AS the SNP’s defeated candidates made their way off the stage at the Glasgow count, a range of emotion could be read from their faces – sadness, disappointment, perhaps a bit of anger.
But also disbelief – they looked shellshocked. It screamed: “What the f*** just happened?”
That made sense. Afterall, the party had just lost dozens of MPs in the General Election, dropping from 48 to nine. It was a disastrous night.
Speaking with the Sunday National afterwards, David Linden (below) – who lost to Labour’s John Grady by 3784 votes – said there are certainly things the SNP “will want to reflect on” in the aftermath.
“I am long enough in the tooth – this is my sixth Westminster election – to know that blaming the voters or trying to find comfort in anything else will not wash,” he said.
“So, there's a period of time that the SNP are going to have to reach very deep into why this result happened. There's no doubt that we have some deep soul searching to do.”
Speaking after his own defeat in Glasgow South, Stewart McDonald said the party have “a lot of listening” and “a lot of learning” to do.
“There's a sense that we are out of tune with what people are telling us. And that's not just SNP voters,” he said.
“But we have been monumentally skelped across the country, to the point where a shock exit poll was overly generous too.”
McDonald added: “We've been saying a multitude of different things on how to achieve independence, the why of independence.
“It's about time we stopped, paused, understood exactly where we are with this argument, where the people of Scotland are with this argument, so that we can build the positive case that we need to build and actually start to move the dial on independence.
"It hasn't gone away. It very, very clearly hasn't gone away as a major issue in Scottish politics, but it's had a setback.”
In his column for The Scotsman on Saturday, McDonald (above) went a little further in his rhetoric.
“Our national mission of independence has been given a hard pause by the electorate – pro-independence and Unionist alike,” he wrote.
“[But] they haven’t given up on us completely. Indeed, I heard countless SNP supporters tell me they were lending their vote to Labour to get rid of the Tories, and to tell us to get our act together. I know that colleagues across the SNP will have heard that message loud and clear.”
Some were more harsh than others in their assessment – even blaming SNP HQ or the handling of the Michael Matheson expenses scandal.
Toni Giugliano, the SNP’s defeated candidate in Falkirk, argued that the former health minister shouldn’t have been protected by the party after being found to have breached rules on parliamentary expenses over a near-£11,000 data roaming bill on his parliamentary iPad.
He added: "I don’t believe this result is a reflection on support for independence – voters have sent the SNP a very clear message to get their house in order.
“I agree with John Swinney that we must heal our relationship with voters – and Falkirk is the place to start. An MSP found to have breached rules on parliamentary expenses must never again be protected – quite the opposite, they must be removed from office.”
Ex-SNP MP for Stirling Alyn Smith (above), meanwhile, advocated for a rip it up and start again approach.
A letter Smith sent to local members, and seen by The Herald, read: “Locally I think we fought a good campaign, but for about two years now I have been of the view that our national organisation, Holyrood and Westminster groups needed a moorburn to allow us to refocus and get back on track.”
Moorburn is the controlled burning of old moorland vegetation to encourage new growth.
Much food for thought for the SNP hierarchy.
