SNP is on a Doomsday cult mission towards complete self-destruction

That phrase – first uttered by Gerald Kaufman to describe Labour’s 1983 manifesto – referred to grand, left-wing policy proposals as opposed to the reaping of a harvest long since sown. But it is apposite nonetheless.

As the SNP heads towards its conference weekend – its morale rock-bottom, its membership slashed – it appears to have embarked upon a Doomsday cult-scale mission to self-destruct.

Where to start, one wonders. With the drug deaths that have risen yet again, three years after Nicola Sturgeon acknowledged she had taken her “eye off the ball”?

With the closing down of Creative Scotland’s Open Fund for Individuals which so distressed the country’s once SNP-minded literati, the outgoing Makar Kathleen Jamie was moved to tweet “Really? REALLY? This is Creative Scotland and the Scottish Government at their worst”?

Or with the ending of the ScotRail peak-fares removal pilot which – if it didn’t persuade motorists off the roads – at least provided those who already travel by train with a slither of compensation for a woeful service.

But, no. Let’s come back to those. Let’s start with the row over External Affairs secretary Angus Robertson meeting the deputy Israeli ambassador Daniela Grudsky Ekstein, which both robbed the SNP of its moral authority on Gaza and opened it up to accusations of anti-Semitism.

What’s fascinating about this row is that, unlike the cuts, which are multifactorial, here we witnessed one unforced error after another.

Members attend the SNP's previous conference

Diplomatic muscle

It would have been odd for a government which sees Scotland as a world player to refuse to meet Grudsky Ekstein. Such an encounter offered Robertson the opportunity to flex his diplomatic muscle and restate the party’s consistently-held position: that Israel should agree to an immediate ceasefire.

And perhaps Robertson did those things. But he also posed for a congenial photograph, which allowed the deputy ambassador to post a congenial message about “the unique commonalities between [the two countries]” and future co-operation “in the fields of technology, culture and renewable energy”.

Having lost control of the narrative, the SNP proceeded to lose control of longstanding liability John Mason, whose unsolicited “support” for Robertson took the form of a tweet opining that “if Israel had wanted to commit genocide they would have killed ten times as many”. This on the week the death toll tipped 40,000. Mason, who has previously defended abortion clinic “vigils”, was stripped of the whip.

Given he had already ruled himself out as a candidate for 2026, this was a masterclass in locking the stable door after the horse had bolted.

Nor did it work as a deflection because, by then, all hell had broken loose. Actual MSPs were quote-tweeting the Robertson/Grudsky Ekstein photo with sad-faced emojis, while furious members were calling for his resignation or tendering their own. And so Robertson apologised: an act which made no sense at all.

John Swinney clearly sent him/knew he was going and, in any functioning organisation, would have stepped up and taken responsibility for the fallout.

This omnishambles is important in its own terms. But it also shows how the party has lost its way: on tone, leadership, and internal discipline.

“When a party capitulates to the angriest of its members, it’s game over,” one newly-hatched Labour MP said.

And while he clearly had his own agenda, there’s an unmistakable whiff of end of empire in the air.

That Shona Robison is having to apply an “emergency brake” to spending is not entirely the SNP’s own doing. It is difficult to budget when there is so little clarity over how much money will be forthcoming from Westminster. And the Scottish government does lack some of the levers that would help it take greater control of its own destiny.

The suggestion Ian Murray will soon have £150 million to hand directly to local authorities for “anti-poverty initiatives” is particularly galling given this is very close to the amount it would cost to continue to fund the universal winter fuel payment north of the Border, and £50m less than it would cost to mitigate the two-child benefits cap.

SNP rosettes

Exploiting poverty

THE exploitation of poverty to provoke constitutional strife is never a good look. Then again, in the last 17 years, the SNP has done its best to emasculate local authorities. What goes around comes around, I guess. Talking about the emasculation of local authorities, it’s hard to feel too much sympathy for the SNP when it chose to squander almost £210m on a council tax freeze which benefited the better-off.

Humza Yousaf announced that policy as his big reveal at last October’s conference when the party was reeling from the Rutherglen by-election defeat.

Now it’s reeling from a General Election defeat, and being forced to make other eye-watering choices, including the scrapping of free bus travel for asylum seekers (missed that one earlier).

It’s also tipped to abandon the council tax freeze, allowing local authorities to “let rip”.

So much for consistency but isn’t that the problem?

Scottish politics has been so dominated by the constitutional question that no space has been cleared for long-term fiscal contemplation. The SNP has failed to ask both micro questions about day-to-day spending priorities and macro questions such as: “Whither universalism?” and “What kind of a nation do we want to be, and how do we achieve it?”

(“Is an effective public transport system integral to our climate change targets?”; “How can we emulate Ireland’s thriving literary ecosphere?”).

It is this lack of rigour and follow-through that has led to a 12% rise in the drug deaths for 2023 (after a drop the year before), and to Creative Scotland being left with a black hole in its finances.

Public emergency

IT is three years since Sturgeon declared drug deaths a public emergency and allocated £50m a year to improving access to treatment services. Yet its own data shows its flagship Medication Assisted Treatment Standards (targets for the prescribing of opioid substitutes such as methadone) have still not been fully implemented.

Nicola Sturgeon

Meanwhile, in March, it emerged the number of rehab beds had risen by 32 –

or just 8% – despite Sturgeon promising they would have doubled by 2026.

The same delivery gap is wrecking Scottish culture. Last year, Yousaf pledged an additional £100m for the arts, a sum that was supposed to include a £6.6m grant-in-aid budget cut from Creative Scotland, and then reinstated.

Creative Scotland planned to use £3m of that money for the Open Fund, but with the Scottish Government unable to confirm release of the money, it had no choice, it said, but to shut it down.

The Campaign for the Arts is now saying that without further action, Scotland could face a “cultural catastrophe”.

The demographic affected by drug deaths might appear to be very different to the demographic affected by arts cuts, but in fact they are similar: the poorest both dying in disproportionate numbers, and being disproportionately denied the opportunity for the kind of self-expression care-experienced author Jenni Fagan has said kept her alive.

All said, next weekend’s SNP conference is set to be a sore one. There is no rabbit big enough or white enough to offset its decline.

The best Swinney can hope for is no more acts of wilful self-harm. This is a party not so much waiting for the curtain to fall, but tugging on the cords.