Swinney ‘must quit over SNP humiliation at polls’

A former SNP cabinet minister has called on John Swinney to quit after the party’s election drubbing.

Alex Neil, who served in cabinets with Mr Swinney including as SNP health secretary, said the party’s campaign had been “rubbish” and that the First Minister was tarnished by his close ties to Nicola Sturgeon.

He urged the SNP leader, who took over the reins of the party for a second time in May, to stand aside to let Kate Forbes and Stephen Flynn run the SNP.

The SNP won only nine seats, a fall from 48 in 2019, leading to bitter nationalist infighting.

Mr Neil, who served in SNP governments between 2009 and 2016, said Mr Swinney’s leadership was not tenable given the scale of the rout.

Labour, which many in the SNP believed they had permanently supplanted, won 37 seats in Scotland.

Mr Neil said that should Mr Swinney refuse to quit, he would lead the party to “another rout” in the 2026 Holyrood elections.

“The campaign we ran was rubbish,” Mr Neil told The Herald.

“There was a lack of a clear message coming across – one minute talking about independence, the next devo max.

“The only two people who we have there are Kate Forbes and Stephen Flynn. My view is that Swinney should hand over to that new generation.

“He is not a fresh leader. He is associated with the Sturgeon years and the mistakes Sturgeon made.

“He was her chief cheerleader and implemented a lot of the daft policies that she tried to push through the Parliament.

‘No time to spare’

“I think the party conference is still scheduled for the end of August – that would be the ideal time to do so and have a quick leadership election this summer.

“There will only be 20 months to the election – they have no time to spare.”

Allies of Mr Swinney have pointed to the short time in which he has been leader, claiming this means he should not be held responsible for the scale of the defeat.

However, he is facing pressure to set out how he plans to respond to the election disaster for the SNP.

The morning after the election, he denied that he had even considered standing down and insisted he remained an asset to the party.

Ms Forbes, who Mr Swinney made deputy first minister after persuading her not to stand against him for the leadership after Humza Yousaf resigned, on Monday defended the leader.

She backed Mr Swinney to improve the SNP’s reputation for “competence and integrity” following the humbling defeat for her party.

‘I am very pleased to support him’

Ms Forbes also urged her party to listen to the electorate, after some senior figures attempted to dismiss the shift to Labour as a symptom of Tory incompetence.

“Competence and integrity must be the hallmark of our leadership and it’s certainly the two words that have been on John Swinney’s lips prior to the election, throughout the election and now in the aftermath of the election,” she said

“Those are two flags, as it were, that need to be planted on everything that we do and I believe John Swinney is the leader to do that and I am very pleased to be supporting him in his mission to achieve that.”

Mr Flynn, the party’s Westminster leader who clung on to his Aberdeen South seat, said the SNP should be guided by the “brutal honesty” of the election results, though he backed Mr Swinney to stay in post.