'We expected better of your lot' SNP will lose 2026 election if it fails to transform, insiders say

The Scottish National party will lose the next Holyrood election without a fundamental rethink of purpose and policy while carrying out long-delayed internal reforms, senior figures have warned.

- Libby Brooks

However, some have expressed doubt that the party's leader, John Swinney, is strong enough to direct the scale of change required.

Before the SNP's annual conference begins on Friday, the Guardian spoke to more than 20 people within the party, including current and former Scottish government ministers, senior activists and those ousted in last month's general election defeat -in which the SNP was reduced from 48 MPs in 2019 to nine as Labour swept the board across the country.

Many predict the SNP, which has enjoyed stratospheric electoral success over the past decade, faces "a doing" at the Scottish parliament elections in 2026 as Scottish Labour capitalises on the UK party's win.

"The way things are now, we run the real risk of not winning in 2026," said one senior MSP. "We have to change course and John needs to be decisive."

Stewart McDonald, a former MP for Glasgow South, who had cleared his Westminster desk before 4 July because he was so certain of defeat, said: "What does an SNP that has learned its lesson look and sound like? I don't think it's possible to overstate the scale of the challenge we are facing as a party."

Almost all said that countering the Labour message of change to voters who were desperate to get the Tories out of Downing Street was "incredibly difficult if not impossible", as one former MP said.

There was also wide acknowledgment that voters were turned off by the police investigation into SNP finances - during which the former leader Nicola Sturgeon was arrested and her husband and former SNP chief executive, Peter Murrell, was charged with embezzlement - and the recent expenses row involving the former Holyrood health secretary Michael Matheson's £11,000 iPad bill.

"I found myself on the doorstep trying to contextualise scandal after scandal," said another former MP, with voters telling a number of candidates "we expected better of your lot".