Even before Thursday’s jaw-dropping news that one of its MPs is joining the Conservatives, this year’s Scottish National party conference was bound to be the most challenging for years. As the first SNP conference since Humza Yousaf succeeded Nicola Sturgeon as leader, the first since the police investigation into the party’s finances, and the first since Labour’s sweeping victory over the nationalists in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West byelection, next week’s gathering in Aberdeen already had plenty of problems to navigate.
The defection of Lisa Cameron to the Tories may seem at first sight to be much more manageable, given the SNP’s loathing of the Conservatives. Yet the charges that Ms Cameron levelled against the SNP as she quit cannot be brushed aside so easily. They carry too many echoes for that. The SNP is already facing a cold electoral wind for the first time in more than a decade. The loss of another MP could turn the headwind into something even icier.
