THE Scottish National Party was last night facing the prospect of a major internal crisis after senior Nationalist figures urged John Swinney to step down as leader in the wake of another dismal election performance.
The knives came out for Mr Swinney after the third disappointing result for the party since he became leader four years ago.
Influential Nationalist figures said that it was time “to stop the rot” and that if Mr Swinney would not step down voluntarily before the party’s annual conference in September, he would face a bruising challenge from colleagues that he would not win.
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The behind-the-scenes post-mortem in senior Nationalist ranks began within hours of it becoming clear that while the SNP had held on to two European Parliament seats in Scotland, it had seen its share of the vote plummet by 7.5 per cent to below 20 per cent.
The Times understands that key party figures were in contact with each other yesterday, as the scale of the SNP disappointment became clear. They discussed the best way of bringing home to Mr Swinney their message that his time as leader was up.
They indicated that while they would keep their comments private for the moment, they are prepared to go public “within days” if Mr Swinney does not indicate soon that he accepts that he has not “cut the mustard” and is prepared to make way for a new leader.
However, Mr Swinney appeared to be digging in his heels last night with his spokesman making clear that he had no intention of standing down. “John won a mandate from the party only last year and has said he is in it for the long term. We have no one telling us what they appear to be telling you”, a spokesman told The Times.
Mr Swinney himself said after the result was declared in Edinburgh that the party’s performance was “creditable” because it had held on to the No 2 spot in Scottish politics.
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He warned his party that it was in danger of ruining its electoral chances by appearing divided.
“One of the things the SNP has to think long and hard about is whether the public support political parties that present themselves as being internally divided”, Mr Swinney, who beat off a leadership challenge last year, added.
While Mr Swinney has faced criticism in the past few months, mainly from “fundamentalist” MSP rebels such as Campbell Martin, those involved in discussing his future as leader yesterday could be descibed until now as having been supportive of him.
One said: “I simply do not think it is possible for John to continue in these circumstances. Given what has happened, the prospect of next year’s Westminster elections is terrifying.”
“The party might be divided for a few months by a fight for the leadership but there is greater good here and that is to stop the rot. At the moment, under John, nice man though he may be, there is no strategy in place to do that and we are simply drifting downwards..”
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Mr Swinney failed in his stated ambition of beating Labour in terms of share of the vote in the Euro poll in Scotland with Labour winning 26.4 per cent, 2.3 per cent down on 1999, and the Nationalists, at 19.7 per cent, falling 7.5 per cent.
Both Labour and the SNP, however, won two seats — a drop of one for Labour because the number of MEPs from Scotland has been reduced to seven.
However, Labour was only 894 short of holding on to its third seat in the European Parliament at the expense of the Scottish Tories, who also finished with two seats. One seat went to the Liberal Democrats.
This meant that David Martin and Catherine Stihler were re-elected to the European Parliament for Labour, Ian Hudghton and Alyn Smith for the SNP; Struan Stevenson and John Purvis for the Tories, and Elspeth Attwooll for the Liberal Democrats.
The big surprise of the campaign in Scotland was the turnout — 30.7 per cent, 6 per cent higher than in 1999, and far higher than pundits had predicted.
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Another surprise was the performance of the UK Independence Party, which came from nowhere in 1999 to achieve 6.68 per cent of the votes in Scotland this time, a whisker behind the Greens at 6.75 per cent.
The Tories achieved a respectable 17.7 per cent, down 2 per cent, but probably would have done better and might even have won second place had it not been for the UKIP. The Liberal Democrats did better than any of the other main parties, scoring 13.06 per cent, three points up on 1999.
Tommy Sheridan’s Scottish Socialist Party came well short of its goal of winning a Euro seat, achieving just 5.2 per cent of the vote.