'I don’t think Scottish independence can be secured right now'

He readily agreed to my request for an interview, mainly to discuss the healing that was required after what had been a bruising leadership contest. And then the sky fell in on the SNP.

We meet in Gourock the day after the arrest of Peter Murrell, SNP Chief Executive, following a two-year police investigation into matters pertaining to the party’s finances. Mr Murrell was subsequently released without charge after nearly 12 hours of questioning, pending further investigation.

But not before a dozen police vans had descended on the Glasgow home he shares with his wife, Nicola Sturgeon, and a forensic search of it carried out by a large squad of officers. At the same time as this was taking place, an equally deep search was being made of SNP headquarters near the Holyrood parliament.  

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Next year will be his 50th as a member of the SNP, during which he’s seen nine leaders come and go. Today, he’s perjink in a tweed suit and for a moment you catch something twinkly in his features. Is it relief, perhaps, that as a wildfire sweeps through his stricken party the flames won’t be burning down his door?

“In my 50-year association with the party this is the biggest and most challenging crisis we’ve ever faced, certainly while we’ve been in government. But I have an obligation to this party and the movement for Scottish independence that’s been such a massive part of my life for so long.

“I’ll do as much as I can, but it’s true that the last few weeks have been pretty wearing. All I can do is put my trust in working with others to get it right. Like it or not, the party has chosen Humza to do this and I want to help him in that as much as I can. Parties and institutions are fallible. In a sense though, it’s a case of The King is Dead, Long Live the King. That’s the way it’s got to be.

“I don’t think independence can be secured right now; we need to work towards some coordinated campaigning. But I think this is achievable. My main focus is how we can create a new Yes movement that allows for different visions but conducted in an atmosphere of mutual trust. That’s going to be really tough, given where we currently are, but it’s vital that we find a way to do it.

“I heard Jim Naughtie on Radio 4 last week postulating that the next election was a choice between Labour saying ‘we’ll get rid of the Tories’ and the SNP saying ‘we’ll give you independence at some stage in the future’. But that’s not the choice. The choice is between Labour saying, ‘we’ll get rid of the Tories for now’ and the SNP saying, ‘we’ll get rid of the Tories forever’. Surely that has to be our core message.”

He backs the calls for an overhaul of the chaotic governances and structures of a party which seemed to have slipped anchor from reality a long time ago. And he acknowledges that if they are ever to regain the trust of its own members, let alone the wider Scottish public, this needs to be directed by an external agency with no party affiliations. Even then, it may already be too late to save the SNP from an electoral Armageddon at both the Westminster and Holyrood elections.

READ MORE: Scottish independence: Humza Yousaf says 'realistic' within five years

No matter what the police investigation turns up, there was already a widely-held perception within the party that something was very badly wrong in the SNP back office: that there wasn’t proper accountability; that too many unelected individuals had too much power and that after almost two years of questions about the whereabouts of the missing 600k there had been no adequate explanation. For any organisation, let alone the party of government, that’s very, very bad.

“Look, there are some people who wouldn’t accept an explanation about some of the conspiracy theories even if the archangel Gabriel gave them it personally,” he says. “That having been said, I was very pleased Humza’s first statement was making exactly the same point, that we need a thorough, intensive, accountable and open examination of governances inside the party. That has to happen.”

He talks about re-constituting the wider yes campaign and uniting various groups whom Nicola Sturgeon and her acolytes at the top of the party considered to be toxic.

So, if you’re talking about rebuilding the Yes movement, I ask him, is there a place in there for such as Common Weal who represent a significant strand of thinking in the party? Would Alba be included in this? Recent seat projections suggest they could win a handful. Would he be happy to reach out and work with them?

“With Common Weal, I have a copy of their most recent work. In fact I’ve bought most of their publications. They have a valuable contribution to make. With Alba, there’s a difficulty, especially if their purpose is to draw members away from the SNP by vilifying the party. But if we could find some means by which we could have a positive dialogue based on mutual respect well, it would still be difficult but it would be entirely possible.”

Does he think the cause has been severely damaged by the events of the last 48 hours? He pauses and picks his words carefully. “I don’t know, is the answer. I think people who don’t know what the situation is know that something is wrong and that it needs sorting out. But actually, the figures for independence are still holding up quite well.

“What the independence movement is trying to do is uniquely difficult. To bring a mature democracy to independence in the first part of the 21st century with all the entanglements that exist and we haven’t worked out how to do it yet. I think we’d be best served by a unified Yes movement trying to work that out. You can’t do that when one part of the Yes movement wants to destroy another part of it. That’s the problem.”

