In the decade following the defeat of separatism at the 2014 referendum, it seemed – even to the most optimistic observer – that the forces of division remained in the ascendency.

But in 2024 that all changed.

Nationalism was resoundingly routed at the ballot box.

The SNP’s once professional political outfit collapsed into a cocktail of scandal and farce.

All of a sudden, a second independence referendum – let alone independence – never felt less likely.

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Of course, the SNP has recovered marginally in the polls since those heady July days (although its position remains seriously diminished since Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation).

John Swinney has brought a semblance of professionalism to proceedings after the soap opera of Humza Yousaf’s premiership.

Scottish Labour, following a bungling first six months in office at a UK level, has lost momentum.

The Scottish Conservatives have faced a bruising internal leadership election.

The rise of Reform in Scotland continues – as it does across the country – to cause serious concern.

But, as we mark the start of the new year, here are five reasons to be optimistic that 2025 may deal a further set back to Nationalism:

1. The Nationalists are on a downward trend electorally…

Given the Labour Party’s dramatic fall in popularity, it is easy to forget just how monumental the SNP’s defeat was at the 2024 General Election. The Nationalists were left with just nine MPs, having entered the campaign with 48. They lost seats in every region and to every party. Their share of the vote fell by 15 percent.

This might be viewed as a snapshot from which the SNP can now recover. But council by-elections since July 4 tell a very different story. The Nationalists have now lost a record 19 local government contests in the last six months. Even a recent SNP victory in Stirling East on December 6 saw the Nationalists continue to lose vote share to the Labour Party. There is no reason to think such trends will not continue over 2025 and, deo volente, into 2026.

2. …and their party machine is in disarray

The loss of so many MPs – as well as a total drought of donations – has left the SNP’s political operation in a perilous state. In November, the SNP said it would need to cut staff at its headquarters by a third, while its Chief Executive Murray Foote also quit the month before. Such reductions represent a significant brain drain from the once mighty SNP operation, and – with less cash and even less optimism - will prove difficult to replace over the next year.

3. Independence has vanished

Not only have the Nationalists taken a drubbing at the polls, but they seem to have lost interest in independence too. The absence of any mention of separatism from John Swinney’s Christmas message was just the latest example of the Nationalists running scared of their very raison d’etre – and it is easy to see why.

A second referendum remains wholly unpopular among mainstream voters, while support for independence remains static. This is so much the case that even pro-independence organisations have apparently become disinterested in asking whether people in Scotland want a second referendum; a November poll for pro-independence campaign group We Believe in Scotland ignored the topic entirely.

With public services a mess and growing global insecurity likely in 2025, an issue as distracting and destabilising as independence will only become more unpopular over the next 365 days.

4. The SNP can no longer hide from its record in government

For the last 10 years or more, the SNP has used alleged austerity by the UK Government as an increasingly indecent fig leaf for its own failings – but no longer. Westminster has now delivered more than £3billion of extra funding to the Scottish Government, rendering arguments about a lack of resource obsolete. Over the next year it will be down to the SNP to explain why – despite the most generous funding settlement in the UK – Scotland still has some of the worst performing public services in the country.

5. Operation Branchform (and miscellaneous scandals)

Operation Branchform - the police investigation into SNP finances - has rumbled along quietly over 2024, but it must now come to a resolution in 2025. Of chief interest will be the fate of Nicola Sturgeon, who recently said she knew “nothing more” about the investigation 18 months after she was arrested and released without charge.

Meanwhile, Nationalist ministers seem determined to whip up controversy of their own. The use – or should that be misuse? - of ministerial cars is the latest in a long line of issues that have now impacted almost every Scottish Government cabinet portfolio. With the more sensible SNP ministers recognising they are in the last throws of government in 2025, we can expect more such behaviour in the year to come.

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Dozens of recently unemployed MPs - coupled with a diminishing number of winnable seats – offered the tantalizing prospect of intrigue and incompetence that only the Nationalists can deliver.

And yet the early signs suggest the SNP’s candidate selection may muster even more entertainment than first expected.

Take vetting. This, as you will know, is the process by which political parties determine whether an individual is a suitable person to represent them as a candidate.

As a process, it is designed to filter out the dodgy and the delinquent before they get on the ballot, and to avoid the party being brought into disrepute.

It was something of a surprise, therefore, to see not only that former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon had put herself forward for vetting with a view to running again in 2026, but that many in the SNP apparently see no issue with this.

There have, of course, been some notable issues with vetting in the past, and every party at every election ends up with some bad apples in the basket.

But it is fair to suggest that being under police investigation for allegedly defrauding the very party you are hoping to represent should – just possibly – be a precluding factor.

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Not that the SNP’s system seems particularly robust in other cases, either. The candidacy of Michael Matheson - who tried to charge taxpayers £11,000 for a phone bill run up by his family streaming football matches while on holiday in Morocco – also, apparently, yields little cause for concern.

Meanwhile, the SNP Health Secretary, currently under scrutiny for his use of a chauffeur-driven government car to take himself and his family to football matches, seems equally to have nothing to worry about.

Such a vetting process would, it is fair to say, make Robert Maxwell blush.

Sturgeon is, of course, not the only former First Minister contemplating continuing life on the backbenches; erstwhile Nationalist leader Humza Yousaf is also putting himself forward for re-election, but the question here is not one of vetting, but of where he will stand.

Yousaf notionally represents Glasgow Pollock but lives in Broughty Ferry, therefore almost certainly spending more time in Dundee than the SNP politicians actually elected to represent the City of Discovery.

Taking over from his former deputy, Shona Robison, might be an option if she chooses to make way.

But with the newly-elected MP for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry, Stephen Gethins, already growing weary of Westminster and seeking selection for a Holyrood seat, Yousaf may have a fight on his hands.

Which brings us to the biggest story of the selection so far: the three recently elected SNP MPs who are, just months into the job, already seeking election to another parliament.

The highest profile case is that of Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster leader, who will seek the nomination for the Holyrood constituency of Aberdeen South.

To long-time observers of Scottish politics this decision, at least, is no surprise. But that does not mean it is without its own hypocrisy or, indeed, hilarity.

Ahead of the Scottish Parliament election in 2021, the SNP had ruled that sitting MPs could not seek selection for Holyrood without first resigning their Westminster seat.

Rather conveniently for Flynn, however, it seems the rule has now been scrapped or was just – in Flynn’s own words – “election-specific”.

Not that the controversy ends there. The Nationalists had previously derided Douglas Ross for holding a dual mandate at Holyrood and Westminster – the very same thing these three SNP MPs now hope to do.

One SNP MSP said at the time that the then Scottish Conservative leader was “failing” his constituents by “thinking he can do both jobs properly”.

Certainly, such arguments seem to die hard, with another SNP MSP, Emma Roddick, now demanding Flynn “rethinks” his decision to stand for the Scottish Parliament on the basis it is impossible to deliver a dual mandate – apparently forgetting she herself continued to serve as a councillor after her election to Holyrood in 2021.

Amid such insincerity, we can, at least, spare a thought for the sitting SNP MSP for Aberdeen South, Audrey Nicoll, who far from worrying about dual mandates will – should Flynn succeed in his ambition to unseat her – be left with no mandate at all.

But there is a serious point to be made here too.

The lack of new blood in the SNP selections - and the Nationalists’ seeming reliance on its sitting politicians and former leaders - does not indicate a party that is on the up, nor that independence is currently anything but a fantasy.

Certainly, Flynn is considered a rising star among Nationalists, and has not kept his ambitions to lead his party carefully concealed.

If he has decided to run for Holyrood, it is because he believes the Nationalists will lose the Holyrood election, and that John Swinney will lose the SNP leadership with them.

Judging by the state of the SNP’s selection contest so far, that seems an entirely reasonable assumption.

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On the campaign trail, he could directly connect with voters through a kind of folksy charm more akin to a Bill Clinton than a Scottish presbyterian.

He was gregarious and tactile, and had a genuine interest in what might be termed “ordinary people”.

As a speaker, he could not only hold a room, but often make the people in the room laugh as well – a far greater skill.

A noted platform orator, he was also a deft debater who loved the cut and thrust of argument, almost for its own sake. Blooded in the bearpit of the House of Commons, it was only on rare occasions that he was bested at First Minister’s Questions.

Above all, however, Salmond’s skill as a politician came from a kind of raw charisma and potency that drew people – including those with whom he often fundamentally disagreed - into his orbit. Without even speaking, he made many people like him and, crucially, persuaded many voters to trust him.

As Winston Churchill said of Joseph Chamberlain, Salmond was one of those rare politicians who “make the weather”.

With such talents at his disposal, it is little surprise that he proved such a successful politician.

As a young MP, he first made a name for himself intervening on the Chancellor of the Exchequer as he presented his budget to the House of Commons – a break with convention that helped make his name.

