Alison Rowat: SNP risks resembling the discredited Tories of old

There sat Ms Sturgeon, defending her Government’s response in the context of the #MeToo movement then sweeping society. The Scottish Government needed a new policy to protect individuals against harassment, and it got one. The fact it turned out to be fatally flawed is another matter.

Ms Sturgeon’s basic defence? Maybe I did not do everything right, but I acted for the right reasons. As she put it in what was not at all a carefully crafted soundbite: “As First Minister I refuse to follow the age-old pattern of allowing a powerful man to use his status and connections to get what he wants.”

Jump forward a week to another Wednesday and the front page of The Herald: “SNP ‘protected’ Chief Whip accused of groping two men”.

As Hannah Rodger, the paper’s Westminster correspondent reported, Patrick Grady, the SNP’s Chief Whip, had been accused of sexual harassment, but the party failed to investigate fully the claims.

READ MORE: SNP 'protected' MP over grope allegations

In one letter from “concerned staff members”, sent first to then Commons Speaker John Bercow and passed to the SNP’s compliance unit, it was claimed the matter was widely known about at Westminster, but because of Mr Grady’s position he was “being protected and his behaviour is supported”.

Here we go again: who knew what and when, and what if anything was done about it?

Mr Grady has stepped aside from his role as Chief Whip but the matter cannot be left at that, not when allegations have been made against him and one other MP.

Yet again, the SNP finds itself taking mud pies full in the face. Any more of this and they will start to rival John Major’s crazy gang of the sleazy 1990s for the number of scandals they can rack up.

In those heady years after Mr Major announced his “back to basics” policy his government was hit by one self-inflicted calamity after another. Arms to Iraq; cash for questions; homes for votes; affairs and children; so many stories were waiting to run they had to be stacked, like planes over Heathrow, till another front page was free.

The SNP is a much smaller force than the Tories of the 1990s. The Conservatives had been swept back into power for the fourth time under Mr Major with a record number of votes (again, remind you of any party?).

But in relative terms the SNP is punching well above its weight when it comes to attracting bad headlines for itself, and by extension Scotland.

READ MORE: Timeline of harassment claims

The continuing Salmond saga; SNP MP Margaret Ferrier accused of breaching Covid regulations; Derek Mackay MSP, still in the Scottish Parliament, and claiming his £64,470 salary, a year after resigning as Finance Secretary for sending text messages to a 16-year-old boy; another SNP Minister, Mark McDonald, sacked for inappropriate behaviour. Add to this the in-fighting, score-settling and fundamental disagreements over policy and strategy, and what a sorry bunch this party has become.

Not that you will often find them saying sorry. Ms Sturgeon apologised last week to the two initial complainers in the Salmond saga, and to the wider Scottish public, but for the most part you will wait an eternity for any expression of contrition.

Nothing is ever the SNP’s fault. Not the failures in education, on waiting times, the ferries fiasco, on hospital building, on an economy bumping along the bottom at best, on drug deaths – feel free to add to the list. Like many another government they now have access to one of the biggest get out of jail free cards ever: the pandemic.

All of this, yet they continue to ride high in the polls. It would be a puzzle if not for the pathetic state of the opposition parties.

Yet the ground on which the SNP has so long stood unassailable may be starting to shift. In two polls last weekend, the first since the Salmond-Sturgeon evidence sessions, support for independence and the SNP were down. Albeit the dip was slight and the polls were not weighted for turnout, the direction of travel had changed. Perhaps more telling was the number of voters, 43%, who said they trusted Ms Sturgeon less as a result of the saga.

More polls will be required before we can say with any certainty how much the party’s current woes are cutting through with the public. It is easy to spot an organisation on the slide, far more difficult to pinpoint the exact moment it began to happen.

I remember the decline and fall of the Major government well because I worked in the Commons at the time. There were so many scandals, one after the other, it was hard to say this or that had been the proverbial straw. Was it the sex, the money, the lying, the cones hotline?

It was all of the above, but it was one thing in particular. The Conservatives had simply been in power too long. The party had grown fat and lazy with conceit. It could not see that the party’s interests were not the same as the public interest. It thought it had a near divine right to govern, yet it had run out of ideas and energy.

READ MORE: Chief Whip stands down

The SNP has a huge advantage over Major’s Tories in that there is no Blair waiting in the wings. Even so, the party should see this latest run of scandals as a warning. The Tories had been in power for 18 years when they were ousted; the SNP is now in its 14th year at the top. Enough time still to turn things around, if it wants to. It can begin by dialling down the arrogance and trying some humility for a change.

Scottish voters can play their part by casting their votes cannily in May’s elections. If they do not, and polls revert to previous positions, the party will be on course for a thumping majority and Scotland will be in for more of the same. Courtesy of Major’s Tories, we cannot say that we were not warned.