How best to describe what’s happening to the SNP? Perhaps, the neatest metaphor is that of a deflating balloon. Right now, you can feel air, and hope, escaping the party.
Ambition, ability, ideas, all seem in a state of collapse. The successes of the past have become ever more remote and the future looks scary territory. Legislation is disintegrating, MPs are quitting, poll numbers are falling, and crucially, the SNP’s torch policy - independence - is in utter disarray.
It’s all come sharply into focus this last week. Once a balloon starts wilting, there’s really no stopping the inevitable.
Maybe another metaphor might be that of a ship holed beneath the waterline. That’s rather fitting given the significance of the government shelving its marine protection legislation. The SNP and Greens have just parked plans for Highly Protected Marine Areas (HPMAs). It’s yet another policy that’s crumbled, like the Deposit Return Scheme.
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The SNP is trying paint an PR-friendly picture of why the legislation is going nowhere. But it’s thoroughly unconvincing. The government is, according to SNP Net Zero Secretary Mairi McAllan, going back to the “drawing board”.
Significantly, the SNP has been told for months that the legislation needs more consultation, specifically with local communities which would be affected, to bring them onboard. Poor consultation also beset DRS. Hubris often teaches humility.
Sure, shelving HPMA legislation cauterises another open wound for the government, but that doesn’t much help the environment, and the handling of it all felt clunky. The party’s once indomitable PR machine seems more than a little flat and grey.
Then, of course, we come to the state of the SNP’s independence ‘roadmap’. Unfortunately, this is a map which leads precisely nowhere, or perhaps to some spot labelled ‘here be monsters’, and for monsters read: electoral decline and eventual defeat.
Humza Yousaf emerged from the SNP’s ‘independence convention’ telling us that the path to indy lies through the SNP winning a majority of seats at the next general election. If - and note the infamous laconic ‘If’ here - that happens the UK government is expected to transfer referendum powers, or open negotiations about independence.
This is so pie-in-the-sky it feels the sun has turned into a bridie. Firstly...
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