That incident began what became a love/hate relationship with Westminster. It was always a great irony that throughout his career Salmond, whose political raison d’etre was to break away from London’s yolk, always seemed far more at home on the green leather of the House of Commons than the plywood benches of Holyrood.

Twice SNP leader, Salmond totally modernised the SNP and positioned it to become the force that would – at least for a time - sweep away the old Labour order and come to dominate devolved politics.

Others were, of course, involved in this process, but there is no question that Salmond was the driving force and that, without him, none of it would have happened quite so quickly or quite so devastatingly.

Two Holyrood election victories followed, including a remarkable – and likely unrepeatable – majority victory in 2011, which paved the way for the independence referendum and, very nearly, the death of the 300-year-old union between Scotland and England.

This, of course, did not quite happen, and Salmond’s clear defeat to Better Together’s Alistair Darling in the first debate of the campaign was a rare, but crucial, slip up.

But whether or not we accept the argument that Yes would never have got to a 45 percent share of the vote without Salmond is moot - there never would have been a contest at all without him.

Salmond’s afterlife was, of course, more dubious, more controversial and, ultimately, rather undignified.

But even from the fringes his shadow loomed large over Scottish politics, and it is not impossible to imagine a scenario where - following a bad defeat for the SNP at the 2026 devolved elections - Salmond once again became the figurehead around which the nationalist movement rallied.

But the tragedy of Salmond’s political life is not that he did not have enormous talent or that he did not attain significant power – it is that he totally failed to use these abundant gifts for any worthwhile end.

As the most charismatic politician of the devolution era – and one of its most skilled orators – he could have made a case for radical reform in Scotland.

As the SNP’s undisputed leader, he could have built a culture that fostered respect and championed decency.

As First Minister with an unprecedented majority behind him, he could have addressed the massive inequalities that exist in Scottish society, or tackled the attainment gap between the richest and poorest pupils, or ended the scourge of drugs deaths.

Instead, Salmond used his undoubted talents and real power to focus on independence – to sow discord, where he could have brought harmony.

And all of these issues – and many more – got worse under his watch.

Certainly, delivering the 2014 independence referendum – and very nearly the break-up of the UK - acts as a useful fig leaf for the fact that, despite his clear abilities, Salmond actually has little legislatively to show for his many years of public service.

In fact, Salmond’s lasting legacy is just that: division. A man who will be remembered not just for pitting nationalists against unionists, but friends against friends, and families against families.

At the final reckoning, that is his central achievement. And for a man of Salmond’s unparalleled talents, that is a tragedy.

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Since Salmond’s unexpected death in North Macedonia on October 12, there has been must discussion of his legacy in the press, plenty of which is worth reading.

Two of the best pieces are in The Spectator. Former political editor of the Scottish Daily Mail Alan Roden provided a brilliant analysis of Salmond’s relationship with the media, while former SNP MP Stewart Macdonald produced an honest reflection on his former leader’s many contradictions.

Writing in The Times, Kenny Farquharson delivered a brutal - but by no means unfair - assessment of Salmond’s character, which was also the subject of this reflection by Chris Deerin in The New Statesman.

Do let me know if you’ve come across any other good pieces.

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The current SNP leader John Swinney has boldly dubbed those under the age of 34 in Scotland today as the “independence generation” who make him “very optimistic” secession will happen soon.

One of his predecessors, Nicola Sturgeon, unsurprisingly agreed, writing in the Daily Record this week:

Nationalist belief in the inevitable triumph of their cause is, of course, nothing new.

Ever since polls closed ten years ago this evening, independence has been “just around the corner” – a belief based largely on the premise that as older, pro-UK voters die off, support for Scottish nationalism, which reportedly remains popular among younger voters, will become the majority point of view.

Demand for a second referendum, and separation, will become insatiable.

The problem is that this is not only arrogant, but untrue. If anything, independence has never been further away.

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Take, for instance, the desire for a second referendum.

In December 2020 - hardly a high point for the Union - 19 percent of people in Scotland told Savanta they wanted a referendum on independence “next year”.

In 2021, the number of people who wanted a referendum on independence “next year” had fallen to 14 percent.  

In July this year, it was still just 15 percent.

Meanwhile, those who reportedly want a referendum in the longer-term (five years or more) is actually going up, from 15 percent in December 2020 to 17 percent in July this year.

You do not have to be Sir John Curtice to recognise that, were independence inevitable as the nationalists suggest, these numbers would be looking very different.

In fact, were independence supporters to have followed the timeline they supported in December 2020, more than half of them would be demanding a referendum “next year” in the polling today – a reality that has simply not been realised.

Equally, were the demographic influence of the fabled “independence generation” growing, it would surely be seen here.

Instead, as we can see, the numbers have remained relatively static. If anything, independence supporters are actually becoming more reticent about another referendum, not less.

What this means is that, far from being inevitable, independence is actually something voters in Scotland - even younger voters in Scotland - care less and less about.

Yes, a decade on from the referendum they might still nominally support independence, but they have a declining interest in actually realising it.

In that respect, while Nicola Sturgeon is right to suggest that glaciers are liable to move slowly, she would be wise to remember they are liable to melt away, too.

The 10-year anniversary of the independence referendum has, as one would expect, generated a lot of commentary.

Those who have followed Notes on Nationalism for many years will be unsurprised that the finest analysis comes from its founder, Blair McDougall, who has also launched a new newsletter, BlairMail.

You can read his first piece and subscribe to the newsletter here:

BlairMail

Stands Scotland Where it Did?

When you look at a globe, there’s a little island in the North-eastern Atlantic which is one colour, rather than two…

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2 years ago · Blair McDougall

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Not since Bram Stoker published Dracula in 1897 has the opening up of books apparently caused so much horror and trepidation.

In Westminster, Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are warning of hard times ahead.

Departments are being asked to find savings. Some taxes – perhaps inheritance and capital gains – may be increased.

Things will get worse, as they say, before they get better.

Remarkably, the situation in Scotland is even bleaker still.

Once again, a Scottish Government budget has been ripped up just months after it was approved.

Emergency spending controls have been imposed by the least imposing Finance Secretary of the devolution era.

Everything* from spending on mental health services to universities has been cut, while an almost £500million fund raised by the Scottish Government selling licenses for offshore wind will now be used to cover day-to-day spending, rather than long-term infrastructure investment.

As the Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton wryly noted of the debacle: “It’s Scotland’s wind, and they’ve gone and blown it.”

Even Scotland’s much-vaunted social contract – giving benefits to rich people as well as poor people – is under threat.

When the SNP embraced Scottish exceptionalism, this is not, presumably, what it had in mind.

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It will come as little surprise to even the most cursory observer of Scottish politics over the last decade that the nationalists are laying the blame for all this woe firmly at the door of Number 10. “This is the consequence,” the SNP’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn warned, “of a new era of austerity…”.

The problem – as that same cursory observer will know well – is that that simply is not the case. The current issues in the Scottish Government’s budget are not the result of Westminster cuts, but SNP profligacy and mismanagement.

As the Scottish Fiscal Commission noted recently: “… Much of the pressure [on the Scottish Government budget] comes from the Scottish Government’s own decisions” – decisions, it would add, were it not an impartial body, that were made entirely for political, not economic or social, reasons.

The ruinously expensive council tax freeze was introduced at SNP conference last year purely to prop up Humza Yousaf’s floundering premiership in the aftermath of the devastating defeat in the Rutherglen by-election.

Social security spending was set at a higher level in Scotland purely to create a dividing line with the allegedly callous system at Westminster.

Public sector workers were awarded massive pay deals purely so the SNP could claim Scotland was the only part of the UK to avoid strike action.

The SNP has, in short, managed the Scottish Government budget as a buy-now, pay-later electoral bribery machine, creating a state with Scandinavian-style inputs for Soviet-style outcomes.  

And yet, this tactic did not emerge out of a void. It is, in fact, not even a recent phenomenon.

The reality is that the SNP has always treated Scotland’s public finances as a blank cheque to try and persuade more people to back independence.

The persistent extension of universal benefits – now apparently under threat – is a prime example of how the nationalists have sought to manipulate middle Scotland through the exchequer.

Certainly, for Scottish nationalists it was never the role of government to act as a steward of public finances, but to use them as a campaigning tool in a perpetual final push for independence.

Such an attitude was always going to be unsustainable, and we are now - quite literally - paying the price.

For Scottish Labour, this presents a major opportunity. In their mismanagement, the nationalists will now be forced to rip up much of the social contract they ineptly created, while simultaneously lacking the intellectual and political capital to replace it with something new.

Much of Scottish Labour’s electoral success will hinge on its ability to fill that void and create a new, sustainable vision for Scotland, which recognises the scale of both the economic and societal challenges facing the country.

In the meantime, however, we all unfortunately must live with the SNP’s continuing incompetence for at least another 18 months.

In that respect, things really will get worse before they get better.

