What happens if or when SNP lose at the general election?

It’s been a strange, almost dissociative, week for the SNP.

The party of government appears to be blithely wandering around in some fantasy-land, imagining all is well with its fortunes, whilst completely disregarding how matters are tanking left, right and centre, especially in the polls.

First let’s look at those polls. Three massive surveys were published within an hour of each this week, spelling doom, doom and more doom for John Swinney.

A YouGov poll put Labour as the largest party in Scotland by a margin of eight seats. Labour would have 28 MPs, to the SNP’s 20. The Tories are on five and LibDems four. Alba’s two seats – held by defectors from the SNP – will go to Labour.

A More in Common poll also predicted the end of SNP dominance, with the party reduced to 18 seats, and Labour once more becoming the biggest party with 33 MPs. Even worse for the SNP was a Savanta poll which put the nationalists on just eight seats.

While clearly, polls can be wrong, none of this looks good for the SNP. Indeed, the party appears to be retreating north in Scotland, with possible wipeout in much of the Central Belt.

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There’s a distinct chance now that the SNP will completely lose Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee. Glasgow and Dundee would be particularly harsh blows as both voted a majority for Yes at the 2014 referendum.

Meanwhile, John Swinney cuts an increasingly absurd figure as he repeats his assertion that an SNP win at the General Election would be a mandate for another referendum.

Deepening the sense of absurdity, the First Minister even claimed that if voters failed to back his party on July 4 the SNP still had a mandate from the 2021 Holyrood election.

He said that in 2021 Scotland had “voted for a Scottish Parliament with a clear majority for independence and a referendum. That democratic choice must be respected”.

It’s truly bizarre, frankly nonsensical thinking, with an unpleasant anti-democratic whiff to it. Mandates do not last forever. They have to be won again and again. By Swinney’s rationale the Conservative and Unionist parties of the 1950s would still have a mandate in Scotland after their post-war election wins.

Nor does the SNP seem to heed the understandable anger around a series of reports detailing how the government has apparently failed to spend huge amounts of the funding available to it, despite the cuts inflicted to public services, cries of poverty, and finger-pointing towards Westminster.

All in all, matters look pretty bleak for the SNP, despite the fact that its leading members seem to be wrapped in a comfort-blanket of impenetrable self-belief, which others might describe as delusional.

So what happens if, as polls predict, the SNP gets hammered at the General Election. Would Swinney survive? How could he hang on, if he fails to staunch the wounds left by Nicola Sturgeon’s departure, the unedifying division of the leadership contest, and the short reign of Humza Yousaf? But getting rid of him could be just as damaging.

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The SNP will shortly be staring down the barrel of the Holyrood election. They need to get their act together quickly after July 4 if they’re to have any hope of holding onto power in Edinburgh.

Yet panic is never a good place from which to plan. Keeping Swinney would be seen as an acceptance of decline. However, removing him could lead to the party shifting right under someone like Kate Forbes.

That may keep the rebellious socially and economically conservative wing of the SNP happy, but it will do nothing to hold onto the socially liberal and progressive voters who gave the party its wins. Drifting right would guarantee defeat at Holyrood.

Independence will certainly fade as an issue. Support for it won’t evaporate, though. The numbers for and against independence remain stubbornly like 2014, with almost half the country still Yes voters.

Might the Yes campaign become more civic rather than political, with leaders emerging from the world of trade unions, the media, and the arts? Maybe. That would certainly be interesting and provide a new dynamic in the constitutional question, which is otherwise moribund and dull.

Support for independence still remains split despite falling support for the SNP (Image: Unsplash)

Scottish Labour would have to find some way to reach out to Yes voters, if the SNP took a beating at the general election and the path to power in Holyrood opened up for Anas Sarwar.

Yes supporters might be happy to lend votes to Labour in July to get the Tories out in London, but Edinburgh will be a different matter. They’ll want something from Sarwar and it would have to be a big constitutional offer: full powers of home rule, with everything but defence and foreign left to Westminster?

Relations between Edinburgh and London should improve. With Keir Starmer all but assured a huge majority, a Labour administration won’t play the bully with quite the same relish as the Conservative Party with its mantra of muscular unionism.

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That in itself would bode ill for the SNP. It depends to a large part on grievance and if the UK government is more amenable, then grievance will be harder to muster. Tolerance for the SNP’s blame-game is running thin, even among its own supporters.

The biggest effect from SNP defeat at the general election, though, will be psychological. Both the party and Yes movement will be floored by losing, and rattled over Holyrood 2026.

That blow alone will be hard to recover from. It risks a dangerous response from the SNP, if members are left thinking that taking a populist tack is all that remains to them.

Within weeks, Scotland will be changed. That is unquestionably the case. Will that change ripple all the way to the Scottish election in 2026? It seems that too is unquestionable. The nation’s politics are in flux.