Perhaps, but I wonder if the people inside the party understand how much damage has been done to its reputation by events of the last two months, starting with Nicola Sturgeon suddenly resigning three weeks after saying she was here for the long haul. There was the truncated nature of the leadership contest; the abuse that one candidate received simply for her faith in this modern, enlightened, progressive party and then of course the police investigation.

The party can’t be trusted; the leader has been tainted; and there has to be a purification, whatever way it’s done. Not for the people inside the trenches but for the people it needs to reach to get them to vote Yes.

As Stephen Flynn (SNP group leader at Westminster) said: “It’s difficult to get those images of police vans outside the house of your leader out your head.” I tell him that, no matter the outcome of the investigation, a healing is required before those perceptions need to be addressed. And that the people who have these perceptions are not necessarily the enemies of the party; they’re not the so-called Unionist commentariat, they’re just ordinary people who are saying: “I want to be persuaded, but you’re making it difficult.”

“Okay, I accept that. I think there are good people who have left to join Alba and I understand that. But I also think there’s an attempt to damage the SNP as an institution, but sometimes when you see the sheer weight of Unionist commentary you realise it’s just remorseless and that it’s an attempt to delegitimise any belief in independence

“Yes. But that’s always been the case.”

"No, it’s worse now than it was in 2014, much worse.”

I disagree. In 2013/14 every single newspaper on a daily basis bar one was lined up against independence. Nor was it merely criticism; it was outright falsehoods about pensions; the EU, the Border. How is it worse now?

“I would have thought so too,” he says, “but it has and it’s taken on a bitterly personal dimension. I think it’s got substantially worse. Each of the arguments can be refuted, but what can never be refuted are the conspiracy theories. And some of them are allegations being repeated by people who back independence.”

Has he ever read any of the abuse meted out by the Scottish Greens, I wonder.  

READ MORE: Are Scottish Greens giving SNP a bad name on business?: Ian McConnell

“I know you’re no fan of the Greens,” he says, which is something of an understatement. The problem for him and his party is that neither are many of his members.

“Why are they deemed to be essential to the government?” I ask him. “Humza more or less said he couldn’t govern without them. Yet, Alex Salmond managed a minority government well from 2007 until 2011 with far fewer MSPs."

“It was a far different environment back then, much less toxic,” he insists. “You could do business with the opposition back then. And besides, I don’t agree with you about the Greens. I’ve worked with them for years and I think they are making a valuable contribution. The climate emergency is the pre-eminent major global issue and it’s essential we have their input. I’m just not going to be part of a process of vilifying people. It’s just not what I’m about.”

“So, let’s talk more about being kind and not vilifying people,” I suggest, and so we revisit the leadership election and specifically the treatment of Kate Forbes. I tell him that if she’d become First Minister I’d probably have become far more critical of her, owing to her laissez-faire economic views and because I’m much more left-wing than her.

But then, out of pure human empathy, I was hoping that someone in the party was looking after her with all that she was being subjected to. “The abuse was visceral,” I tell him. “Yet she was far more honest about her views on equal marriage than Humza. Didn’t you, as the father figure of the party, have some sympathy for her and what she was being subject to?”

“Of course, and I said to all three candidates that if they wanted to sit down with me to discuss this then I’d be happy to help. But I can’t do it ex-cathedra because that would be seen to be intervening. I chaired four hustings and I made it clear how impartial I was. I think Kate still has an important role to play in this party.

“But I think too that the effects of some of the criticism of her was over-stated. I think many of our members were able to look beyond that and see for themselves that some of the criticism wasn’t fair or right. I was coming back from one of the hustings and met a gay couple on the boat who were party members. They said they’d be voting for her because they were reassured by her. And I think when you meet her in person you realise that she is a genuine person and has a genuine contribution to make. And I can assure you that she’s perfectly capable of looking after herself.”

“Fair enough,” I say, “but the results of the leadership election said very clearly to the rest of the country that this is a house divided. Even before this, there was a perception among the party faithful that there were too many bad actors on the NEC and in the upper echelons of the party whose actions were negating any progress towards independence.” I rhyme off a list of those I consider to be the party’s rockets and bangers. 

“Well, let me say this, I very much doubt if any of those people will be involved, and anyway, none of them carry sufficient weight or substance to move this forward. There’s a false perception out there that certain people are controlling things, but they’re not controlling things: they’re just noisy.”

That may be true, I say, but don’t these people give a flavour of the party and what it’s about to people who don’t know much its internal politics?

“Okay,” he says, “I accept that and on several occasions I’ve had to take certain people aside and say: ‘Look, shut the f*** up. There’s no need to do that’. But equally, I don’t want to sound like an Anglican preacher as this risks having the opposite effect.

“With all due respect, Mike,” I tell him, “that party of yours could probably be doing with a few more f***ckin Anglican preachers right now, if you don’t mind me saying so.”