*Inevitably, independence is the one policy area where the Scottish Government is reticent about whether it will reduce spending.

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Stand-up comedy must be one of the finest arts in the entertainment business.

Making people laugh is, after all, never easy.

But that difficulty is compounded a hundred times or more in a packed auditorium full of people with different senses of humour and, in many cases, different levels of inebriation.

When politics is involved, the challenge is harder still.

The political comedian Matt Forde – who I saw at the Edinburgh Fringe and more recently at the Holyrood Magazine Garden Party – does, however, make it seem easy.

His impressions are a delight, but it is his incisive wit and irreverence that really make his show genuinely hilarious.

What made it particularly remarkable, however, was Forde himself.

At the end of last year’s Fringe, Forde was diagnosed and shortly afterwards treated for chordoma, a rare type of bone cancer.

He talked with deep emotion, but also startling good humour, about his diagnosis, treatment and recovery, and the ongoing impact that has on his life today.

As a young(ish) man who has recently been through a similar experience, that not only resonated with me deeply, but made me laugh out loud too.

And that really is an art.

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Taking part in the first TV debate of the referendum campaign on August 5, 2014, the Better Together chief - who tragically passed away in late 2023 at the age of 70 – ruthlessly and relentlessly revealed the fiscal fallacy offered by the Yes campaign.

In front of a live TV audience, as well as more than 750,000 viewers at home, Darling challenged the SNP leader Alex Salmond on what was his “Plan B” should the UK Government follow through on its commitment to not maintain a formal currency union with Scotland in the event of political separation.

In response, an increasingly rattled Salmond could only offer bluff and bluster, and by the end of the exchange most viewers saw him as a nationalist grifter who would gamble their economic future if it meant getting independence over the line.

TV debates are a much – and generally correctly – maligned feature of modern British politics, but this exchange helps both to explain why the nationalists were defeated in 2014, and why, ten years later, they have still failed to gain any ground.

During the referendum campaign, the SNP had centred the economic arguments for independence on Scotland’s abundance in fossil fuels. With the oil price hitting $110 a barrel in 2013, it was argued the North Sea would not just be the bedrock of an independent Scotland’s economy, but the treasure chest that would alternatively fund a vast expansion of the welfare state or turn Scotland into a low-tax, corporate redoubt.

Public doubts about this proposition emerged in earnest in mid-2014, as the oil price began a steep decline and Scotland’s notional budget deficit began to look more Argentinian than Arabian.

As the September vote neared, big business also became increasingly concerned about the potential impacts of separation and some firms publicly – but many more privately – made contingency plans to move their headquarters elsewhere in the event of a Yes vote.

In such an atmosphere, the public began to look at many of the Yes campaign’s claims – such as setting up an entire diplomatic function, with embassies around the world, for a mere £90million – with growing scepticism.

Darling’s debate performance brought all these concerns together into a two-minute salvo from which the Yes campaign never recovered.

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It is, however, emblematic of the obdurance and conceit of nationalism that it has still utterly failed to address these concerns to this day.

Extraordinarily, the SNP’s position on currency in an independent Scotland has not evolved in any meaningful way since Darling challenged Salmond over it ten years prior.

Meanwhile, as the latest annual Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland report published this week shows, an independent Scotland would currently face spending cuts and tax rises worth more than £22billion just to stand still.

Even that figure is likely to be generous given the SNP’s volte face on oil and gas and its much-publicised opposition to new licences in the North Sea, which would make Scotland’s notional deficit at least £4billion higher.

Amid such ideological idiocy and indolence, it is little surprise the cause of independence is floundering, and that the SNP has utterly failed to address the core flaws in its proposition that were so brutally exposed by Darling in 2014.

More than a decade on, the SNP’s problem is still that it has no “Plan B”. 

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It may be recess but there is no shortage of bad news for the SNP government.

Finance Secretary Shona Robison has insisted public services will not “crumble away” - never a good look - as the fallout from the SNP’s financial mismanagement continues.

Meanwhile, the head of the Scottish Qualifications Authority was forced to apologise after around 7,000 pupils received blank emails rather than their exam results last week.

Once the data was properly released, it suggested a widening attainment gap between the richest and poorest students. For those wanting to learn more about this scandal, my friend Dr. Barry Black has written an excellent analysis here.

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The early signs are not good.

As many as 20 recently redundant MPs are thought to be already considering how they can replace the green leather of the House with the IKEA plywood of Holyrood.

Some have dubbed these would-be nationalist MSPs as FILTH – Failed In London, Try Holyrood. Yet that is only true in the majority of cases.

There are a handful, such as the former Glasgow South MP Stewart McDonald, who are thoughtful and would be an asset to their party in Edinburgh.

Others, such as the outspoken Nationalist Joanna Cherry, would give the SNP whips sleepless nights and would certainly meet – the admittedly rather modest – test of enlivening the Holyrood chamber.

For the rest of the rejects, it seems unlikely that closer relative proximity to their constituents would do anything to address their anonymity or ability.

The tension arises, however, not over whether this new group of wannabe MSPs would be an asset, or even if they will stand – it is where and how they will get selected.

After all, even at the height of its pomp, there were only a finite number of Scottish Parliament seats the SNP could win, and that number is now diminishing by the day.

This presents the distinctly unedifying prospect of former nationalist MPs jostling for seats with other SNP parliamentarians, present and former.

As an illustration of how desperate this fight will become, the 20 MPs currently considering standing in 2026 represent almost a third of the seats the SNP currently holds in the Scottish Parliament, and even the most optimistic nationalist strategists concede a significant portion of those can no longer be considered safe.

Such a high-stakes internal conflict over the next 18 months is likely to further exacerbate existing tensions in the nationalist ranks.

SNP politicians had descended into recrimination and backbiting even before the disastrous general election defeat. Selection battles, where political careers hang in the balance, are unlikely to herald a new era of harmony.

Perhaps more troublingly for the SNP though is the spectre of the internal elections themselves.

It is the SNP membership, which is incidentally suffering a similar rate of attrition as the nationalists’ elected politicians, who will get to choose which candidates fight which constituencies or are placed at the top of the regional list, which is elected by PR and therefore the safest bet.

There is nothing wrong with this democratic process per se, but it does create a rather narrow and - in the case of the SNP in particular - single-issue electorate. And if we cast our minds back to the most recent SNP internal election, this does not bode well.

The race to replace Nicola Sturgeon was marked with many moments of hilarity, and the highlight was not just Ash Regan’s flagship proposal to build an “independence readiness thermometer,” but that she still went on to win the support of more than 11 percent of the SNP membership.

Little wonder, perhaps, that she left the SNP shortly after her defeat to become the only Holyrood representative of Alex Salmond’s Alba Party.

More seriously, there is little doubt Humza Yousaf’s ill-fated premiership was hamstrung in part by the commitments he felt compelled to make to SNP members during the contest to replace Sturgeon.

Even current SNP leader John Swinney, more than a year on, felt duty-bound to maintain Yousaf’s commitment that independence would be page one, line one of the nationalists’ manifesto, despite the obvious absurdity of that proposition at the general election.

When the SNP membership demands red meat, it rarely accepts anything less than T-bone steak.

An influx of former SNP MPs running for Holyrood will therefore not only further fray the nationalists’ fragile unity but will also potentially saddle the party and its politicians with further far-fetched policies and commitments.

For a party already struggling with credibility and reeling from defeat, that really is the last thing the nationalists need.

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It may be a new Westminster parliament, but what’s left of the SNP group is still up to its old tricks.

Westminster leader, Stephen Flynn, tabled an amendment to the King’s Speech calling for the two-child benefit cap to be scrapped.

Given the new government has not publicly committed to scrapping the controversial cap, this was an attempt to put new Labour MPs in a tight spot (although its main consequence was actually to give Sir Keir Starmer an excuse to suspend half a dozen troublesome left-wing MPs in his own ranks).

Flynn’s amendment was, as Alex Massie has eloquently pointed out, gross hypocrisy. The SNP Scottish Government has the ability to mitigate the cap but chooses not to, for precisely the same reason that the UK Government chooses not to: that it cannot immediately afford to do so. His piece is well worth a read.

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And finally… I hope you are continuing to enjoy Notes on Nationalism. I would love to hear from you if you have any comments, feedback, or ideas for pieces you would like to see, so do please get in touch:

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Thank you, and until next time…

The raw numbers are, of course, brutal for the nationalists. They lost 39 MPs and half a million votes. When the much-delayed final result was announced in Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire, the SNP had just nine seats left and many of those - such as the two seats in Scotland’s Yes City, Dundee - were hanging by a thread.

Facing such an onslaught, it is unsurprising that the nationalists’ blame game is already in full flow. Joanna Cherry was among the first to attack new SNP leader John Swinney, noting that far from steadying the ship he had, in fact, sunk it.

Former SNP Cabinet Secretary Alex Neil agreed, and suggested Swinney - barely three months into the job - should make way for a Kate Forbes-Stephen Flynn double act.

