FORMER first minister Alex Salmond has accused the SNP leadership of a “brain-dead” response to the party’s General Election result.
The SNP won nine MPs when the public took to the polls last month, having won 48 in 2019.
In an interview with The Scotsman, Salmond said the SNP lack “fight” and people no longer believe the party is trying to secure independence.
He also hit out at External Affairs Secretary Angus Robertson (below), calling him a “fud,” following his meeting with a senior Israeli diplomat.
It was revealed this week that SNP membership numbers have fallen to 64,525, down from 73,936 since last year.
“It’s not the lack of progress that demoralises people, it’s the lack of any strategy,” Salmond said.
“It’s not the winning and losing, it’s the lack of fight. It’s not to have fought at all, that’s the disillusioning aspect.”
He continued: “It’s like being a football supporter. You go to a match – you don’t necessarily expect to win, but you expect the team to do their best [not find] that they look like they’d all rather be elsewhere.
“That’s what the SNP looks like just now. Therefore, it’s disillusioning for independence supporters, therefore people don’t want to stay as members.
“I don’t think most people say, ‘I’m not going to be a member of the SNP because of Operation Branchform’.
“They don’t want to be a member of the SNP because they don’t think the SNP are trying to get independence.
“I would have thought that you would want some fairly radical shifts to change that.”
Salmond’s (below) interview comes after a new Norstat Opinion poll predicted the SNP would win the most seats at the next Holyrood election but fall short of being able to secure a majority.
The former SNP leader said that any “analysis or serious questions” about what went wrong at the election have been “totally absent”.
John Swinney is set to lead a General Election review at the party’s conference next week.
Salmond added: “The SNP are giving the impression of being – the leadership – of being virtually brain-dead at the present moment, and that’s very worrying.
“You would have thought there would be a reservoir of talent and ability and common sense which would take it to a different level.
“That doesn’t mean that every single person in the SNP is devoid of these qualities – of course they’re not.
“But they seem to be, as an organisation right now, to be devoid of making the shifts that have to be made.”
Angus Robertson comments
Salmond also hit out at Scotland’s Culture Secretary after he faced criticism for holding a meeting with Israel’s deputy ambassador to the UK Daniela Grudsky.
Robertson has since issued a statement and said it “would not be appropriate to accept any invitation for a further meeting”.
Salmond told The Scotsman: “I think Angus is a fud, which is a Glaswegian expression which means somebody with an over-inflated view of his abilities who tends to make mistakes, as he does.
“But then, of course, the point is why is Angus Robertson where he is? Is the SNP currently so devoid of talent that they can’t have somebody who doesn’t make elementary mistakes?”
He added that he believes Robertson should have been sacked after the meeting and said: “Angus Robertson is not the reason the SNP government is languishing where they are. He’s a symptom, not a cause.”
The Scottish Government has said it won’t meet with Israel again until “real progress has been made towards peace”.
The National has approached both the SNP and Scottish Government for further comment.
