and I put out plenty) bore the strapline “For a better Scotland, independent and in the European Union”. I talked about independence in nine hustings, on social media and in a thousand doorstep conversations. 

I’ve not checked with all, but many colleagues did the same. So, we can criticise how the message was communicated but it won’t wash to claim that it was anything other than central to the SNP’s election message.   A more accurate observation might be that whilst the SNP talked about independence, few others did. And for a large section of the Scottish population, including some Indy supporters, it simply was not relevant in this election. 

Whether the SNP result signals a lack of support for independence, or simply a lack of salience of the issue, the fact remains that a defeat on this scale cannot simply be swept under the carpet. It ought to inform our strategic thinking going forward, including the role of conventions aimed at citizen engagement.  

But let’s park that discussion for now, because I want to respond to the ideas raised last week by Gerry Hassan. I regard Gerry as a critical friend of the yes movement and his pieces are always thought provoking and challenging. I’d wish for nothing less. But his extended piece on how we got to last month’s defeat was undermined by selective interpretation, and in some cases just getting stuff wrong. 

Gerry is right to say that we never had a proper postmortem on 2014 and that a lot of the last ten years has been wasted, leaving us no further forward. He’s right also to appeal for hard thinking now and the drawing up of a medium-term strategy to advance the cause of national autonomy. 

But he’s wrong to suggest this has been a wilful design deployed by the SNP leadership. He claims “the party leadership deliberately avoided conducting any postmortem to understand why Yes lost”. Avoided? Really? That makes it sound like there was a massive upswelling of opinion amongst Yes activists, most of then busy joining the party if you recall, which party chiefs somehow sidestepped or undermined. 

I remember it somewhat differently. As soon as the tears were dry after the referendum defeat, I remember getting thrown into the heat of the 2015 election campaign. The remarkable result – getting 1,454,436 votes, exactly 50% of the total – was misread by Yes activists as a quick turnaround in their fortunes, when in fact it included many who did not support independence but wanted the SNP to stand up for Scotland in the union. 

That victory mesmerised people. It felt that things were going right and blunted their appetite to ask why they had gone wrong a year before.  

And then came Brexit, a peg of changed circumstance on which to hang the legitimacy of a second vote. Yes, Nicola Sturgeon argued this case, but let’s not pretend she forced the idea on unwilling Yes activists. On the contrary, whilst there were some lone voices cautioning that we were not ready, most of the movement was getting high on the idea of Indyref2 being just around the corner.  

It’s too facile to blame this all on SNP leaders. The truth is en masse the Yes movement was guilty of self-deception on a pretty grand scale. 

Gerry Hassan rightly critiques several so-called strategies as being nothing of the kind. Key amongst these is the idea of using an election as a de-facto referendum. He claims this was the strategy adopted by the SNP under Sturgeon, Yousaf and Swinney and the one on which the recent election was fought. That is not true. In fact, the de-facto referendum idea was defeated at the last SNP conference in favour of a different strategy which is still on the party’s website. 

Gerry claims that the leadership are still stifling debate on last month’s defeat. They’re just not.  Branches are actively discussing what happened and what to do about it. An unprecedented series of debriefings with candidates and campaign managers organised by the leadership have been extremely frank. Many party activists are openly debating these matters in the press without censure or constraint. 

I agree we need serious thoughtful discussion. But let’s make sure its civil and honest as well as candid and open. Attributing motives without proof or accusing people of doing things they haven’t done isn’t helpful. 

So, was Thursday’s election really as bad as it looks for the SNP? The answer is yes.

The Labour party has just formed a new UK government having won 63% of the seats with just 34% of the votes. In a contest where two out of every five voters stayed at home. That’s first past the post for you. It exponentially distorts results when seats are in three- or four-way contention. And this is the most distorted result in history. A mandate a mile wide and an inch thin. But no-one is going to challenge it because no-one did any better.

Some might try to take comfort by saying that the electoral system also distorts Scotland’s results. Labour has won two thirds of the seats with just 36% of the votes in Scotland. And the SNP was less than six percent behind.

This is true. But anyone looking for salvation for the SNP in these figures is delusional. Percentages are only half the story. Less than half when turnout plummets. To understand how bad this is we need to look at actual votes cast. At the 2019 general election the SNP got 1,242,380 votes. This time 708,759. That is a drop of 43%. More than four out of every ten people who voted for us last time chose not to do so on Thursday. Is this sinking in yet?

The first step to recovery is to acceptance. Then we need to dry our eyes and think through a rational plan for recovery.

In the aftermath of Thursday, still picking through the electoral debris, it is far too soon to draw conclusions. We need to start by asking the right questions, to discuss what went wrong and what to do about it.

For starters let’s accept we lost. And just as winning elections means you have a mandate, losing them means you do not. There is no point arguing that we still have a mandate from 2021. Mandates only last as long as it takes for people to reconsider them. We tried to discharge the 2021 mandate by asking the UK government, and then the Supreme Court for permission to have another referendum. Both said no. This time we asked the people to back us in continuing the journey to independence anyway. The people said no.

That is not to say that we stop or tone down our arguments for independence. Far from it. Others may follow Groucho Marx’ doctrine “These are my principles, if you don’t like them, I have others”. But that is not an option for us. The only rationale for the SNP is to be the political wing of the national movement for autonomous self-government.