The most damning attack (so far) came from the SNP’s former deputy leader, Jim Sillars, who suggested Nicola Sturgeon - who he dubbed “Stalin’s wee sister” - was also to blame. Sillars added:

“[The general election result] was inevitable given how the Sturgeon/Swinney era misled the movement, lost its common sense in government, promoted marginal issues as national priorities while the real priorities of the people such as education, housing, NHS, infrastructure, were notable only for the staggering level of incompetence with which they were dealt with.

“Whether the leadership has the grace to repent is of no matter. It is a busted flush. The people have no regard for them.”

These are the kind of recriminations that would make Scottish Labour at its nadir blush, although it is hard to disagree with Sillars’ essential point.

But amid all the internecine blood-letting, the nationalists have missed the most fundamental consequence of July 4: the return of the Tartan Tories.

This is most apparent from the electoral map. The SNP no longer hold any seats in the Central Belt. Indeed, you now have to travel north of the Tay before you can even hope to find the constituency office of an SNP MP.

This means not just SNP politicians, but also members and supporters, will be increasingly concentrated in rural Perthshire and the Highlands.

The MPs elected there will need to represent those voters, who tend to be more economically and socially conservative. Meanwhile, in more than half the Westminster seats the SNP now hold it is the Conservatives - not Labour - who are the closest rival.

While it is of course true that the SNP will continue to have devolved elected representatives in the urban, Central Belt (at least for the time being), their power is on the wane.

The leadership of Swinney and Forbes was already moving the SNP back towards the right, and such moves will only be accelerated by this rebalancing of the nationalist base after July 4.

Such a transition will doubtless be welcomed by tweed-wearing nationalists who enjoy singing folk songs about Robert the Bruce and are nostalgic for political campaigns claiming “It’s Scotland’s Oil”.

But it will do nothing to arrest the SNP’s decline. If anything, the return of the Tartan Tories will push the nationalists back into the electoral pigeon hole that they spent decades trying to climb out of, and will leave middle Scotland even more open for a continued Labour resurgence.

The election delivered a changing of the guard in Scotland in more ways than one, and I am delighted and deeply humbled to have been asked to take Notes on Nationalism forward after Blair McDougall’s election as the new Scottish Labour MP for East Renfrewshire.

There is no question that there is a high bar to meet. Blair is not only a brilliant thinker and devastating critic of populism, but also a wonderful writer with an incisive political instinct.

NoN’s loss is, however, East Renfrewshire’s gain, and I am pleased to say Blair will still occasionally contribute to these pages when he can.

In the meantime, my ambition is to continue to provide the insight and analysis readers of one of Scottish politics’ most popular newsletters have come to expect. In that respect, I am not planning any radical changes but - with devolved elections less than two years away and nationalism in turmoil - there should be plenty to write about.

Please do get in touch with ideas, comments, criticisms and suggestions at any time.

And, if you like what you see, please do consider sharing Notes on Nationalism with family, friends and colleagues by clicking here:

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Finally, if you would like some further reading on Scottish politics, I wrote a piece for The Spectator this week arguing that Anas Sarwar is now the most powerful Labour figure outside the cabinet.

Thank you, and until next time…

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So that was something.

Nearly ten years after I saw my closest friend in politics lose the area I call home in an SNP landslide I won the same community in a Labour landslide. I can now say the term Prime Minister without a pejorative edge. Grown-ups are in charge again. The SNP’s crisis has become a catastrophe for them.

I’m only now getting time to assess what just happened.

When you’re the winning candidate there’s a theatrical tradition that you should be the last person to arrive at your count. So you miss all the tension as the ballots are tipped out of the boxes, sorted into piles, separated and then counted. It’s just as well: the tension of the competing bundled votes being laid out in a horizontal bar chart is unbearable when you’re an activist, let alone a competitor.

The result of that convention is that you arrive, say a few thank yous to your team, and then are ushered into a room to be told the numbers. When the declaration is made you spend the whole time wondering what the correct facial expression for the moment is. Stoic statesman or Stephen Twigg gosh-face?

After your speech, the Returning Officer hands you an envelope marked “Member of Parliament” which, disappointingly, doesn’t contain missile codes but instead points you towards the House of Commons HR department. It’s a reminder amid the drama that this whole process has been, after all, a job interview.

In truth, I haven’t yet enjoyed it on a personal level. When I went to wake up my kids to tell them they now had to refer to me as “Daddy MP”, I felt a wave of emotion bubbling up that I felt was better corked for now. When friends living under dictatorships from my old role called and texted to say how happy they were for my new job, I had to fight hard to hold it together.

Stiff-upper-lip intact, a few hours later I gathered together on a platform on the banks of the Clyde along with the rest of the new Scottish Parliamentary Labour Party. It was only as some of my new colleagues arrived for the photo opp that I realised they had won.

Stephen Daisley has a good piece today on some of the new talent in our group:

“Whatever other problems the new government might have, it appears to have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to Scottish MPs.”

He’s right. One of the consequences of Scottish Labour having had our arse handed to us for a decade is that people who might have otherwise been pulled into parliamentary life earlier have years of experience in other fields now.

I wrote today in the Sunday Times about what this election means for the future of Scottish politics.

“Labour lost heavily in 2015 because the election was all about the constitution and not enough about choosing a government. This week the SNP lost because the election had absolutely nothing to do with the constitution and everything to do with voters expressing unhappiness with two rotten governments.

Independence hasn’t slipped away over a distant horizon because of any muscular unionist strategy: it is because the SNP are organisationally, intellectually and financially bankrupt.”

Regular readers will remember my previous appeals for readers to internalise the difference between wanting to fight the SNP and wanting to beat the SNP. This wasn’t an independence election, claiming it as such risks undermining what is so damaging for the nationalists: the constitution was utterly absent over the last few months of debate. Without it, the SNP are now naked, unable to conceal the utter failure of their governing project.

Whether real politics has returned to Scotland isn’t up to me or any other politician to say, it will be for the people to decide. I do know this though: the framing of Scottish politics won’t change if those of us who do want to reunite Scotland around the meaningful work of political change cannot move on then Scotland won’t. We need to find new ways of discussing politics that move on from the past. Anas Sarwar has excelled at this over the last few months and we can all learn from him.

Quite apart from anything else, it is the SNP’s leaders that are communicating the new political reality. Sturgeon says the break up of the UK “is off immediate agenda.” John Swinney says the failure of his cause is his party’s fault. When your opponents communicate the outcome you want, there is no need to dwell on the obvious.

If Thursday’s vote was about a desire to get rid of two poorly performing governments, then the job was only half done when Keir Starmer walked into Downing Street. It will only be complete when Anas Sarwar walks into Bute House.

What now for NoN?

I enjoy political analysis and, given you and thousands of others subscribe to this newsletter, it seems you do too. However, the pundit has now become a player. My new responsibility is to shape events rather than comment on them.

I am so excited to tell you that this newsletter will now be edited and written by the brilliant Andrew Liddle. Many of you will know him from his insightful journalism. Others will have read his brilliant book on Winston Churchill. He is far smarter and a far better writer than I am.

I will still write occasional pieces on here, so I won’t be a stranger, but this will be his project from here on out. I cannot wait to read how he assesses the new Scottish political landscape, the lead-up to the 2026 Scottish Parliament elections, and the deepening crisis of nationalism.

Watch this space for his first edition…

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Culture Corner

What else? It’s certainly been a long time coming.

As I watched the Prime Minister calling the election earlier I felt a strange and unfamiliar feeling: hope. Perhaps it was a subconscious thing, triggered by the wag who was blasting out Things Can Only Get Better on a loudspeaker while Sunak spoke, but it was a feeling of hope that immediately took me back to the late 1990s.

I’m not a fan of political nostalgia. Living in the past doesn’t help you chart a course for the future. Today I felt a familiar hope that we would have a Labour government again, but there was something else too that I found myself hoping for.

This election is about more than just changing government, it is about leaving behind a politics that has left our country poorer, more divided and less successful than before.

In Scotland, we have had two governing parties who awake in the morning to search for imaginary enemies to fight rather than real problems to solve. One of those governing parties carries the label of conservative but has fought culture wars against so many of our great institutions: the National Trust, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the RNLI… Little wonder so many decent conservatives are so embarrassed by what they have become. The other governing party carries the label of Scottishness yet sees enemies in shortbread, teacakes, whisky, haggis, Edinburgh Castle…

Every day that goes by with these mindless distractions our country sinks further and further into despair and ruin.

When we cast our votes we will be choosing a candidate to represent us and a government to look after us. We will also be signalling that we have had enough of a politics that treats us like idiots. Enough of parties who think that we can be made more angry at frivolous distractions than failures by our governments.

