Leader John Swinney pictured as his SNP saw major losses (Image: Getty)
So now we know. The SNP presence in the House of Commons has fallen from 48 at the last General Election in 2019 to six in 2024, with just 12 seats still to be declared.
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This is hardly unexpected. The polls had been hinting at it for months, and not withstanding frenetic campaigning on social media the party has been handed a hiding at the hands of Scottish Labour. Scotland fell out of love with the SNP after seventeen years of them being in the ascendancy.
I suspect they'll find it a bumpy landing.
This has serious implications for the SNP financially. Not only are they still under investigation by Police Scotland/Poileas Alba over the "missing" ￡660,000 supposedly ring-fenced for the next independence referendum, but their fundraising has basically dried up and they will lose the Short money from Westminster and the levies they put on their MPs salaries for party funds.
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They will basically be skint.
While much of Scotland will rejoice at their demise in the House of Commons, we really should ask ourselves how this has come to pass. How is it that the once all-powerful, all-conquering SNP now finds itself in a downward spiral which might lead to it being a political also-ran in the next few years?
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This dramatic change in the party's fortunes can be attributed to a number of things, but first and foremost of these is leadership, or more accurately the lack of it.
By his own admission, Alex Salmond's precipitate resignation in the aftermath of the lost 2014 independence referendum was a mistake.
Like him or loathe him, Salmond is quite clearly the pre-eminent independence supporting politician of the last three decades. None of those who followed him as party leader and First Minister were fit to tie his shoelaces let along fill his boots. That he is now out of favour and out of the SNP has been a major blow to the party.
Of those who followed him perhaps the less said the better.
Nicola Sturgeon's initially impressive start in post looked as if she would be the one to carry forward the independence flame, but it all ended badly in a welter of fallings-out, financial skulduggery, and the arrest and release without charge of herself, her husband, and the SNP treasurer as Police Scotland embarked on Operation Branchform, its investigation into the "missing" party funds.
Her abrupt resignation the day after an alleged late night visit from Scotland's Chief Constable raised eyebrows, and lowered reputations, even further, and of course now we know that her erstwhile husband and party CEO, Peter Murrell, has been charged with embezzlement of party funds.
She was never able to replicate her predecessor's persona or gravitas.
Her immediate successor, Humza Yousaf, was an ill-fated attempt to continue the Sturgeonite programme in her enforced absence. Yousaf was very much the rabbit caught in the headlights, finding himself in a job way beyond his competence levels. As his leadership unravelled it appeared increasingly that he wanted to be anywhere but in Bute House, the First Minister's official residence in Edinburgh, and he too resigned.
And now we have "Honest" John Swinney, whose funeral director demeanour and Parakeet-like, nodding-head mannerisms when being interviewed hardly inspire confidence in the electorate. He too is a Sturgeonite, another continuity candidate, but that particular continuum is clearly coming to an end.
His first shot at SNP leader twenty or soyears ago was underwhelming, and so it has proved to be again.
But if poor leadership has been the primary cause of the SNP's decline, an inability to deliver while in government in Scotland comes a close second.
Ever since the party first took power in Holyrood in 2007 under Alex Salmond's leadership it has demonstrated a reverse Midas touch; almost everything it has been involved with has turned to dust.
The list is endless. Highest drug deaths in Europe, failure to dual the death-trap A9 trunk road despite promises, inability to build and deliver two ferries for CalMac on time and within budget, the decline of Glasgow, Scotland's biggest city, into a Dystopian nightmare, the ham-fisted and failed attempt to introduce a bottle return regime I could go on and on.
That's why the SNP has been hammered by the electorate at this election; they are just not up to the job. Whether this result will be replicated in the 2026 Scottish parliamentary elections is another thing altogether, of course, but it can hardly be helpful.
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And, astonishingly, Swinney has vowed to lead the party into that election as well. Whether that will be his choice, of course, remains to be seen. The men in grey kilts are already gathering.
I predict that support for the SNP will continue to fall between now and then and Labour will find itself once more in power in Edinburgh come May 2026. Whether they'll be any better is another question altogether.
？ Stuart Crawford is a political and defence commentator, former SNP member, and retired army officer. Sign up for his podcasts and newsletters at www.DefenceReview.uk
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