The implosion of the Scottish National party

It would have been hard to imagine, when Nicola Sturgeon stood down as Scotland’s first minister in February, the mess her Scottish National party would be in just weeks later. The party’s former chief executive — Sturgeon’s husband — was arrested this month in a long-running police investigation into SNP finances. Even as the new leader, Humza Yousaf, sought to seize the narrative on Tuesday by presenting his governing agenda, the SNP treasurer was taken in for questioning in the same probe. Yousaf needs to get a grip on the party’s governance, but has not yet shown he can do so.

Sturgeon’s husband Peter Murrell had already resigned as SNP chief during the leadership campaign, taking responsibility for media being misled over the party’s membership numbers (72,000, not 100,000-plus as had been claimed). Police then questioned him in a probe of party funding opened after donor complaints alleging that £600,000 the SNP raised in 2017 for pro-independence campaigning was misdirected to other purposes. Though Murrell was released without charge, pending further inquiries, the image of a police forensics tent in the couple’s Glasgow garden will linger in Scots’ minds. Sturgeon has had to deny suggestions that she resigned because she knew what was coming.

It has since emerged that the party’s auditors resigned six months ago; Yousaf says he found out only when he became leader. A leaked video has shown Sturgeon assuring the SNP executive in March 2021 that party finances were fine and not a topic for discussion.

No evidence of criminality has so far been presented, and the Scottish nationalists can point out that the UK-wide parties are no strangers to sleaze allegations. But the SNP has always claimed to be superior to Westminster counterparts. Instead, the veneer of discipline and competence Sturgeon and her predecessor Alex Salmond toiled to establish has been peeled away. Discipline, it seems, came at the cost of excessive control by a closed circle around the ruling couple.

With support for independence stuck at about 45 per cent and no near-term route to that goal, Yousaf was always going to have to focus on showing the SNP could provide capable government. It is now clear he must first reform his party and provide a proper accounting — though this will be complicated by the ongoing legal probe. An external review of governance and processes is needed. The inner circle must be widened, and powers rebalanced between the leadership and elected office holders. The party must swiftly resolve its “difficulty” in appointing new auditors.

The problem is Yousaf was a continuity candidate with a lacklustre record, supported by little over half of party voters in a divisive poll. He must distance himself from Sturgeon and the very party establishment from which he sprang, and demonstrate a political savvy he has not hitherto evinced. Letting in more light, moreover, risks re-exposing the cracks in a party united by dreams of sovereignty but little else.

If Yousaf fails, and pro-independence members lose a majority in Scotland’s parliament, the basis for demanding a new referendum falls away. Recent polls suggest, though, that support for the SNP has softened by more than backing for independence itself. That means there is no room for glee in London at the SNP’s discomfiture.

With young Scots tending to identify more as Scottish than British, the sovereignty cause has demographics on its side. The SNP’s travails are a chance for Conservatives and, above all, Labour, to regain Scottish seats. They open space, too, to remake the case for why Scotland is better off within the UK. Westminster parties, and all who value the union, should not squander it.