Populism thrives in an environment where people have lost hope. After a decade of economic decline, so many people have lost faith, not just in politics as a process but in government as a potential source of positive change in their life. Stories of a yacht in Monaco or a campervan in Uddingston encourage people’s worst suspicions of those of us who put ourselves forward in public life. Working harder for a worse standard of living has left people broke and broken. The public services that used to be the source of reassurance have become another reason for anxiety.

Perhaps we can only convince people that politics is a noble pursuit again through action after the election rather than any words spoken before it - but we can make people begin to hope for something better than what they have experienced lately.

I’ve been thinking a lot today about a line by Gwendolyn Brooks:

“Even if you are not ready for day it cannot always be night.”

The thought of a government committed to the boring, unglamorous and difficult work of change excites me so much. The prospect of a vote where, once again, Scots declare that they’re not taken in by the easy lies of populist nationalism thrills me. There are a long six weeks, and a lot of hard work ahead, but we can begin to hope.

As readers know, I’m a candidate in this election1. As such editions of the newsletter might be slightly less regular over the coming weeks. My own contest against the SNP locally could not be closer: the latest modelling has me ahead of the nationalists but by only 365 votes. It’s the type of margin that doesn’t encourage a good night’s sleep for a candidate.

If you would like to help me pull off what might be the biggest upset of the night in this election, please consider chipping into my crowdfunder. Like all election campaigns, everything I spend in the next few weeks must come from supporters and anything you give will make a huge difference in such a close race.

Obama’s Yes We Can was recycled from Cesar Chavez. Trump’s Make America Great Again was stolen from Reagan. Corbyn’s For The Many Not The Few was taken from Tony Blair. Nicola Sturgeon found herself aping Thatcher as she tried to own aspiration.

The precise circumstances change but in a democracy the same things happen over and over again. An opposition party finally learns how to reach the voters that they lost. People get tired of a tired government. A party coming to the end of its time in office tries to squeeze one last mandate out of the people. Governments paint challengers as a risk. Challengers portray themselves as the long-awaited change.

Round and round it goes.

I mention all this because our new First Minister seems to believe he can break the wheel.

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Today Savanta became the latest pollster to record a crossover point: Labour has overtaken the SNP in both Westminster and Holyrood.

Going by the playbook John Swinney’s strategy should be to paint an insurgent Labour as a risk to everything his administration has achieved. That is what long-time incumbents who are behind in the polls do. Parties seeking a fourth or fifth term, as Swinney now does, tend to use a “don’t risk it” message.

After a year of constant crisis, with three different SNP leaders, it is hard for Swinney to portray Labour as the risk of chaos. So instead of following a traditional incumbency model, he is painting himself as a change. It is a wildly misjudged strategy.

Swinney is a retread. He is a figure of the past. Here he is in his own words a year ago:

“The party needs some space to allow fresh thinking and fresh talent to come to the surface. I’ve had a superb and very, very privileged opportunity to be at the heart of the party’s decision making for the best part of the last forty years and I think its important the somebody else takes the party forward.”

Of course, an existing public image and a record of experience can be strengths for incumbents. People know who you are and you have a record to stand on. That is only an advantage if your public persona is helpful and your record is one to be proud of.

Swinney’s image has been as the right-hand man to two SNP First Ministers subsequently discredited by scandal. His experience is as a Minister responsible for some of the worst failures of the SNP government: marking down poor kids’ exam results; failing to close the attainment gap; presenting budgets that raised taxes, cut services and failed to grow the economy; signing off on the infamous ferry contract.

Swinney knows with his deep connection to the Salmond and Sturgeon years and his record of failure that the label of continuity will be hung around his neck. So he rose at First Minister’s Questions to present himself as a fresh start. The laughter from all around, and his only inability to keep a straight face, tells the story.

But just listen to what comes next. He pretends to offer something new in one breath and talks about two decades of SNP rule in the next.

Outside of a wine cellar, it is hard to argue that something that has been around for twenty years is fresh.

It isn’t just that John Swinney isn’t personally equipped to offer change, the SNP as a party no longer represent change. That’s why, with one exception, John Swinney’s cabinet is identical to Humza Yousaf’s. No new faces and no new ideas.

The old idea the SNP represented - lowering one flag and replacing it with another - is no longer on offer. John Swinney has abolished the role of a Minister for Independence. The same poll that has Labour take the lead also sees the nationalist majority in the Scottish Parliament disappear.

At heart, John Swinney is a small c conservative. The cause he has devoted more time to than any other is that of making Scotland a corporate tax haven. His first act as First Minister was to make a social and economic conservative his Deputy.

Unable to paint his opponent as a risk, unable to stand proudly on his record, and unable to offer change, the ‘new’ SNP leader may be left with nowhere to go.

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As Humza Yousaf departs and John Swinney prepares to jump on a grenade to save a new leader from owning heavy general election losses, what have we learned? Some political leaders exist in the historical memory as teachable examples for future leaders. Poor Humza Yousaf’s legacy is one of lessons in how not to do politics.

Here are three that immediately come to mind.

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1. Don’t offer continuity in a time of change.

All politics is about balancing change and continuity. Incumbents have the strategic advantage of being a known quantity but must keep reinventing themselves to avoid being tired. Challengers from opposition find change easy but often have to offer reassurance that the things people like about the status quo will continue.

The SNP lost their referendum in 2014 because they offered change in a moment when voters prioritised continuity. People were anxious about the scale of the irreversible choice they were being asked to make and wanted to be sure they were making the right decision. So as angry as they were about austerity they prioritised security above the opportunity to try something risky but different.

In 2023 Humza Yousaf chose to be the continuity Sturgeon candidate at a time when the bottom was falling out of her government’s reputation. Yousaf may not have been able to predict the potential for the investigation into SNP finances - although journalists at the former First Minister's resignation press conference were. Likewise, it was obvious to everyone else that the party’s failures in managing public services were finally catching up with them.

Perhaps Yousaf felt he was too personally responsible for many of those failures to offer a credible break from the recent past. When he did finally recognise the need for a change in direction his critical eye turned to his coalition partners rather than his own party’s record.

If John Swiney does become party leader again, after a twenty-year gap, it will hardly solve this problem. A year ago he resigned, saying he had been trying to leave frontline politics since 2016 but had stayed on because he wanted to support Nicola Sturgeon. At a time when they desperately need a break from the past a Sturgeon restoration is a gift to their opponents.

2. Policy delivery matters trumps delivery of message.

Commentators often discuss how Yousaf was a less gifted communicator than his predecessors as First Minister. That is true, but it misses a deeper cause of the SNP’s woes. I’ve been thinking of this line from Primary Colors:

"Bullshit'll grease a lot of doors," Stanton said. "The real test is what you do when you walk through 'em. . . .

The SNP are consummate storytellers. Since 2007 they have told a story about how we as a nation, represented exclusively by them, have made more moral, better political choices than them. There are two problems with that story now. First, if you are going to claim to be more moral, then you have to be more moral. That is why images of seized campervans and blue police tents have been so damaging. Second, if you are going to claim superiority, you need to demonstrate superior delivery. But the SNP is now a failing government.

One in six of us are now on NHS waiting lists. Even critically ill patients can wait two hours for an ambulance. Private GP clinics and hospitals are experiencing a boom as public provision isn’t available The attainment gap between richer and poorer kids at Higher level is widening. Places at university for Scottish kids are being slashed as are opportunities to learn at colleges. More than a third of bus routes have disappeared and train fares are up 9% this year. Ferries have become a national joke. The number of potholes reported by drivers and cyclists is up 50%. The police have said they can no longer investigate every crime. Less than 10% of promised green jobs in offshore wind have been delivered.

Little wonder most of us think things are going in the wrong direction. Even the SNP’s own voters are pessimistic:

Myth-making about national superiority fails when people’s lived experience is so often so disappointing.

Herein lies the challenge for whoever becomes First Minister. Governments with a sound reputation on the fundamentals of governing can ditch unpopular policies seen as a distraction. Final-term parties often use a version of a ‘back to basics’ message as they refocus attention on their strengths. It is unclear what the SNP’s strengths now are. Across the board, they have created crises. A focus on the fundamentals will simply invite us to look more closely at their failures.

3. Don’t look like a loser.

The camera never lies. Take a look at the front pages from the last few days.

You know you’re doomed when editors start shouting across the newsroom “I want a gormless photo of him for the splash!” However, long before the crisis that brought him down, it has almost looked like the First Minister’s own press team were working against him. Below are three photo ops organised by Yousaf’s own team.

One can only imagine the weekly planning meeting.

• “Boss, your poll ratings are appalling so we thought an image of you in literal freefall would be ideal.”

• “First Minister, there’s speculation about your future as leader, so we thought we’d have you pictured hanging on by your fingertips.”

• “So, this week your choice for Chief Executive of the SNP was charged with embezzlement so we’ve arranged a photo of you with an actor most famous for playing an anti-corruption police officer.”

