It was a defining image of the Scottish National party’s 2023 conference – the wall of reporters raising dictaphones, cameras and mic booms aloft while delegates broke into whoops and applause to greet the figure sweeping down the main staircase like a movie star. The only problem was that this beloved figure wasn’t the current leader, Humza Yousaf, but his predecessor, Nicola Sturgeon. The reaction of delegates who crowded round for hugs and selfies was testament to the enduring esteem in which she is still held. Despite the conference junking her plan to run the next general election as a de facto independence referendum, and despite Yousaf’s assertion that campaigning in the Rutherglen byelection – which the SNP lost spectacularly to Labour earlier this month – had been overshadowed by the police investigation into party finances, and despite the arrests of Sturgeon, her husband and the former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell, still Sturgeon provided a rare moment of invigoration on Monday for delegates who had spent much of the conference rattling around the unnecessarily roomy Aberdeen venue like dried peas.
This was one of the most sparsely attended SNP conferences in years, and muted in tone. Kate Forbes, whom Yousaf narrowly beat to the leadership last spring, had a prior engagement in the US, while many MPs had returned to the Commons before Yousaf got on his feet for his closing speech on Tuesday. Nonetheless, his first address to conference as party leader was warmly received, with ordinary members as well as colleagues praising his dignified, compassionate and “statesmanlike” approach to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where his own parents-in-law are trapped. For most members, the focus of the conference was Sunday’s debate on independence strategy. Extraordinarily, given the party’s founding principle, it was the first time this had been fully discussed in the main conference hall for several years. There was a note of exasperation in Yousaf’s pre-conference interviews. He told the Guardian: “That’s it, draw a line.” The party had “spent far too long talking about process”. On the day of the debate, the motion evidenced Yousaf’s skills as a negotiator as he headed off any rebellion by accepting a number of amendments and even had the leadership critic Joanna Cherry falling in behind the final version – though she still couldn’t resist a pop at Sturgeon’s previous aversion to strategy debate.
But the problems with the multi-faceted strategy – that if the SNP wins a majority of Scotland’s Westminster seats at the general election, it will have the mandate to negotiate independence with the UK government; campaigning for more powers for the Scottish parliament; considering making the next Holyrood elections a de facto referendum; setting up another constitutional convention – did not evaporate after Sunday’s vote. There was frustration from many delegates who complained about the difficulty of explaining it simply on the doorstep. There was insistence from some MPs – even some of those who proposed amendments – that negotiations should only begin after sustained majority support for independence had become clear. And this cuts to a key contradiction. Yousaf will put independence on the “first line, first page” of his manifesto in order to win back SNP voters who have deserted the party but remain committed to independence, but at the same time he is trying to broaden support for independence – two very different audiences. His conference speech underlined the importance of explaining “the why not the how” of independence to voters, and making it relevant to the cost of living crisis. But he is speaking to an electorate who are making a new set of calculations, as a fringe meeting of the Scottish Election Study pointed out. Scottish voters, and increasingly SNP voters, prioritise getting the Tories out of Downing Street for the coming general election, and UK Labour looks increasingly capable of doing so, while the SNP has taken a hit on competence ratings after a series of domestic policy disasters.