Scottish National Party

The Scottish National Party (SNP) is a far-left, nationalist and socialist political party which campaigns primarily for Scotland to leave the United Kingdom and become an independent state. In the last few decades, the SNP has normally polled the second highest number of votes for a political party in Scotland.. This changed dramatically in the 2024 UK General Election. However, at present the SNP remains the largest single party in the Scottish Parliament holding 63 of the 129 seats..

In the UK General Election held on 4 July 2024 the SNP lost half a million votes, their share falling 15 percentage points to 30%, with an electoral turnout of just 59.2%. They lost 39 seats in the United Kingdom Parliament leaving them with just 9 seats.

The Party had been rocked by innumerable political and financial scandals.

The Party supports multi-culturalism and in March 2023 elected as its leader, Pakistani Humza Yousaf. He immediately attacked the number of real Scottish people in the country's top jobs asking, in a recorded speech, "Why are there so many white people in government positions in Scotland?"! He was forced to resign on 30 April 2024. John Swinney, MSP., replaced him as Party Leader.

The next elections for the regional Scottish Parliament will be in 2026.

History

The SNP was formed in 1934 from the merger of the National Party of Scotland and the Scottish Party. The SNP first won a UK parliamentary seat for the Motherwell constituency in a by-election in 1945, but Dr Robert McIntyre MP lost the seat at the 1945 UK General Election three months later. They did not win another seat until 1967, when Winnie Ewing was the surprise winner of the Hamilton by-election in 1967 in the previously safe British Labour Party seat of Hamilton in Lanarkshire. This brought the SNP to national attention, leading to the establishment of the Royal Commission on the Constitution (United Kingdom). Their high point in UK General Elections thus far was when they polled almost a third of all votes in Scotland in the October 1974 United Kingdom General Election and returned 11 MPs to Westminster, the most MPs they had ever had at that point.

At the UK general election of May 7, 2015, the SNP succeeded in virtually wiping out the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats Party in Scotland, securing 56 of the 59 Scotland seats in the UK Parliament at Westminster.

After the 2021 Scottish Elections for the devolved Assembly in Edinburgh, the SNP and Scottish Greens entered a coalition which resulted in the appointment of two Green MSP's as junior ministers in the government, delivery of a shared policy platform, and Green support for the government on votes of confidence and supply. This allowed the SNP a majority within the Scottish Parliament which caused further division in the Union.

Party organisation

The SNP consists of local branches of party members. Those branches then form an association in the constituency they represent (unless there is only one branch in the constituency, in which case it forms a Constituency Branch rather than a Constituency Association). There are also eight Regional Associations to which the branches and constituency associations in each can send delegates.

The SNP's policy structure is developed at its Annual National Conference and its regular National Council meetings. There are also regular meetings of its National Assembly which although they do not formally make policy allow for detailed discussion of what party policy should be.

The party has an active youth wing: Young Scots for Independence, as well as a Federation of Student Nationalists wing. There is also an SNP Trade Union Group. There is an independently-owned monthly newspaper, The Scots Independent, which is highly supportive of the party.

The SNP's leadership is invested in its National Executive Committee (NEC) which is made up of the party's elected office bearers and 10 elected members (voted for at conference). The SNP parliamentarians (Scottish, Westminster and European) and councillors have representation on the NEC, as do the Trade Union Group, the youth wing and the student wing.

In recent years its most prominent leaders have been Alex Salmond (1954-2024), from 1990 to 2000 and from 2004 to 2014; and Nicola Sturgeon who served as First Minister of Scotland and Leader of the party from 2014 to 2023. She has served as a member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) since 1999, first as an additional member for the Glasgow electoral region, and then as the member for Glasgow Southside (formerly Glasgow Govan) from 2007.

Finances

In 2004 the SNP had income of about £1,300,000 (including bequests of just under £300,000) and expenditure of about £1,000,000. A high profile and controversial donor to the party was the founder of Stagecoach Group, Brian Souter.

Despite the reduction in membership fees, SNP income overall grew from £4,248,625 in 2022 to £4,753,512 in 2023. After posting a deficit of just over £800,000 in 2022 the party has returned to surplus, with the figures showing this to be £662,293. That comes after spending by the party fell markedly from £5,052,284 in 2022 to £4,091,219 in 2023. However the party’s income for 2023 included £274,408 of cash left in legacies by supporters after their death – with the accounts stating this money “has not actually yet been received”.

The accounts also show the party still owed £60,000 to its former chief executive Peter Murrell – former Leader Nicola Sturgeon’s husband – as of December 31, 2023. This was described in the accounts as being a loan from “former executive management”. Murrell was charged by police in April 2024 in connection with the alleged embezzlement of party funds.