Good images can humanise a political leader. A visual style, or even a single photograph, can define an administration. You can’t control the candid moments a snapper captures in pursuit of a particular editorial line, but you can stop handing your opponent’s visual metaphors for your weakness.

A few readers have asked how they can help with my campaign to unseat the SNP in East Renfrewshire at the General Election. There’s loads to do, both on and offline, and I’m out on the campaign trail almost every day. So if you have any spare time, drop me a line by replying to this email.

We’ve all had breakups that we pretended were mutual but which really left us a bit broken.

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For days, the Scottish ‘Greens’ have debated whether to walk out on the SNP. The junior coalition partner had thrived on a strategy of being the hipster wing of the nationalist movement. They set out their stall explicitly as the depository for the second voters of SNP supporters. As the SNP fall in the polls and deeper into scandal, that now looks like a less fruitful strategy.

Harvie and Slater’s party debased themselves in return for those second-preference voters. Much of the commentary in the coming days will suggest that it was watching their humiliated MSPs defending the dropping of climate targets that broke the relationship. That is to forget that the Scottish Greens decided long ago that their environmentalism was secondary to their nationalism. Remember Ross Greer going to the international climate change conference in Glasgow to attack Greenpeace and to defend the SNP on fossil fuels?

What is driving this isn’t principle but polling.

They’re just not that into you anymore, Humza.

For Yousaf, this is an utter humiliation. Just hours ago he told us that he wanted the agreement to continue - despite his partner holding a vote on whether to leave. Unsurprisingly the First Minister’s own party was miffed as to why only one side of the relationship was getting a say over whether to have a divorce.

We’ve all been here: you know you’re about to get chucked so you dump them first to try salvage a bit of pride. We all know it only ever makes you look more pathetic.

Where does the Bute House break up leave the SNP?

Loss of Pride

There’s no doubt that the Bute House Agreement was not popular but it is relatively far down the list of reasons people have left the SNP. Internally, Yousaf may feel that ending his coalition will enable him to better see off the shadow leadership campaign of Kate Forbes and her supporters. However, the very fact that he is making decisions on how to govern the country on the basis of how it helps him control the right wing of his party only underlines his weakness.

The amount of disorder within the SNP’s system will grow. The Herald’s Tom Gordon summarised how the SNP are now in the grip of political entropy:

“SNP now showing classic hallmarks of government in terminal decline. Struggling leader, powerful rebels, bitter knife-edge votes, legislative turmoil, electoral reverses looming, and oppo parties chorusing 'time for a change' after years and years and years in power”

To survive in politics you need to be able to think several moves ahead. Yousaf has possibly the worst chess game of any leader in history.

When Sturgeon resigned ahead of a mass of government and party scandals, he painted himself as “the continuity candidate.” When it was obvious Michael Matheson would have to resign he told the media that the matter was “closed”. He backed Peter Murrell as a “proven winner.” WIth the Greens now poised to take revenge by removing his parliamentary majority, it seems that, yet again, he wasn’t able to think beyond the moment he is in.

As regular readers know, I’m spending most of my time knocking on doors and talking to voters. Something that is noticeable among those who have previously voted SNP, even if they haven’t yet jumped ship to another party, is how seldom you hear a confident declaration of support for the nationalists. Labour’s parliamentary candidate chat group is full of campaigners sharing stories of meeting SNP members on the doorstep who are no longer sure if they’re going to turn out for their party.

Nationalism, at base, weaponises pride for political purposes. It is that confident feeling of belonging that the SNP’s past success was built on. In the journey from Sturgeon’s dominance to Yousaf’s incompetence, that confidence has evaporated. The SNP have gone from Steve Clarke to Ally MacLeod.

The fundamental problem the First Minister has is this: he doesn’t make people proud to be SNP. An attempt by Yousaf to paint this as the moment he resets his leadership won’t work precisely because he would be leading that effort. It isn’t that his government lost its way. He isn’t returning to a period in his administration when he confidently controlled events because that time never existed. From the first moment of his leadership voters looked at him and were utterly unconvinced.

Gust Avrakotos: There's a little boy and on his fourteenth birthday he gets a horse and everybody in the village says, "How wonderful. The boy got a horse." And the Zen master says, "We'll see." Two years later, the boy falls off the horse, breaks his leg, and everyone in the village says, "How terrible." And the Zen master says, "We'll see." Then, a war breaks out and all the young men have to go off and fight except the boy can't cause his leg is all messed up, and everybody in the village says, "How wonderful…."

Charlie Wilson: Now the Zen master says, "We'll see."

From Charlie Wilson’s War

Redfield and Wilton’s latest Scottish poll got me thinking.

When asked what issues would most determine how they would vote at the forthcoming General Election, only 16% of respondents cited independence/The Union as one of their top three issues. Even among those who voted SNP at the last General Election, the constitution was a top three issue for just a quarter of people.

My initial thought on reading these results was that this is an awful landscape for a nationalist party in this election. When the electorate has deprioritised their defining issue what can they do? The SNP can’t ditch the idea of leaving the UK, so they have to convince people that the policy should be higher up the list of priorities. A strategy based on telling the electorate they are wrong isn’t wise.

Then yesterday I was knocking on doors in an area that was traditionally strong for the Conservatives and another thought occurred.

I have been going door to door in the constituency where I am standing for election since the nineties. Since then, there have been voters labelled as ‘Shy Tories’ - those who intend to vote Conservative but are unwilling to disclose this to canvassers or pollsters for whatever reason. In 2 hours yesterday afternoon, we only found a single voter willing to say they were Conservative. Was this shyness or is something else going on? Certainly, the disastrous leadership of Johnson, Truss and Sunak has given Tory supporters reasons to be sheepish, but I think it’s time to consider whether something else is going on.

In the aftermath of the 2014 referendum, Labour people would lament how the Conservatives gained from that contest while our party only sacrificed. Ruth Davidson used TV debates to demonstrate the formidable and effective communicator that she was. Her party emerged from the referendum with a simple and effective political strategy: The Scottish Conservatives became ‘The No Party’.

In post-referendum Scotland, the Conservatives, like the SNP, had a binary constitutional message that connected with a motivated group of voters. Labour stubbornly attempted to talk about public services, tax, the economy - anything but the constitution - and our vote was devoured by parties more comfortable with the politics of identity.

Even now, as Labour recovers in the polls, some argue that Labour needs to place the constitution at the centre of our offer, to either adopt muscular Unionism or to appease nationalists. However, what if it wasn’t Labour who were being short-sighted over the last decade? What if both the SNP and Conservative strategies were powered by an energy that is dissipating?

For the SNP this risk has been well discussed. The change that they once offered is no longer credible now that momentum has shifted away from them. Labour offers a more immediate change that people know can be delivered as the party cements its strong lead across the UK.

The impact on the Scottish Conservatives of the new landscape has been less discussed. I spend hours every day talking to voters who I know from previous canvass results on our database were attracted to the robust Unionist positioning of Ruth Davidson’s party. Today, on doorstep after doorstep, they describe themselves not as Conservatives but as tactical anti-SNP voters.

Rather than being “Shy Tories” it feels like they are no longer rooted as Conservatives at all.

By establishing themselves as ‘The No Party’, the Scottish Tories over-simplified their personality. Their relationship with voters became one-dimensional.

Sure, some voters remain believers in a small state, traditional social values, and free enterprise, but for a decade the party has not been making the case for those ideological positions. They told Scots that the only thing that matters is being against independence. That makes it easier for those disillusioned with a Conservative government to shift their allegiance, even if only tactically and temporarily, to another pro-Union party. That disillusionment could easily turn into mass desertion.

Perhaps this is only a moment rather than a movement away from identity politics. But as voters prioritise things other than where a border should be drawn, it is Labour that appears to be in the moment.

Everyone said that Labour’s positioning was terrible after the referendum. We’ll see….

By the way, if you fancy helping out with my campaign, drop me a line!

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Are the SNP trying to lose the election? They are opposing popular taxes while pushing unpopular ones on people on modest incomes. The conceit that they represent a more caring politics to Westminster Tories is coming apart as civil society leaders launch astonishing attacks on them after a huge cut to the housing budget in the middle of a child homelessness crisis. Their backbenchers are taking to the airwaves to suggest the only way to fix the mess Yousaf left the NHS in is to introduce charges for healthcare.

If the SNP are holding back the bad news until after the general election, just imagine what more is coming.

Since Labour’s recovery in the polls, the SNP unwisely turned all their fire on a party not yet in government. This was foolish for three reasons.

Firstly, Labour’s recovery in Scotland is built on the feeling among voters that the party can offer change more quickly than the nationalist movement. Treating Labour like they have already won the election only adds to that sense of immediate change being available.

Second, focusing your fire on Labour opens the SNP to the accusation that they stand as a roadblock to change. Defining themselves in relation to a still-imaginary Labour government invites them to take positions like opposing a windfall tax on the energy companies sending out eye-watering energy bills.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, the SNP are no longer the loudest anti-conservative voice in Scotland. They have vacated that ground allowing Labour to take their place.

