The SNP’s decline has finally begun

We are past peak SNP. The party has won a third successive Scottish Parliamentary election, an achievement that is not to be sniffed at, but it has lost its overall majority. There are signs that the normal rules of political gravity are beginning to apply in Scotland again.

Equally telling is that the SNP is out of big ideas. Its manifesto was a thoroughly managerialist document. It also now seems highly unlikely that there will be another independence referendum before 2021, and the next Scottish Parliament elections.

The SNP now faces a challenge of how to use the extensive powers that are coming the Scottish Parliament’s way. If it doesn’t use them, people will begin to ask what the point of the SNP is. But if it does, it will have to take decisions that could well prove to be unpopular.