The SNP’s election pitch is a masterclass in inconsistency

The SNP may be in crisis, with police investigating the use of party funds and support from voters sliding, but the current General Election campaign obliges leader John Swinney to pretend everything in the garden continues to bloom.

Launching the Nats’ manifesto in Edinburgh on Wednesday, the First Minister acted as if his scandal-scarred party was still the unstoppable force it once seemed to be. On 4 July, if Scots wanted independence, then a vote for the SNP was the way to achieve it, he said. Victory in a majority of Scottish seats would, said Swinney, mean a mandate for him to ’embark on negotiations with the UK government to turn the democratic wishes of people in Scotland into a reality’.

The most unquestioning of Scottish nationalists might buy this stuff, but to anyone else it’s patently nonsense.

On the day Rishi Sunak called the General Election, the nationalists held 41 of 59 Scottish constituencies.