Membership

According to accounts filed with the Electoral Commission for the year ending 2004, the party had a membership of 10,854 in 2004, up from 9,450 from 2003. By the end of 2006, the party's membership had increased to 12,571, representing a 16% year on year rise after Alex Salmond was elected leader for the second time. This boost in popularity had been strengthened by a number of opinion polls that showed support for independence on the increase and occasionally outstriped support for the union. By the end of 2021 membership had grown to around 104,000. Since then the several scandals have rocked the party, and the membership has dropped to around 72,000 members as of March 2023 (reported by the BBC) with a majority of Scots still opposed to independence.. Accounts filed with the Electoral Commission show membership fell to 64,525 as of June 1, 2024.

Policy platform

The SNP's policy base is, by and large, in the mainstream socialist mould. For example, amongst their policies are a commitment to unilateral nuclear disarmament, progressive personal taxation, to redistributing wealth from rich to poor, the eradication of poverty, free state education [Scotland already had this] including support grants for higher education students and free university places for Scots, pay increases for nurses and so on. They are also committed to Scotland leaving the United Kingdom and becoming an independent entity, although they also support being a full member state of the European Union, as well as supporting Scotland's entry to the single European currency at the appropriate exchange rate. This would effectively mean, of course, that they would lose their independence. They also stated their opposition to NATO.

The SNP have slowly become a republican party.

The SNP is committed to maintaining an independent Scotland within the British Commonwealth of Nations.

Ideology

Although it is widely accepted that the SNP is in modern times a decidedly Left-wing political party, this has not always been the case. From almost the instant the party was born, there have been ideological tensions present within the SNP. This was by and large a product of the way in which the party was formed, as an amalgamation of the left-of-centre National Party of Scotland, and the Scottish Party, both tiny parties. In addition the overwhelming majority of those who vote for the SNP previously voted for the Labour Party.

By the 1960s, the party was beginning to be defined ideologically. They had by then established their National Assembly which allowed for discussion of policy and it was producing papers on a host of policy issues that were socialist. Also, the emergence of William 'Billy' Wolfe as a leading figure played a huge role in the SNP defining itself as a left-of-centre social-democratic party. He recognised the need to propagate this lie in order to challenge the dominant political position of the Labour Party in Scotland.

He achieved this in a number of ways: establishing the SNP Trade Union Group; promoting socialist policies; and identifying the SNP with labour campaigns (such as the Upper-Clyde Shipbuilders Work-in and the attempt of the workers at the Scottish division of the Daily Express newspaper to run as a co-operative). Ideological tensions continued in the 1970s. The party leadership under Wolfe was determined to keep the party clearly on the Left of the Scottish political spectrum, to put them in a position to challenge Labour. However, the party's Members of Parliament at Westminster were less keen to have the SNP viewed as a left-wing alternative to Labour, for fear of losing their seats to the Conservatives. There was further ideological strife after 1979 with the 79 Group attempting to move the SNP even further to The Left, away from being what some still described a 'social-democratic' party, to an expressly socialist party. This brought with it a response from those opposed to this, who desired the SNP to remain a 'broad church' and apart from arguments of left vs. right, in the shape of the Campaign for Nationalism in Scotland.

The 1980s saw the SNP reinforce itself as a party of The Left, with campaigns against the so-called Poll Tax etc. They developed this platform to the stage they are at now: a clear Left-wing political party, called by some opponents a National-Socialist party.

The ideological tensions inside the SNP are further complicated by the arguments between gradualists and fundamentalists. In essence, gradualists seek to advance Scotland to independence through further devolution, in a 'step by step' strategy (which seems to be working). They tend to be in the moderate Left grouping, although much of the 79 Group was gradualist in approach. However, this 79 Group gradualism was as much a reaction against the fundamentalists of the day, many of whom believed the SNP should not take a clear Left or Centre position. The position of fundamentalists within the SNP is further complicated by the fact that modern fundamentalists are unlike the old-style. They tend to be on The Left of the party, critical of both the gradualist approach to independence and what they perceive as a moderation of the party's socio-economic policy portfolio.

This grouping of "neo-fundamentalists" have their roots within the Jim Sillars (a former Labour MP born in 1937) camp inside the SNP.

European Free Alliance

The SNP retains close links with the Welsh Plaid Cymru, with both parties' Members of the UK Parliament co-operating closely with one another. They work as a single group within the House of Commons. Before the United Kingdom left the European Union both parties were part of the European Free Alliance (EFA). The EFA works with the Far-Left European Green Party in order to form a grouping in the European Parliament: the Greens - European Free Alliance.