SNP’s humiliation in Scotland shows independence is no longer a priority

The general election result is a catastrophe for John Swinney and the Scottish National party, which has dominated Scottish politics for a decade. Now it has experienced a comprehensive defeat.

A decade on from the independence referendum, the SNP has been swept aside by a resurgent Labour across central and western Scotland – to a far greater degree than any opinion poll predicted.

On the eve of the election, Swinney had insisted the race in Scotland was too close to call. Unlike Labour’s certain victory across England, he said, the SNP was in a nip and tuck race with Labour in Scotland.

In the event, the SNP has been humiliated, losing three-quarters of its Westminster seats, down by at least 38. Many of its voters stayed at home to register discontent at the party’s failure to deliver a second independence referendum or their disillusionment with the series of scandals hitting it at Holyrood, its policy failures and its divisions over gender recognition.

Others who backed the SNP at previous elections swung behind Keir Starmer’s message about kicking the Conservatives out of power, presumably impressed, too, by Labour’s newfound discipline and message coherence.

Those attributes were once key to the SNP’s surge to power under Alex Salmond, and then Nicola Sturgeon. But over the past three years, its voters have lost faith in the independence message. A significant minority now no longer decide how to vote based purely on their constitutional preferences.

Starmer and Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, have succeeded in focusing voters’ minds instead on defeating the Tories at Westminster.

At the 2015 general election, the first held after the independence referendum, the SNP had won an extraordinary victory, buoyed up by the post-referendum euphoria among yes voters. While the yes campaign had lost that referendum by 10 points, it had built and harnessed a generation-defining confidence among left-of-centre Scottish voters, across central Scotland in particular.

Led by Sturgeon, the SNP won nearly every Westminster seat in Scotland by taking 50% of the vote, reducing Labour, the Liberal Democrats and Tories to one seat each to become the third largest party in the Commons with 56 seats. Successive general elections whittled that away, leaving the SNP with 48 MPs.

Swinney knew the party faced a difficult day on Thursday but he had hoped the losses would be respectable. Successive Scottish polls put Labour and the SNP only a few points apart on the national vote. Although Labour expected to win about 30 Scottish seats owing to the heavy concentration of its vote in central-belt seats, Swinney still hoped the SNP might scrape home in about 20 or more.

In the event, the opinion polls were wrong on every measure. Seat projections based on opinion polls were also wrong. In some Conservative seats, it seems very likely anti-Tory tactical voting played a significant part in the results.

With several counts still under way, Labour has won a 36.6% share of the vote, up 17.2 points from 2019, and the SNP 29.9%, down 15.2.

This election was devastating, too, for the Scottish Conservatives, who had been eyeing up wins in six or seven seats but won only three, with several still to declare. Their outgoing leader, Douglas Ross, was defeated by the SNP in Aberdeenshire North and Moray East, one of the few rays of light for Swinney.

Ross had enraged his own party by replacing the incumbent Tory candidate, David Duguid, in the seat in order to remain at Westminster. In doing so, he had broken his promise to quit the Commons and focus solely on being group leader at Holyrood. He has been forced to quit as Scottish Tory leader as a result.

Ross had repeatedly weaponised independence, attempting to scare Tory voters into swallowing any distaste they may have for the Conservatives at UK level by foregrounding the SNP’s quest for a second referendum.

That gambit failed; the Tory share of the vote has plummeted to 11.8%, with its support in some seats undermined by a switch by 150,000 of its hardcore voters to Nigel Farage’s rightwing Reform. Instead, the centrist Liberal Democrats benefited, winning at least three extra Commons seats across their old rural heartlands and more than doubling their Scottish representation.

Swinney is not expected to quit as SNP leaderHis focus will be on ensuring Labour’s surge at Westminster is not repeated in the far more important elections to the Scottish parliament in 2026.

Yet these results make that far harder. Losing so many Westminster seats dramatically cuts the state funding the SNP will receive; it greatly reduces the profile it gains from having so many prominent MPs and guaranteed speaking slots in the Commons.

Crucially, it profoundly changes the political weather in Scotland: if its voters no longer prioritise independence, it leaves the party on the defensive. It can no longer claim to be the radical insurgent at Westminster. Now it is just another party managing domestic decline at Holyrood.