Whenever there are highly stage-managed events (speeches, launches, public events, media stunts and so on) I have a simple means of assessing their significance. If done well, the razzmatazz and scripting can be almost hypnotic, making you feel something the organisers want you to feel. My technique is simply to ignore it all and make an audit of ‘what changed other than words?’.
Strip out all the noise and all the rhetoric. Forget the design and the light show, the soundtrack or the smiling photos in the document being launched (or whatever). Just try to narrow everything down to a simple ‘before there was this, and after there was this, and here’s the difference’.
That tells you what real change was achieved. Nothing at all changed at the SNP conference. Well, that’s not quite true, but nothing meaningful changed. It presents a deeply concerning picture.
Here’s what didn’t change. There is absolutely no new, serious working process to look at or revise the party’s internal democracy and no suggestion of what change might come. There was no shift at all in core strategy which, however phrased, remains ‘follow the people’s priorities in government, explain why independence is important, stay united’.
There is no meaningful change in personnel. There was no new messaging. There was no new policy. There wasn’t even any new understanding of what’s wrong.
Here’s some more things that didn’t change. The membership didn’t challenge the leadership or ask particularly awkward questions. The tight control and management of the conference continues to cut out any risk of dissent (Angus Robertson faced one critical question before the opportunity for questions was closed). There is no more coherent plan for achieving independence now than there was before.
So what did change? Here, what changed is what (probably) stayed the same. What changed was the policies passed by conference. Once again a sequence of left-orientated and radical policies which go well beyond anything the Scottish Government has done were passed, including on the need to increase revenues through tax.
But the membership has been doing this for a decade now and the leadership just ignores all the resolutions they pass. Members voted against freeports, they voted for land reform, they voted for five specific Common Weal policies (particularly on energy and against PFI). They vote and they vote – and none of these things happen.
No-one I’ve spoken to has any idea what the hell the strategy session concluded other that ‘the leader promises there is a plan’
Is this staying the same? Well, we’ll know tomorrow or Wednesday when the fiscal statement and the Programme for Government are announced. We’ll know because the tax strategy the membership voted for has been public domain and had a high profile for a long time now. They know all about this – if they’re doing it, they’ll do it this week.
If they either ignore this or they do it to a cynically minimalist degree so they can say they did something but try not to scare anyone and so raise such a small sum of money it makes no difference to the budget, then we will know where we are. Which is where we were.
For me, there are two particularly concerning outcomes. The first is that the session which was about learning the lessons of the July defeat and drawing conclusions learned no lessons and drew no conclusions. Whether by design or default (probably the former) it involved two hours of pointless data and platitudes followed by an open mic spot.
The data was what people who don’t know how strategy works thinks data analysis looks like. But proper data analysis should tell you why something happens, and really all this did was repeat the election results out loud. There was talk about the ‘massive’ survey of members – except then the leadership said they had no resources to actually read through what was collected.
This was all stage-management, told us nothing and seems aimed to cut the time for the ‘open mic’ part to as little as they could get away with. No-one I’ve spoken to has any idea what the hell the session concluded other that ‘the leader promises there is a plan’.
Well there isn’t. I promise you there isn’t a plan, and that’s not me speculating. And that’s the second thing I find particularly concerning – that the membership of the SNP is still too willing to clap at platitudes, rely on the word of the leader and apportion the blame externally. If anything has been learned, it isn’t obvious what it is.
For governance reform the leadership is simply pointing to the review which was announced at the last conference and which was supposed to report in the Spring. People involved in it who are seeking reform already report that it is being tightly controlled to prevent significant change.
For government reform the plan doesn’t seem to go beyond the aforementioned ‘following the people’s priorities’, which raises questions about what they think they’ve been doing so far. For a Holyrood election strategy they’re going to explain how independence is essential because of Westminster mismanagement. That too is nominally what they’ve done at the last six or seven elections.
The point is that the membership has been offered a fix-to-come which hasn’t yet been specified but which will be put together by exactly the same people who led us to where we are and which will be based on exactly the same promises which were made to lead us here.
While it might look like the SNP is in denial, it isn’t in denial at all – everyone at any serious level in the party knows that it is in very big trouble
Where does this leave those of us who need an effective SNP but who have no say over what the SNP does? Not in a brilliant position. Basically there seem to be four groups among the membership now. The first is a diminishing payroll which will always follow the direction of the party leadership, whatever that is.
The second is a group of often long-standing members whose hope is independence and who are not desperately political and incline to try and trust their leaders. The third is a group of people who are angry or in despair and have either left the party or are simply disengaged completely. This means it’s the final group where we find anything that looks like a solution.
Because there is a group of serious, deeply concerned people still in the party who know all the things I’ve written above are true and who are very uncomfortable with what is happening. They are willing to drive change, but they need a change option around which they can coalesce. This is the group in whose hands the future of the SNP now really rests.
I’ve spent all summer meeting people and talking to people and trying to come up with suggestions and proposals. I’ve done my very best to be constructive. Among loads of other things, I’ve set out my suggestion for a policy agenda which could help the party at this juncture (here). I have outlined what structural steps I think are needed to get the party back in shape (here).
I’ve tried to explain why it will be very difficult to rebrand the existing continuity leadership, convincing me there needs to be a clear shift to a new political generation (here). And I’ve put forward a proposal to get that new generation into parliament (here). This is a credible package of measures the party could take that stands at least some chance of working.
I now need to move on. I will be watching as things develop further, looking for any remaining opportunities to save things, considering what my own best personal contribution is from here, staying in touch with people who get all of the above and want to do something. But I’ve got work to do beyond trying to persuade the SNP that ‘it isn’t just going to be OK’.
For the time being, the SNP leadership has closed down the avenues for reform and is continuing on the same path as before. My suspicion that nothing has changed will probably be confirmed this week when the Programme for Government ends up looking exactly like it has every other year (though I continue to live in hope…).
And if so I can only conclude that the purpose in what has just happened continues to be factional control, continues to be gripping on to power for its own sake. None of this is going to win the 2026 Scottish Election for the SNP. It is hard to be persuaded this is even going to minimise their losses.
The only thing I can tell you is that, while it might look like the SNP is in denial, it isn’t in denial at all. Everyone at any serious level in the party knows that it is in very big trouble. What is happening isn’t denial but gaslighting. They are asserting that they have a plan they don’t have which will address problems they’re trying to tell people are lesser than they themselves believe them to be.
I didn’t really have any expectation that the conference would go much different than this, but even at that I was disappointed with how lacking in focus the membership were. Too many seemed to have wanted to hear one more bedtime story and the leadership was happy to tell them it.
I have been clear that pain is coming for the SNP. It could be sharp and short or it could be chronic and prolonged. The party instead thought it would take a shot at avoiding pain altogether. I fear the consequences of this for Scotland.