Neil Mackay: SNP is in hell and has nobody to blame but itself

This person isn’t some fringe extremist. They’re usually calm, considered, and decent. They’re on the Sturgeon wing – progressive, moderate on the constitution. So I was taken aback by their statement. I asked what they meant by ‘plants’? Did they really mean some MI5-type agent provocateur, or just idiots and attention-seekers?

“Both,” they said, “and the second category are a gift for the first.” They were sick of “the f**k ups”, they said – the party has to get a grip, move on.

That’s how bad a state the SNP is in – its most level-headed members now believe the party is being messed with by agent provocateurs.

READ MORE NEIL MACKAY: SNP infighting an embarrassment

How did the SNP get here? Today, its once legendary discipline is in tatters. It’s consumed by a ‘culture war’ over trans rights. Nicola Sturgeon had to denounce transphobia personally. Some days later, Joanna Cherry – who says she’s “not remotely transphobic” – was sacked from the Westminster frontbench. Throw in the Curse of Salmond and raging differences over indyref2 – and the SNP has more factions than imperial Rome.

The truth is, the SNP has brought all this misery upon itself – and much as it sounds counter-intuitive, the party itself is now the biggest threat to Scottish independence. In poll after poll, a majority has backed breaking with the union – but just as the nation reaches this tipping point, the party which takes the lead on independence threatens to implode. It’s the kind of dramatic irony that makes Shakespeare seem unimaginative.

Joanna Cherry (Image: PA)

Boris Johnson has to do little more to preserve the union than sit back and watch the SNP tear itself to pieces, while the public mood sickens at the spectacle.

To be fair to the SNP, it is a victim of its own success. After the first independence referendum, its membership exploded. It grew big, fast. The party has always been an umbrella movement uniting Tartan Tories and socialist republicans – but post-2014 the inevitable tensions of keeping a mass movement, with distinctly different wings together, have simply, come 2021, become too difficult to sustain.

It didn’t have to be this way. At the root of the SNP’s problems is the way its elected members – MPs, MSPs and councillors – indulged the worst extremes of this new base. They fed conspiracy theories, they launched Trump-style attacks on a free press, and they stood back while the worst elements of the SNP base carried out orchestrated campaigns of hate and abuse against their perceived ‘enemies’.

Nicola Sturgeon, to her credit, didn’t indulge in this behaviour. She pointedly hasn’t taken part in Saltire-draped nationalist marches, and privately is known to loath the extremists of the online base.

Nevertheless, Sturgeon remained too quiet when it came to calling out the base – giving space to other leading political figures to ramp up extremists. It’s grossly hypocritical to watch those same politicians now denounce the base they once fed. Those who did call out extremism vocally and prominently – centrists such as Angus Robertson, Stewart McDonald and Alyn Smith – became targets.

The base, which was being enabled by SNP figures, was almost exclusively found online. I could spend just as long calling out online extremists amongst the unionist fringe, but it’s not a unionist party leading this country, so that can wait. Suffice to say, both sides – nationalist and unionist – are as bad, but it’s the SNP that’s being consumed by its base, so let’s stick with them. It’s also the behaviour of the SNP which endangers the hopes of somewhere around half the population who want to see Scotland independent.

The online world feeds on aggression, division and phoney sensation. We’ve the algorithm to thank. Pick an extreme political position and you’re all but guaranteed online success. The SNP’s aggressive online fringe presented us with ‘the paranoid style in Scottish politics’ – riddled with fake news and conspiracies.

So the SNP’s digital base, already hardline in its nationalism, quickly found itself shifting from denouncing traitors to finding victims for its wrath. Attack is good for clicks, and for some those clicks are good for the bank balance. Trans people seemed to be a convenient marginal target – particularly as the progressive Sturgeon wing was seen to ally with the trans community. In the nexus of Alex Salmond and indyref2, the maxim ‘my enemy's enemy is my friend’ looms large.

Despite the ugliness of much of the paranoid and extremist base, many prominent SNP politicians not only continued to tacitly feed the beast but actively worked hand in glove with some its most cynical elements.

READ MORE NEIL MACKAY: Independence, yes. SNP, no

The result is today’s chaos. Moderate independence supporters – among whom I count myself – find it impossible to have anything to do with a party so toxic. Young SNP members are turning away at what they see as a hateful and reactionary hijacking of a movement they joined in 2014 believing it to be progressive. And the hardline base has turned on the leadership calling for Sturgeon to be ousted. Cherry waits in the wings.

For independence supporters this is a uniquely Scottish dilemma. How often as a country have we thrown away sporting victory at the last minute?

The civil war is starting to resonate among the wider public. The party looks a mess. Internal chaos seems to be affecting good governance. Scotland’s badly organised vaccine programme could easily be blamed on a leadership consumed with bitter factionalism.

There’s still three months until the elections – a lot could happen. Sturgeon could even go. If that happens then all of Johnson’s dreams come true at once. Without Sturgeon, the SNP loses much of its mass appeal – and could falter at Holyrood. If that happens then where does the Yes movement go? It all really could be over for a generation.

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