Taking the low road: why the SNP is still standing strong

“If the normal rules of politics applied in Scotland, the SNP would be sure-fire losers at next year’s Holyrood election,” said Chris Musson in The Scottish Sun.

Public services “are on their knees” and polls suggest the majority of Scots “take a dim view” of how the ruling party is handling things. The recent Scottish Social Attitudes survey shows “plummeting trust” in Holyrood since devolution, with a “sharp decline” over the past decade. And the SNP has been in power since 2007, “in an age where patience wears thin with leaders after a couple of months”. Anywhere else, they’d be “odds on to be out on their ears” come the Holyrood election in May.

But instead they kicked off their party conference in Aberdeen around 14 points ahead of their nearest rivals – which could be Labour or Reform, given how close it is. Only a third of voters say they’ll back the SNP in May, but the first-past-the-post system governing most seats means it will be “enough for them to win – and quite possibly win big”.

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Swinney ‘won’t need to do much’

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” said Alex Massie in The Times. A year ago, voters across Scotland “rose up against the nationalists” in the general election, in which the SNP lost 39 seats and a third of its voters.

Now, polls suggest the party is “on course to win a fifth consecutive election victory” in the Scottish parliament. And that’s not down to Britain’s “leading collection of political fantasists”, the SNP itself. Voters simply “dislike Labour (and the Tories) even more”. Polls suggest Labour will “do well to beat Reform into second place”.

The SNP has “endured everything a government would normally dread”, from a police fraud investigation, rows over gender law reform and the “worst drug-death rate in Europe”, said Sky News. But it “retains something its opponents lack, which is a loyal, unshakeable base”.

For many, voting SNP is “an expression of identity as much as policy”. Meanwhile, “the unionist vote is fragmented” and “every vote for Nigel Farage chips away” at it further, leaving Labour and the Conservatives to “fight among themselves”. Scottish Labour has “squandered its best opening in a decade” – and first minister John Swinney “won’t need to do much to stay in power”.

‘Stop digging, get delivering’

The SNP “still faces significant challenges”, said The Guardian. The party might credit Swinney with differentiating himself from Westminster as a “pro-immigration and a progressive tax reformer”, but the May election is likely to prove a “bruising” contest – some dismiss talk of a majority as “wishful thinking”.

There’s the impending trial of Nicola Sturgeon’s former husband, Peter Murrell, for alleged embezzlement. His tenure as SNP chief executive coincided with a “steep fall” in membership. Scottish independence as an idea is “way more popular than the SNP”, said one senior party source.

But the SNP is “completely stuck on how to establish a viable route to Scottish statehood”, said the BBC. Keir Starmer has “no intention” of consenting to a future referendum. The party also needs to avoid “pushing independence too hard” because it isn’t necessarily a priority for voters.

Swinney may have “stabilised” the SNP but now the party needs to try to “make a noticeable difference” on what matters to voters, including the cost of living, public services and the NHS. One ally of Swinney sums it up as: “stop digging, get delivering”.