IT’S a brutal business being sacked from your job in public in the early hours of the morning. But as I have learned from bitter experience, politics is a very brutal business.
There are compensations. I am fortunate to have a legal career to return to and other interesting options to explore.
The worst thing is that the fantastic team I have put together with my chief of staff Fraser Thompson and my caseworkers Lucie, Jillian and Kim are all out of jobs now too, although I have no doubt that, given their talents, they will find new employment.
I do not take my defeat too personally because during the election I spoke to many former constituents who told me that they would like to have been able to vote for me but that they simply could not vote for the SNP at this election.
Labour’s narrative of change was very compelling. Yes, their landslide was achieved on less than a third of the vote across the UK, but in Scotland, they significantly increased their share of the vote, and this must not be overlooked.
People were disgusted with the Tory government at Westminster, but the harsh reality is that they weren’t too happy with the Scottish Government either.
The SNP vote was squeezed from two sides. We lost votes both from people who passionately believe in the cause of independence and people who formerly trusted us with their vote because we had governed well and with integrity.
Independence supporters rightly think we have dropped the ball and our reputation for governing well has taken a bit of a battering in recent years. To make matters worse, there are also serious questions over the level of transparency and honesty over party governance. Those of us who were actually on the doorstep during the election – and we were small in number because of the level of disaffection among former activists – know what the issues were and many of us saw defeat coming, although perhaps not such a huge defeat.
There was deep unhappiness with the current record of the Scottish Government and with recent scandals, most particularly the ongoing police investigation into the party’s finances and the way in which the issue of Michael Matheson’s iPad expenses was handled. I encountered real anger on the doorstep, and it was hard to know what to say to appease that anger.
I also found it hard to disagree with much of what was being said to me both by disillusioned independence supporters and those who used to lend the SNP their vote.
I take no pleasure in saying I told you so, but for a number of years now I have tried to challenge the party’s lack of strategic direction in relation to independence and its embrace of policies which were far removed from the priorities of the electorate. For doing so, I have been vilified and it’s rather exasperating to see some of those who joined in that vilification now acknowledging that my concerns were well placed when it is almost too late.
Unless the SNP appraise what has gone wrong openly and honestly and embrace radical change, the party won’t recover from this setback and the 2026 Scottish election will be another rout.
Politics is not just about winning elections – it’s about what you do with the power entrusted to you when you win. It has been a failure to deliver on that trust that has led to where we are now.
I am relieved not to have to thole the humiliation currently being endured by what remains of the Westminster group. That group will need to find a new direction. Until Stephen Flynn came along, it was poorly led, and he simply hasn’t had enough time to turn around the problems created by years of ineptitude.
Of course, all is not lost. We only need to look at the way in which the Labour Party have bounced back from the setback of the 2019 General Election to this historic victory. However, it took a lot of hard work and that started with acknowledging honestly what had gone wrong. Are the SNP ready to do that? I’m not sure they are yet.
It is their duty to do so because the issue of independence will not go away. That cannot happen when opinion polls regularly show that around half the population still support it. However, the botched strategy and the wasted opportunities of the past 10 years mean that in the short term at least, the public have other priorities, mandates have been squandered and thanks to the way in which the UK Supreme Court was approached, routes which might have been fruitful have been shut down.
I AM going to take some time off to decide what to do next. Whatever I decide to do, I shall continue to speak truth to power, particularly when it comes to the rights of women and the rights of lesbians. I also intend to continue to contribute to the debate about Scotland’s constitutional future.
The concerns which I have repeatedly expressed about the SNP’s direction in recent years have been vindicated by this terrible election result. It is up to the membership of the SNP to ensure that the radical change required happens. If you are a member or a former member of the SNP, what are you going to do about it? Will you attend your local branch meetings and press for change, arrange an appointment at your MSP’s surgery, attend conference and vote for motions which back change? Or sit back and grumble?
The time for shooting the messenger is long past, particularly as the messenger now is the voting public of Scotland.
