Why the SNP lost its supporters — and how it can win them back again

Since 2011, the SNP has undergone a meteoric rise from underdog to Scotland’s natural party of government. It’s a transformation I helped design, through innovating the digital strategy of the party. However eight years of Nicola Sturgeon’s rule has fostered an era of indolence and self-deception over policy and independence. As Humza Yousaf embarks on his ‘summer of independence’ campaign (which started in Dundee this past weekend), it becomes ever more important to reflect on the stagnation of support for independence.

Instead of good governance and progress towards independence, it appears some SNP politicians have relished the trappings of power more than in serving the electorate who put them there. In the final years of Sturgeon’s time in office, the party was transfixed by divisive ‘woke’ politics, not least her disastrous gender bill reforms. But, for her critics, the warnings signs about Sturgeon’s political nous were there much earlier. Despite Brexit (which only 38 per cent of Scots voted for), Boris Johnson and serial Westminster sleaze, Nicola Sturgeon succeeded mostly in splitting the independence movement, undermining faith in the party and leaving the nation bickering over fundamental realities.