The SNP’s reckoning is coming

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Katy Balls has narrated this article for you to listen to.

The SNP party conference in Aberdeen this week wasn’t the nationalist jamboree activists had hoped for. Even though it was Humza Yousaf’s first conference as party leader, several of his MSPs stayed away and the main hall was half-empty most of the time. ‘The key word was “flat”,’ says one attendee.

It was Nicola Sturgeon, Yousaf’s predecessor, who attracted the most excitement, when she made a cameo appearance on Monday. The former first minister had to deny she was the ‘Liz Truss of the SNP’ – a reference to the former prime minister’s attempts to upstage Rishi Sunak. ‘You’ve got to hand it to her for the hubris,’ said one unimpressed nationalist.

At least Yousaf has won praise for his handling of the events unfolding in Israel and Palestine. The First Minister, whose in-laws are trapped in Gaza, met with the mother of a victim of the Hamas attack and emphasised his support for Scotland’s Jewish community.

But none of this changes the fundamentals facing his party. In the past month, the SNP has lost the Rutherglen and Hamilton by-election to Labour and one SNP MP has defected to the Scottish Conservatives. Then there’s the ongoing Police Scotland investigation into possible fundraising fraud.

Of the three issues, it’s Scottish Labour that’s the greatest concern to the nationalists. The Scottish Labour candidate for Rutherglen and Hamilton won twice the number of votes of his SNP rival. Polls suggest Labour will overtake the nationalists as the largest party in Scotland next year, and if the swing were replicated in the next general election, Labour could win around 40 of Scotland’s 57 seats. However, given that by-elections tend to encourage protest voting, Labour MPs feel a more realistic target is around 25 seats.