Kenny MacAskill: SNP losing by-election was unforgiveable

The National

09-06-2025

The town's name is seared in Scotland's soul from Winnie Ewing's victory there in the UK Parliament by-election in 1967. I was a child then but was aware of its seismic effect on not just Scottish politics but Scottish society.
Many stalwarts told me how a movement viewed as marginal and romantic came alive with that triumph. Scottish politics was changed irrevocably, with independence becoming a possibility, not just a dream.
More recently, when I was justice secretary, I worked with Christina McKelvie, an assiduous and popular MSP, as she sought to address knife crime in her community.
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The seat's loss a bitter blow to the efforts of those stalwarts and countless others.
Alba stood aside, calling on supporters to 'max the Yes vote'. Just what the Scottish Greens think they achieved by standing is for them to explain, with their total of votes barely greater than the very small Labour majority.
Unionists are now crowing and the impact will be felt by the wider independence movement. It's a tragedy which will require work and change to come back from.
It wasn't the fault of the SNP candidate any more than success can be attributed to her spectacularly poor Labour opponent. The polish of New Labour was forsaken, with Davy Russell a throwback to Labour candidates from days of yore when the party reigned across huge swathes of Scotland, its dead hand lying across the land.
Under Alex Salmond's leadership, that Tammany Hall power was broken and Scotland was transformed for the better. We cannot allow those dark days to return.
Remember that this was also a defeat for what little remains of the Labour left and those who still think Scotland can be transformed within the Union.
Last week's result will be taken as an endorsement of Starmerism, legitimation of the austerity agenda and Labour's attacks on the poor and vulnerable. Those who have bravely spoken out will be hounded and party loyalists empowered.
Responsibility for the defeat rests with the SNP leadership for both its lamentable by-election strategy, and its actions and failings over recent years. Circumstances had changed from last year and were favourable for SNP.
The tidal clamour for change last July, which saw myself and my Alba colleague swept out of the UK Parliament along with numerous SNP MPs, had well and truly ebbed. Starmer's Labour were and are deeply unpopular. At the same
time independence was polling well above 50% and even higher when the spectre of Farage and Reform was posed. All good, you'd think, for pushing the case for independence.
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That was what, after all, was done by Winnie Ewing all those years ago and decades before we even had our Parliament restored. She gave a vision of the land Scotland could be, contrasting it with the country it was, as pits and shipyards started to close and emigration continued.
But independence wasn't mentioned by the SNP. It was the policy notable only for its absence in literature, on the doorsteps and in debate.
Yet it was the unique selling point for the SNP.
It was the one thing that carved them out from their principal opponents, Labour and Reform, and, even more than that, was backed by well over half of voters. That failure's not just inexplicable but unforgiveable.
Instead, a strategy of 'stop Reform' was pushed. Just what was that meant to express other than avoiding having to answer for failings in their Scottish Government administration is hard to fathom.
In politics, saying what you're for is always better than arguing what you're against. It motivates those who share your beliefs and can even earn respect or at least legitimation from opponents.
Besides, Reform are not going to take power in Scotland – but only independence can ensure they are not foisted on us by being in the Union. The SNP leadership treated independence supporters in Hamilton with the same arrogance and disdain that they've treated the wider movement over recent years.
A simple assumption that they'd have to vote for them and the backing of others could safely be pursued.
Do what 'yer telt' and 'wheesht for indy'. But, as in 2017, where there's neither motivation nor articulation of independence, many simply stayed at home. The SNP did not lose support to Reform in Hamilton, instead they saw independence supporters say: 'What's the point of voting?'
That compounded growing contempt for their failings in office and their lack of vision for the country. An obsession with gender and identity when what is wanted is an improvement in public services, whether health or housing, jobs or justice. Focusing on individual rights rather than the collective good at a time when communities are struggling.
There has to be a coming together of the independence movement but that requires a recognition by SNP that they are only a part, albeit a major part, of it.
The growing gap between support for independence and support for SNP tells a story and a bit of humility would go a long way. It also means that Holyrood 2026 has to be a plebiscite election and that to 'Max the Yes', it has to be vote Alba on the list.