It is the SNP’s Deputy Leader though who had me wondering if this is a party with a political death wish. He writes in the Sunday Herald today that SNP MPs may not take their seats in the House of Commons if re-elected in the General Election.

The SNP’s strategic weakness is that it can’t offer the change that people want. In the aftermath of their referendum defeat Nicola Sturgeon faced the same risk, but back then people (rightly) didn’t believe that Labour were going to win the General Election. This allowed Sturgeon to frame the election about sending Scottish voices to the House of Commons - memorably captured in the SNP advert with the green benches reupholstered in tartan.

Then there wasn’t an alternative, more credible form of change on the ballot. Now there is.

Instead of trying to find a credible offer of change the SNP pivoted straight into a post-election world where they oppose a UK Labour government. That hasn’t worked for them so far, but for Keith Brown to suggest that they won’t even take their seats is an extraordinary gift to Labour.

He is providing the ultimate evidence that the SNP offers no change for Scotland. Worse, he is demolishing the Sturgeon-era argument that SNP MPs are more powerful voices for Scotland. Voting SNP now risks there being no Scottish voices in the Commons, no power for Scotland, and no change for Scotland.

Elect a Labour MP who will do their job: delivering higher pay, more secure work, and quality jobs for workers. Or elect an SNP MP who won’t turn up for work.

Thank you, Keith.

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You see, the cafe in the castle has been refurbished and is still called what it has always been called: The Redcoat Cafe. This is what passes for a crisis in the SNP’s Scotland.

SNP politicians were outraged. You might think in a country where 250,000 kids are in poverty, a quarter of pupils can’t read to standard and 860,000 are on NHS waiting lists that they might have other things to do. You’d be wrong. Those torches won’t light themselves, those pitchforks are useless without a mob to brandish them.

Pity the social media manager for the castle this evening. Used to occasional alerts from Japanese tourists asking if, like all Edinburgh cafes, Harry Potter was written there, right now their phone is vibrating with rage.

The hundreds of replies to the castle’s invitation to enjoy a cream tea with them are worth scrolling through. It’s an orgy of idiotic anger.

The stupidity isn’t about a lack of education. In one response, reminiscent of Pizzagate, an academically accomplished Scottish Green Party member posts how the cafe deserves to be firebombed. He should perhaps be more worried about the boys in blue than the squaddies in red.

It doesn’t matter to those egging on this mob that Scottish soldiers have worn red tunics for centuries. The need to feel this anger is more powerful than any historical analysis.

Nationalism all over the world stokes outrage at the desecration of national symbols by an outsider group. The problem in Scotland is that nobody in any position of power is denying Scottish cultural identity. The modern UK state, for all its many faults, does not impose a uniform identity. It’s a multi-national, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-religious, multi-lingual marvel.

Nationalists pace around on the cultural battlefield (dressed in ahistorical costume, presumably) but there’s nobody on the other side. That is why they have to spend so much time creating imaginary enemies.

Sometimes it is described as faux anger. I think this misses the point. They really are very angry - even if they have no real idea why. They are so fired up because this is where they live, where their politics comes alive. Remember Jim Sillar’s famous line criticising Scots for being “ninety-minute patriots”. They expect every one of us to live every moment in the heightened tribalism of the terraces.

Most people are too filled with anxiety over how to stretch their wages to the end of the month to have much room for anger at imaginary things. A political movement that spends its time going beetroot-red at the thought of which flag is on a bag of carrots looks increasingly detached from reality.

Normally the smart advice is not to amplify your opponent’s framing of politics. This time I say share and share again - and ask whether voters might prefer politicians who see the real problems in Scotland.

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Nicola Sturgeon has big questions to answer.

The commentary in the media today around Sturgeon’s conduct is furious. Paul Hutcheon in The Record summarises the story:

“She gave an assurance to bereaved families live on TV that WhatsApps and private emails would be disclosed. She had a duty to fulfil this promise and the mass deletion of her messages is an unconscionable betrayal.”

The leading article in The Times notes that no minutes were taken in the official meetings that Nicola Sturgeon chaired and goes on:

“When, in addition, the first-hand evidence which might cast light on life-and-death decisions has been destroyed, then we are in the realms of autocracy. The public has a right to know whether those decisions were made wisely or not. When Sturgeon herself comes to give evidence to the inquiry, she has a lot of explaining to do.”

One of the additional things she may have to explain is the suggestion to the inquiry that she does not keep a diary.

Compare that to this, at the Wigton Book Festival a few months before the outbreak of Covid19.

The Scotsman’s leading article suggests that the decision by Nicola Sturgeon, and let’s not forget John Swinney, to destroy evidence was calculated:

“it is clear they made a deeply cynical political judgment that the damage to their reputations caused by releasing the messages would be worse than that caused by covering them up. It was a pervasive attitude throughout the Scottish Government, which appears to have been captured by a culture of secrecy.”

It is up to all of us to make sure that their calculation was incorrect and that they do pay a higher political price for concealing the truth from us.

So far Sturgeon’s only defence of her mass deletion of evidence is that other people didn’t delete their side of the conversation and so the inquiry has some messages:

“the Inquiry does have messages between me and those I most regularly communicated with through informal means. Although these had not been retained on my own device, I was able to obtain copies which I submitted to the Inquiry last year.”

Sorry, but other people’s honesty doesn’t lessen your own dishonesty. You promised the bereaved you would keep everything. You broke that promise.

The Civil Service destroyed evidence and laughed about it.

As angering as Sturgeon’s blatant destruction of evidence is, for me, the more important story here is about a deficit of professionalism and an excess of politicisation among Scotland’s senior public servants.

The zipped mouth emojis and banter about deleting messages tell the story, but it is worth watching this short clip of Ken Thomson. Here the Scottish Government's former director-general for strategy and external affairs, trying to explain away the conversation between himself Jason Leitch and deputy chief medical officer Nicola Steedman about deleting records that could be discovered by Freedom of Information:

Mr Thomson’s difficulty in explaining what should and should not be retained here is less convincing after a discovery today. Sam Taylor noticed that it was Thomson who was responsible for ensuring that civil servants did not destroy material that the Inquiry might ask for. His advice is clear:

“all of you are aware of the need to keep a full and clear record of our part in responding to Covid-19 and our other work in eRDM. This includes the decisions we take, the process by which those decisions were reached, the reasons for those decisions and the evidence and data used to support them, and applies whatever the format in which that information is held and on whatever device or system.”

Ignorance of what should have been retained, it would seem, cannot be used as a defence here.

The SNP Government Comms Office lied to the media.

Now that we have confirmation that Jason Leitch destroyed his records, journalists are recalling that when this story first emerged the SNP Government issued this statement:

"It is not correct to suggest that the National Clinical Director deleted every WhatsApp message every day."

Compare that to Jason Leitch’s message to the senior team handling Covid within the SNP Government:

“WhatsApp deletion is a pre-bed ritual.”

The Scottish Government Communications Office were asked to account for their earlier inaccurate statement by journalists yesterday. Their response was that it would be inappropriate to comment on their earlier lie about evidence to the public inquiry because the public inquiry was ongoing.

Again, remember these are civil servants who are now refusing to explain why and how a clear lie was issued to the media.

Where now?

Yesterday felt like a rubicon for Scotland’s democracy. If civil servants can destroy evidence, knowing that it should have been preserved to maintain public records, for responding to Freedom of Information requests and most importantly for scrutiny by a judge-led inquiry. If they can do this while joking about it with each other. If civil servant press officers can then lie to journalists to cover up this. If they can do these things without facing consequences, then transparency and accountability in Scotland is completely shattered.

Will Humza Yousaf restore confidence that Scotland’s government is responsible to the Scottish people? Will he take action against the individuals and the system that so casually destroyed evidence and denied bereaved families the truth? I doubt it, because to criticise their actions would mean he would also have to condemn the actions of his political colleagues who also destroyed their records.

Only a new broom at Holyrood will sweep away this culture of cover-up, concealment and contempt for democracy.

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“Every nationalist is haunted by the belief that the past can be altered.”

So wrote George Orwell in the essay this newsletter’s name is taken from. He was writing about how, for a nationalist, the past is not about facts but about storytelling. Events that do not fit the national myth are ignored and events that did not happen are imagined.

Even Orwell could not have foreseen the shameless attempt by Scotland’s nationalist establishment to rewrite history and to protect their own myth.

The myth in question here is the idea that the SNP Government made better, different decisions to the UK Government during the pandemic. As I have written before the reality is that they made the same decisions and arguments as the UK Government on herd immunity, banning public events, closing schools, protecting older people and washing hands. If you doubt that for a moment watch this.

It is important to begin with this because it is the motive for what follows.

