The new Labour government, so slick in opposition, started tripping itself up almost immediately on taking office. The decision to axe winter fuel payments for all but the poorest pensioners landed badly and embarrassing revelations about who paid for Victoria Starmer’s clothes triggered a cynical public still angry about Tory sleaze.
Sir Keir Starmer watched his net approval ratings crash from +11 in July, to -38 just three months later, the biggest collapse in approval of any modern election-winning British Prime Minister on taking office. This was supposed to be the government of change and hope, but both were AWOL.
Yes, for the SNP, things were looking up. This blundering start by Labour finally took the heat off them. The election result itself was painful for John Swinney’s party, seeing them lose a vast tranche of seats and leaving them with just nine, but that was foreseen and unavoidable given the fiasco around Humza Yousaf’s departure from office just eight weeks earlier.
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Looking ahead, the SNP now had something to work with. Starmer was looking more hapless than they had dared hope. He’d sold himself as a safe pair of hands, but the departure of his chief of staff Sue Gray to placate bitter internal factions who were leaking like Tories, raised legitimate questions about how competent he really was. The SNP’s strategy all along had been to try morally and politically to outflank Labour on its own ground, condemning the two-child policy, standing against austerity and portraying Labour as Tory-lite. Labour were making it all so easy.
Ah well. It must have been good while it lasted, but the past is now catching up with SNP ministers, again. They can’t seem to escape it.
On Saturday, as The Herald’s Kathleen Nutt reported, the Scottish Government published documents in a long-contested freedom of information dispute. It relates to the Scottish Government’s handling of sexual harassment complaints against Alex Salmond more than five years ago. The documents raise questions about how independent a probe by lawyer James Hamilton into whether Nicola Sturgeon broke the ministerial code actually was, given that the secretariat set up to support it was staffed by civil servants.
It reanimates a controversy that the current crop of ministers would much rather was never mentioned again.
It all seems long ago now, but the Scottish Government’s handling of the sexual harassment complaints against Alex Salmond were found in court to have been “tainted by apparent bias” back in 2019. The former First Minister was later charged with sexual assault and then acquitted in court on all those charges, though revelations about his behaviour, including his lawyer being overheard describing him as a bully, did his reputation great harm.
Last year, he launched a civil action against the Scottish Government, with his lawyers seeking “significant damages” and alleging that civil servants “conducted themselves improperly, in bad faith and beyond their powers, with the intention of injuring Mr Salmond”. Friends of the former First Minister, mostly serving SNP parliamentarians, suggest his action could continue following his death.
Kenny MacAskill, acting leader of the Alba Party, is now calling for a whole new inquiry.
Even if there were a lack of distance between inquiry and ministers, it doesn’t mean there were any deliberate wrongdoings, but it raises questions, and unanswered questions can do a lot of political damage. And so it continues. The past surges into the present; old divisions spill into a new political landscape.
None of this helps the SNP. The party still in theory have a shot at winning a remarkable fifth term in office in 2026, even if they lose support and Labour gains. That’s the beauty of the Holyrood voting system. The timing of the next Holyrood election helps John Swinney’s party, coming less than two years into Labour’s first Westminster term.
Keir Starmer has spoken openly of taking unpopular decisions early on to raise money for more spending later (read: in time for the next general election but not Anas Sarwar’s Scottish election bid). Labour had a decent Budget day yesterday, announcing a significant spending uplift for Scotland, but there will be difficult times ahead as the government grapples with painful spending pressures.
To attract any disappointed voters from Labour, all the SNP have to do is to convince them the infighting is over. The Kate Forbes-John Swinney double act since June has helped.
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But ongoing controversies rooted in the past premierships of two former First Ministers keep sabotaging the message. The divisions on show over the last month are a reminder that the temporary absence of public wrangling over the summer did not mean old wounds had healed or that the great movement has come together again. Not at all. There has been no rapprochement, just a hastily applied plaster. The SNP is not looking much like a party that can go into the 2026 Holyrood election expecting to win.
It has so much baggage. The Covid inquiry has yet to publish its report into how ministers handled the pandemic. Embezzlement charges have been brought by police against Peter Murrell, former SNP chief executive and Nicola Sturgeon’s husband. The festering tensions between the three pro-independence parties are rarely concealed. All in all, the divisions in the once mighty independence movement are deep and enduring.
Losing the next Holyrood election and spending time in opposition could be the SNP’s salvation. If the SNP want to put themselves back on top, they need a period of self-examination and a changing of the guard. It’s time for a new course set by a new generation.
Labour have little to fear while the SNP is so weighed down by the albatross of the past.
Rebecca McQuillan is a freelance journalist specialising in politics and Scottish affairs. She can be found on X at @BecMcQ
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