This result is undoubtedly a setback for the independence movement, but it can also be an opportunity to renew and refresh. So, first off let’s ask why people did not vote for us. It’s a complicated picture, as various groups of people withdrew support for different reasons, some contradictory. Broadly speaking there were positive and negative reasons.

The positive, and let’s face it, the measure is relative, was that people were seduced by the argument that whilst the SNP could oppose a Tory government, only Labour could replace it. It’s a strong argument. It doesn’t even depend on spelling out an alternative, any change is better than no change. It was a better argument than we had.

We mitigated that argument on the doorstep saying as England was voting Labour anyway, the choice was to add to their majority, or have someone who will push them to do more. But that simply means that had the result in England looked closer, even more might have switched in Scotland.

Undoubtedly many, probably most, who were floating between SNP and Labour and who eventually plumped for the latter, did so out of despair rather than enthusiasm. In my experience these people were more likely to be white collar liberally minded people who came to the independence cause over the last decade believing it offered a better route to social democratic reform. In this election they decided it didn’t.

What we do not yet know is whether this represents a definite change in outlook for this group, or whether Thursday’s decision was temporary and tactical. Many of them are probably not sure either. Whether that change sticks depends in part on how we respond, but also mainly on whether the Starmer government succeeds in making any worthwhile social or economic reforms.

And now to the negative reasons why people didn’t vote for us. There are many factors here, each one contributing a little bit, but accumulating into a significant slap. People were sending us a message and we need to hear it.

Top of the list is that a significant section of those who support Scotland being an independent country did not believe that we had any strategy for achieving it. They didn’t even see the point is voting for the idea, again. And in truth, they were right. We don’t have a strategy.

Then there were those who feel that everything is shit and they blame us for it. Most of these people never voted SNP, but some did. Underperformance in areas of government the SNP control definitely affects the trust and confidence some of our supporters have in the party. Labour’s attack on both governments worked well for them, making us take some of the flak for a profound discontent with governance in general.

Others cited policy reasons for withholding their support. At times we even got shot by both sides. I well remember canvasing in a stair near Waverley station and arguing with a woman who said she couldn’t vote for us because the party’s policy on making it easier for people to change gender undermined the rights of women. Five minutes later I was upstairs being told by her neighbours that they couldn’t vote for us because Kate Forbes was DFM and that clearly meant we didn’t care about trans people. To my mind neither of these things are true. But we need to understand why people believe them.

I lost several thousand green votes too. Our position on managing the decline of and transition from oil and gas was misrepresented. We didn’t counter with sufficient clarity and conviction.

And then there was the elephant in the room. Operation Branchform never mentioned, always there. Hard to fight an election with your former leaders awaiting charges, especially when many of the public perceive little distance between now and then. A perception not countered by the debacle over iPad expenses.

So what do we do?

As above, no easy conclusions or answers. But we need to start asking questions in five areas.

Firstly, we need to explain how Scotland could become an independent country. That starts with stopping pretending it is just around the corner and can be achieved at the next election. We never had a postmortem on the 2014 referendum. There was talk in the months after of a ten-to-fifteen-year strategy to win the next one. That got derailed by Brexit. Now ten years have passed. The Supreme Court ruled that the British constitution does not allow people in Scotland to sanction a review of the union without Westminster consent. That needs to be challenged intellectually and legally and we need a plan to do it.

Secondly, we need to argue the case for independence in the new context of a UK government that suggests it wants to achieve the same reforms that we seek from self-government. That task is made easier by the stated lack of ambition of Starmer’s government. 

We should set demands for the new UK government. I’d start with ten, but happily focus on fewer. So, just for illustration:  £16Bn for NHS, reschedule debt to fill the IFS 18Bn black hole, a statutory minimum wage of £13 per hour, recognise Palestine, abolition of Lords, proportional representation, review Rosebank license, 28Bn green transition, increased top rate of tax for millionaires, a public energy company to own and develop wind and marine. All things Labour voters would agree with. All things the Labour leadership doesn’t. And all things that if refused by the UK government make the case for Scotland having the powers to do them itself.

Thirdly, and especially as we approach the 2026 election, we need to explain better the limitations and constraints of devolution. The “two governments” mantra needs to be exposed for suggesting a false equivalence between what is essentially a provincial administration in a small part of the UK, and the fifth most powerful state in the world. We need to show the shackles of devolution, whether legal or financial, and have a synchronised approach between the Scottish government and our representatives in the union parliament to challenge them.

Fourthly, we need to have a laser like focus on service delivery in those areas where we do have control. Not having the money or power to do some things does not excuse bad performance in the areas we do control. The new Programme for Government provides an opportunity to reset and reprioritise in the new circumstances. We need a small number of achievable targets, and we need to achieve them in a year.

We should also be more confident and persuasive in talking about what has already been achieved. Our opponents do tell lies, and even when not lying they will put the worst possible interpretation on things. Our new party leadership rightly came out fighting on the government’s record. That is going to be more relevant in the next election than in the one we have just had.

Finally, we need a process of internal renewal. Most people join political parties to indicate passive support rather than get involved in them. But the proportion of our members who are active is abysmal. We need the will and the organisation to allow many more people to become engaged.

That ought to involve a fundamental rethink of the structures and governance of the party, with a new focus on grass roots organisation. It will also mean opening doors to the disillusioned and discontent elsewhere in the independence movement. British conservatives have just suffered their worst defeat in history, not because more people believed in Labour, but because they were divided. It’s a lesson we need to learn too.