The Scottish National party heavily lost the general election because of its “self-inflicted wounds” and fringe policies, according to the party’s Westminster leader. Stephen Flynn, who was one of only nine SNP MPs to survive the election rout, said on Friday that the party had lost the trust of voters after repeated crises and a failure to focus on policies that the public supported. He told reporters Labour was victorious, winning 37 Scottish seats on 4 July, because its “message of change was very crisp and clear. People understood it and believed in it, because they wanted to get rid of the Tories”. Flynn was speaking after SNP members challenged Flynn and John Swinney, the first minister, about the defeat during a debate held in private on the opening day of its annual conference in Edinburgh. Activists rounded on the leadership over the SNP’s communication strategy during the election, the ongoing questions about the location of £625,000 in donations to the SNP’s independence fund, and recent spending cuts. Members were “absolutely furious”, said one source, that the Scottish government’s first spending cut hit a £2m free bus travel scheme for asylum seekers, which was announced just as English towns and cities were hit by far-right riots. One ex-MP said many members were “angry and frustrated” about “being blamed for other people’s scandals on the doorsteps” while they were campaigning in the election. Members felt “the public wanted to punish us for the general chaos the party had been in”, one activist said. “Even though we see independence as part of the solution to the cost of living, NHS, poverty, it is just not cutting through with the electorate.” The party’s crises this year include the embezzlement charges against its former chief executive Peter Murrell; a minister’s £11,000 expenses claim for his family’s mobile roaming charges; the collapse of the power-sharing agreement with the Scottish Greens; and Humza Yousaf’s resignation as first minister. Other former MPs said Swinney and Flynn embraced the criticisms. Swinney has overseen a series of “listening sessions” with activists, a membership survey and interviews with candidates and agents since the election. Tommy Sheppard, who lost Edinburgh East at the election, said the immediate challenge was to rebuild the SNP before the Scottish parliament election in 2026. Opinion polls show that the SNP’s lead over Labour in a Holyrood vote has disappeared, leaving them neck and neck. “No one said, ‘Oh, this is a blip, and we can sweep this under the carpet,’” Sheppard said. “We know something big happened [but] we need to understand what happened and change pretty quickly in order to get ourselves on the front foot again by next year.” In 2015, at its peak under Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP had 126,000 members and won 1.4m votes at the general election. In contrast, it won 725,000 votes in the July election, while its membership fell last year to 65,000. Flynn said the priority was to win back the hundreds of thousands of former SNP voters who switched to Labour rather than worrying about “homeless” pro-independence voters who stayed at home. The movement still commands roughly 48% support. “It’s those people that we firstly need to acknowledge, and we need to win back their support and their trust,” he said.