Reader, I bear bad news. You thought that, with the General Election out of the way, you could put your politicians back in a box for a while and carry on with your lives, free of empty promises and juvenile hyperbole. Alas, no, for today marks the start of party conference season.

Much like the autumn temperatures, party conferences have come early this year, emphatically confirming that summer is over. They were, you see, supposed to double-up as pre-election rallies ahead of what was expected to be a November poll, before Rishi Sunak finally decided he had had enough, and threw in the towel.

First, this weekend in Edinburgh, we have the SNP. Heads down, nationalist politicians and members will amble into the Edinburgh International Conference Centre in the heart of the city, in an existential funk, looking for answers.

They will, largely, be able to be split into two groups. There will be the group that thinks the electorate got this one wrong. That the people made a mistake and failed to spot the immutable virtue of the SNP. Erred in allowing their pencil to gravitate towards the box marked "Labour" on July 4.

And there will be the group that realises the SNP had this coming. That for, perhaps, a decade, they were operating in a world without credible opposition and therefore without political consequence. That they believed in their own virtue a little too much, caught a nasty bout of confirmation bias and lost their hitherto sharp political connection with the wants and needs of the ordinary person.

The party’s short-term fortunes depend on how many belong to the former group, and how many belong to the latter. And it depends, even more so, on the level of understanding amongst the party’s senior elected politicians of why July 4 happened.

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Remarkably, those bowed heads converging on Edinburgh today have reason to be more optimistic. The SNP took a walloping at the General Election, but polling and instinct both lead us to believe that they are in the fight for the 2026 Holyrood election which, from their perspective as the governing party, is far more important than the Westminster one just past.

The most recent poll - the only one conducted since the General Election - shows the party on 33 per cent in the constituency vote, leading Labour by three points, and tied on 28% on the regional vote. Despite it all; despite the poor economic growth, the declining performance of the public services, the crumbling transport infrastructure, despite even the ongoing police investigation and the disastrous couple of years in government with the Greens; despite all of that one in three people in this country intend to vote for the SNP, in a poll that, if replicated in an election would have them narrowly beat the Labour party.

This should be a lightbulb moment for the SNP.

It should be the moment where the Scottish Government’s Cabinet gather around the table and say, “hey, we can still win this thing”.

But how?

First, they must accept, publicly, that they have made mistakes. That, in the latter years of this lengthy period in government, they have focussed on frivolity and rejected the real issues which affect people every day. That, since the Government was given increased financial powers, it has not used them well.

Then, they must take the opportunity that the public financial constraints offer to them to renovate Scotland. Sir Keir Starmer, this week, revealed his three-word-slogan "Fixing The Foundations’". For the SNP, they should make it their business to "Build The Foundations" for an open, prosperous Scotland, in our nation’s best tradition of compassionate capitalism.

That means levelling with the comfortable classes and the older generation; no, you cannot access universal benefits, and it is not because we want to harm you, it is because we want to help your children and grandchildren, who are paying for this largesse. You don’t want your children and grandchildren to pick up the bill for your bus passes, your prescriptions and your heating, when they’re struggling to put food on their own table, do you?

It means trusting people to cope with a debate about tax, and to understand that the constantly increasing levels of personal taxation on higher earners are actually reducing investment, limiting job creation, and reducing the tax receipts we need to pay for the things we want. Voters are not quite as stupid as politicians think they are, and John Swinney and Kate Forbes are perfectly able to articulate why they need to reverse all of these damaging tax increases.

Voters will also respond well to Mr Swinney and Ms Forbes placing a large sign on Scotland saying "open for business". That means scrapping all state interference in levels of rent in the housing market, and inviting investors and builders in to address our chronic housing supply issues. And it means inviting private finance back into Scotland as the source of funding for an enormous catch-up programme of infrastructure building, including our transport infrastructure, which is fast becoming a European outlier.

Everything comes back to the NHSEverything comes back to the NHS (Image: Getty)

And of course, it all comes back to the NHS. You and I, the users of the NHS, well understand that the system has collapsed, because of a toxic combination of a lack of supply, and service mismanagement. The vast majority of us believe in the availability of taxpayer-funded healthcare, but we also understand that we cannot simply pour more and more money into the NHS when there is absolutely no evidence of the funding improving the service. Far from being the department which needs more funding, the NHS is the area of government spending where there is most to be saved. Hundreds of millions, probably billions, could be saved from this unfit behemoth without affecting a single patient, and instead be put into training more doctors and nurses, and collaborating with the private sector to build more facilities and buy more equipment.

The SNP may well lose the next election. But if you are going to go down, then for God’s sake go down swinging. Be remembered as a party which built the foundations for the country you love; not simply a party which was good at winning elections for a while.

Andy Maciver is Founding Director of Message Matters and Zero Matters