The SNP has never been noted for its capacity for self-reflection. Each and every time it suffers defeat, it plays the card marked victimhood. Dark forces, rather than its own incompetence, are aways to blame when things don’t go to plan.
The SNP has reacted to defeat in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election with predictable gracelessness.
Perhaps the perfect example of this inability to ask whether the party could have done things differently came in 2014 when the Yes campaign was heavily defeated in the independence referendum. Rather than wondering whether his threadbare plan for secession might have turned voters off, former SNP leader Alex Salmond pointed the finger at both the BBC and the Treasury. These institutions — with their inconvenient facts — had conspired to undermine democracy.
This inability to take responsibility continued under the leadership of Nicola Sturgeon. She repeatedly attacked the UK government for failing to allow a second referendum even as every poll showed the majority of Scots didn’t want one.
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