The SNP leadership contest, between Kate Forbes, Humza Yousaf and Ash Regan, seems to prove why political parties should not wash their dirty linen in public. But when there’s nowhere else to do it, the public arena becomes the only location in town. And despite the rancour on display, maybe this long postponed outpouring of difference is no bad thing.
The airing of grievance can only be put off for so long by any governing party – especially one so large that eyebrows were raised this week when “only” 78,000 voting cards were reportedly dispatched – if true, this would be a 30% drop in SNP membership since 2014. But it would still be more than the entire UK membership of the Lib Dems.
And beyond the party faithful, between 40% and 50% of Scots consistently support the party at each election, so it would be beyond belief to find there was no substantial difference in policy or strategy for independence.
Yet Nicola Sturgeon’s eight years at the helm produced an uncanny level of apparent agreement – despite the split by Alex Salmond to form the Alba party in 2021. She has been the elegant cork in a bottle that was always going to blow without her general skill at containing, diffusing and distracting from some fairly irreconcilable differences.
However, cracks were starting to appear. It’s true that the Scottish parliament as a whole backed the recent gender recognition reform bill, but when the first minister made trans rights a priority for the SNP and the practical consequences for housing prisoners (though probably more to do with the Equality Act) emerged, it riled many. Partly because of the perceived threat to women’s safe spaces but also because of the difficulty of where to lock up convicted rapist Isla Bryson, it was the latest in a mounting stack of delivery failures. As a result, key Sturgeon policies such as the national care bill are now being stalled, rethought or openly disowned by candidates.
And Sturgeon’s strategy of pursuing a lawful referendum from a reluctant Westminster by turning the next general election into a de facto referendum is not endorsed by any of the three leadership candidates.
So it is high time the SNP debated a whole range of topics. Control of the party’s conference by Sturgeon’s husband, SNP chief executive Peter Murrell, has led to a sanitising of the agenda, and a change in party rules has prevented “troublesome” MPs like Joanna Cherry switching easily from Westminster to Holyrood. In addition, a police investigation continues into an alleged £600,000 of funds missing from ringfenced monies raised on Murrell’s watch for the purposes of a future referendum campaign.
All sorts of long-suppressed(or repressed) grievances and quite legitimate policy differences are coming to a head, then – simultaneously and through the not quite matching prism of three hastily selected candidates seeking to replace a woman who has been the most popular politician in Britain.
Although it hasn’t been a pretty leadership contest, it might still be better than stumbling on under a weakened first minister. And it has served two purposes. First, it’s better to get all these grievances out than to keep them festering in the semi-private domain of social media. And it’s far better to have proper internal democracy – robust and occasionally carnaptious – than an ugly explosion when teacher finally leaves the room.
Second, a whole stack of issues has actually been aired. The SNP’s record has taken quite a battering – not least from leadership candidates themselves. But that’s prompted long overdue questions about initiatives such as green freeports – the version of the UK scheme backed by Forbes when she was finance secretary. Are they to be reluctantly embraced as the only investment vehicle in town, an unashamedly good idea to kickstart investment, or to be fiercely resisted as making it easier for money laundering and casualised working practices?
We do need to know.
The other question that needs to be asked (even though it may be unpopular), is whether the next first minister will actually be a caretaker. After two exceptionally long-serving and very visible leaders dominating Scottish politics for about eight years apiece, the next first minister has hard acts to follow. Much is said in life about the difficult second album. How many bands even reach the third?
In this contest, there’s extra reason to speculate. Much of the party’s talent is stuck in the House of Commons, due to the coincidence that a general election was the first electoral contest after the independence referendum. Folk fired up about independence left day jobs as doctors and lawyers – to jointhe ranks at Westminster and, Cherry’s epic legal challenge over Brexit not withstanding, rapidly found they were in the wrong parliament. For believers in Scottish independence, the centre of the political universe is Edinburgh, not London.
If members could easily return to Holyrood, might these two experienced MPs have stood in this election, as Alex Salmond MP did in 2004? Might the new, vigorous tag team of Stephen Flynn and Mhairi Black have presented the members with a latter-day version of the old Salmond/Sturgeon lineup?
Might such a leadership team come forward if Murrell is challenged, and SNP rules restored to their pre-2014 status? It’s a tantalising possibility.
Meanwhile, with each televised debate and online hustings, the big questions facing each candidate arebeing honed. For Forbes, we know she is a social conservative but is she an economic conservative too, as the only candidate who sat on the largely discredited growth commission? Does she favour inward investment and wealth creation over redistribution and the clever use of public procurement to drive restored local economies?
For Yousaf, dubbed the continuity candidate, we need to know whether he is run by SNP headquarters and Murrell or is indeed his own man. Lots of very similar-looking videos have appeared in what looks like a highly orchestrated social media campaign.
Regan, the former community safety minister who resigned over gender reform legislation and styles herself as the independence candidate, must reassure SNP members that her leadership would not be a Trojan horse for Salmond’s ambitions.
For all the candidates though, taking lumps out of one another in Hunger Games-style pugilistic confrontations is not the way to impress party members. Although I’m not an SNP member, I’d vote for the first candidate to step back, refuse to pick up any more cudgels, reflect on the extraordinary success of the SNP and talk about the way independence could transform Scotland.
But washing dirty linen in public has engaged voters with hitherto unknown figures, normalised discussion of independence, and proofed possible leaders with the steepest imaginable learning curve. And on balance, that may not prove to be the catastrophe hoped for by the SNP’s unionist rivals.
Lesley Riddoch is a writer, journalist, campaigner and broadcaster