Today evidence at the covid inquiry confirmed that Nicola Sturgeon and other SNP Government officials destroyed WhatsApp messages relating to the management of the pandemic.

First of all, this is a betrayal of a clear promise to the bereaved families. Nicola Sturgeon explicitly committed to keeping these messages, indeed she was characteristically indignant at having even been asked the question of whether she would keep these records. Sturgeon knew she should have kept these, she knew they were of interest to the judge-led inquiry, but she destroyed the evidence nevertheless.

Most importantly, of course, the destruction of evidence means that the families of the bereaved will now never know the truth of why decisions, like releasing infected people into care homes, were made.

And it was not just Nicola Sturgeon’s destruction of evidence that came up at the inquiry. Jason Leitch, National Clinical Director of the Scottish Government, also has confirmed he deleted his message. One infuriating exchange that was not destroyed was shared with the inquiry. Here it is:

Here Ken Thomson, one of the most senior civil servants in the Scottish Government, reminds participants in a chat that the messages they write are covered by Freedom of Information. Two minutes later Jason Leitch says “WhatsApp deletion is a pre-bed ritual.”

They are not just destroying evidence to protect themselves, here they are engaging in banter about it. Narrating your own bad behaviour in this way is astonishing - and astonishingly stupid.

Politics can be so full of synthetic anger. Amid the usual screeching should not lose sight of the fact that the destruction of evidence that these individuals knew they had a legal and moral duty to retain is an outrage.

Some initial questions that I think should be asked:

1. In October last year, when this story first emerged, Humza Yousaf promised that he had asked officials to do an urgent review to make sure that all records were kept. Did he get reassurances that messages were kept or was he told that both his predecessor and his Clinical Director had deleted messages? If he was told that the records had been destroyed, why didn’t he tell the public? If he was told that records were destroyed, has he asked for any disciplinary action to be taken? If not why not?

2. What action will be taken against the civil servants who not only destroyed records but chatted about how they knew these records should have been retained? Are we now operating in an environment in Scotland where civil servants destroy evidence that they knew would be requested by an inquiry and keep their jobs?

3. In addition to the officials we know of, when Yousaf asked his officials to look into record keeping, did he discover that other officials have destroyed their evidence? Is Jason Leitch alone or did others destroy evidence? If so, will he disclose who and how many have destroyed evidence? If not, why not? If he hasn’t asked the question, it would be extraordinary.

4. Why did Nicola Sturgeon break her promise to the bereaved? Appeals to procedures and being advised that the messages could be deleted is not a defence. She gave an explicit undertaking to keep these messages.

5. Who made the decision that the chief figures in managing the pandemic in Scotland should destroy evidence? When was that decision made? Will anyone be held accountable by Humza Yousaf for this? This is his responsibility.

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In the last days of their disastrous Rutherglen byelection campaign, the SNP put out a final leaflet. It read “Don’t waste your vote on Labour.”

It was a terrible political message from a desperate campaign. It said nothing positive about why to vote for their party and instead amplified the sense of a movement away from their party. Voters look for social permission to change their voting habits. The SNP campaign’s plea not to desert them only reinforced that, yes voters were leaving them for Labour.

Humza Yousaf’s interview with ITV Border confirmed that this was more than just a misjudged leaflet. It is now the SNP election message: we know you’re planning to vote Labour, but you shouldn’t.

By railing against Labour momentum Yousaf is confirming it for voters.

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It is worth lingering on one part of Yousaf’s interview.

“Keir Starmer does not need Scotland to win the election. That is the point. He is going to be the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.”

The reason this claim is nonsense is that Keir Starmer is only spoken about as being the likely next Prime Minister of the UK because there has been a recovery in Scotland.

When you hear Yousaf say that a Labour victory is a certainty, remember the context that Keir Starmer inherited. In 2019 Labour had its worst result since 1935, winning less than one-third of the vote and returning only 202 MPs.

The job this left the new Labour leader with is huge. Simply to overtake the Tories and become the largest party, Starmer found himself needing to gain around 80 seats on about an 8-point swing. One in ten of the 80 Labour target seats are held by the SNP. If, as Yousaf wants, Scottish seats do not contribute to a Labour win then the swing needed just to be the biggest party increases.

The 110 gains needed to guarantee a Labour government would include gaining another 7 or 8 SNP-held seats. Yousaf says Starmer doesn’t need Scottish votes. Without them, Starmer will need to secure a 14-point swing. To put that into context, Tony Blair’s landslide victory in 1997 was a 10-point swing and Clem Attlee’s 1945 earthquake result was delivered on a 12-point swing.

Only once before has there been a 14-point swing in a UK General Election. You have to go back to the 1931 election, held amid the Great Depression, after the pound left the gold standard, with one in five workers on the bread lines, and a Labour Prime Minister being expelled by his own party after defecting to govern with others. That is the historic nature of what Yousaf so casually dismisses as inevitable.

The swing needed, if Scots believe Yousaf that their votes are not needed, would see Labour win seats that have never, literally never, been Labour in all of political history.

Yousaf is arguing that it’s a certainty that things that have never happened are certain to happen.

It is quite a transformation for the SNP to go from telling us that the English are all terrible Tories, and so we have to leave the UK, to now telling us that we don’t need to vote out the Tories because the good socialists of places like Chelsea will do the job for us.

Only someone who does not want a Labour Government would argue that a Labour Government is inevitable without Scottish Labour MPs.

All of the above analysis rather than messaging. The SNP’s claim that voters can get a Labour government without voting Labour is simply a lie, but there is a far simpler and more powerful response.

The reason Yousaf is now spending his time telling people not to vote Labour, rather than making a positive case for himself, is because he knows voters who want change are going Labour this time.

By providing social permission to change their vote the First Minister is making a terrible strategic mistake. Don’t interrupt him.

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An argumentum ad nauseam is a logical fallacy where a person without evidence for their argument makes a claim over and over hoping that repeated assertion eventually becomes proof.

This is worth keeping in mind as the First Minister makes his New Year fight-back speech today. In particular, this passage that was briefed to the press in advance:

“If we use the same analysis for countries that are similar to Scotland – such as Denmark, Ireland and Finland - the difference for the typical Scottish household would be even greater. They would be £10,200 better off.”

People remember that in 2014 the Independence White Paper promised us we would be £600 better off. When that didn’t transform things they upped the figure to £2,700. In the closing days of the referendum, they dialled it up to £5,000. Nicola Sturgeon’s Growth Commission offered us £4,100.

Like a dog returning to its own vomit, today the SNP will try to same argument again.

This time they’ll offer £10,200. Talk about inflation!

It’s not just the figures that have been repeated but the process through which they have calculated it. In 2006, 2007, 2009, twice in 2013, and more times; than can, be counted in 2014, they used the same model.

It didn’t work before their referendum defeat but they weren’t deterred and tried it again in 2018 and in 2022. They are beginning 2024 by recycling this failed argument.

They pick a random group of countries and claim Scotland could be like them without any sense of how we get from where we are now to there - or for that matter without choosing which of the many countries’ models we’re meant to be choosing.

A Weak Argument from a Weak Leader

Having knocked hundreds of doors in the last few weeks it is clear that the hardcore SNP base is demotivated and the swing voters don’t believe that the change they offer can be delivered by a party in crisis. These are problems of credibility. Making ever more extravagant claims deepens that problem, it doesn’t solve it.

If you doubt my analysis, it is shared today by Alex Neil in the Daily Record who has clearly been out on the doorstep too:

“…in their view, the SNP has abandoned any pretence of trying to get independence anytime soon, so they're voting Labour - because if we're not going to get independence, they want rid of the Tories. That message is cutting through, even among strong independence supporters. The new priority is to get rid of the Tories as they don't see any progress on independence."

The response to Yousaf’s desperate relaunch shouldn’t be to rebut the canard at the centre of his speech. Doing so for an ad nauseam argument that hasn’t worked in the past, and which makes a leader lacking credibility even less plausible anyway, isn’t necessary. Precisely because this is an argument that has been repeated and rebutted repeatedly over the last twenty years, voters have already been provided with the counter-framing within the constitutional debate anyway.

Engaging in the fantasy policies in Yousaf’s speech helps him to communicate the fiction that the independence movement is going anywhere. Instead the response should be around the process story rather than the policy one.

Yousaf’s recyled argument is so poor that it plays into alternative framing which shifts the debate away from dead-end independence arguments: this is really about Yousaf’s weakness and the SNP’s falling support.

Kate Forbes is preparing a leadership challenge after he loses seats to Labour. This isn’t a speech about the future of Scotland. This is a speech about Humza Yousaf’s future job prospects. This relaunch isn’t about energising the case for a separate Scottish state - nobody believes that is happening any time soon and he’s offering no new leadership anyway. This is about trying to shore up his support within the SNP.

In the past SNP leaders have given speeches about independence to build on momentum. Today Yousaf gives a speech about independence because he has lost it.

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