Crisis-hit Scottish National party tries to ride out the storm

Scotland’s governing Scottish National party is facing historic difficulties as it reels from a very public police investigation into its finances. Party president Michael Russell has called it the SNP’s worst crisis in 50 years, while Nicola Sturgeon has said events since she quit as leader last month surpassed her “worst nightmares”.

“It’s a real shit-show,” said one SNP parliamentarian of the turmoil that is threatening the pro-independence party’s long dominance of Scottish politics and sparking fears it could lose many of the 45 seats it holds at Westminster at the next UK general election. “A lot of people are worried.”

How the crisis is handled by Humza Yousaf, who in March narrowly won a divisive leadership campaign to become SNP leader and first minister, will have far-reaching implications for the party and its cause of independence.

Allies of Yousaf said he hoped to ride out the storm by focusing on delivering on promises to improve SNP governance while implementing policies he thinks will restore the party’s reputation for competence.

“He understands that there are things he needs to sort out within the party,” said one person who works closely with Yousaf. “He wants to get on with the business of delivering in government.”

Yet while the ally said Yousaf was winning credit for directly addressing questions about the SNP’s woes — he has repeatedly spoken to journalists at the Scottish parliament over the past few weeks — the first minister remains at the mercy of events.

Yousaf’s attempt to set out a new government agenda was this month overshadowed by the arrest of then SNP treasurer Colin Beattie as part of a police probe sparked by claims the party spent money raised for a future independence referendum on other things.

In early April, police arrested Peter Murrell, former SNP chief executive and Sturgeon’s husband. Both men were released without charge pending further investigation.

Many in the party now worry that Sturgeon herself could be questioned or arrested — a possibility widely speculated about in Scottish media and one that would drown out Yousaf’s attempts to regain the political initiative by publishing last week, for example, a new criminal justice reform bill.

Sturgeon told journalists at Holyrood last week that she had not been questioned by police but declined to comment further on the probe.

“I can’t imagine anyone not being concerned,” said one member of the SNP’s ruling national executive committee. “We need to be braced for the worst and hope for the best.”

While opponents sense weakness in the party that has controlled the devolved government in Edinburgh since 2007, loyalists on its governing body are defiant.

“We are the governing party and we should expect to be attacked by our opponents,” said a second NEC member. “My only issue is with the proportionality. We are held to a degree of scrutiny that seems to be harsh and more judgmental.”

Some members question the dramatic ramping-up of the long-running police investigation, which included high-profile searches of SNP headquarters and of Sturgeon and Murrell’s home.

“It looked like a murder investigation outside the first minister’s house,” said the first NEC member of the police tent and screens erected in Sturgeon and Murrell’s front garden. “People who have spoken to me have been quite shocked by what felt like heavy handed behaviour.”

But they said the NEC was united in accepting the need for reform of the party — which critics have long complained was too closely controlled by a small group centred on Sturgeon and Murrell — and making its workings much more transparent.

A former NEC member who has since left the party said the body’s atmosphere had been “oppressive and unprofessional” and that people who voiced concerns about the party’s governance were sidelined.

The national committee has set out plans for a working group to explore ways to improve governance and to consider “the structural position of headquarters”. Drawing on external input “where appropriate”, the group will publish interim findings by June and a final report before the SNP’s annual conference this autumn.

A third NEC member said he and his colleagues drew comfort from opinion polls suggesting that while the SNP had lost some backers in recent months, it remained ahead of second-placed Labour. Support for independence remains close to its level in 2014, when Scots voted to stay in the UK by 55-45 per cent.

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“Resilience in the polling is definitely something that has brought great heart to everybody during what has been a difficult time,” the NEC member said. “Most parties . . . would bite their hands off for these kinds of polling numbers.” 

Murrell resigned as chief executive in March after the party was forced to admit it had 72,000 members, some way off the more than 100,000 it claimed at the start of the leadership race and far below a peak of 125,000 in 2019.

But SNP stalwarts have been cheered by the party’s claims that its membership has rebounded slightly since the final days of the leadership race.

Some critics question the ability of the NEC to effect genuine reform, arguing that it failed for years to properly scrutinise party operations. But members say the body is united behind Yousaf. “At the moment, it’s positive and constructive and looking to move forward together,” said the first member.

Still, some senior SNP figures not on the ruling body say its MPs, MSPs and leadership have yet to fully reckon with the scale of the crisis. They cite funding worries, fuelled by admissions that the party’s lack of an auditor means its MPs in Westminster risk losing access to £1.2mn in state subsidies this year.

“I’m astonished about how otherwise serious and intelligent people are in such deep denial,” said the parliamentarian. “There could be more damage as the scandal unfolds.”

Other independence supporters insist that their cause of ending Scotland’s three century-old union with England is bigger than any single political party, even one as formidable as the SNP was under Sturgeon and her predecessor Alex Salmond.

Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp, founder of pro-independence campaign group Believe in Scotland, said the SNP might bounce back if Yousaf was seen to effectively tackle its governance problems.

“If they don’t, we’ll just form another political party,” he said. “This is not the end of independence.”