SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn has admitted his party has ‘failed’ to give voters what they want ahead of its rockiest conference in decades.
The Aberdeen South MP said the SNP had lost trust, lacked ‘hope and optimism’, and must mend fences after its general election hammering.
He said: ‘Our priorities, our actions and our delivery must change.’
Party activists will gather in Edinburgh this weekend amid the civil war that erupted when the SNP crashed from 48 seats to nine.
Mr Flynn, tipped as a possible successor to John Swinney, said the whole party must share the ‘collective burden’ of failure after 17 years in power.
SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn admits ‘we have failed’ in brutal assessment of his party’s record
Writing in the Daily Record, he said the SNP faced a huge challenge.
People wanted change ‘now’, but Holyrood’s budget was going through a ‘brutal’ squeeze.
‘The road isn’t going to be paved with easy choices,’ he said, blaming the Labour government for ‘no new money flowing from the Treasury’.
He went on: ‘Our party conference offers us the first opportunity to run the rule over what has gone wrong in recent times.
‘It could perhaps be argued that a weekend isn’t long enough on that front.
‘But we must be careful not to spend too long talking about ourselves at the expense of talking about the public. Their needs, their aspirations, their future.’
Mr Flynn with former First Minister Humza Yousaf, who stepped down earlier this year
He added: ‘It is time we got ourselves back into the business of delivering the hope and optimism that has been in such short supply for people living across Scotland.
‘Now, the harsh truth is that we have failed on that front in recent times.
‘The trust that drove the SNP to unprecedented heights has gradually eroded.
‘It is our time to be the change that the public expect and deserve.’
Last week it emerged the SNP’s membership had almost halved from its 2019 peak to 64,525 at the end of June, although its finances improved in 2023.
The party won most of Scotland’s Westminster seats in 2015, 2017 and 2019.
But after Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf quit as leaders, and police made arrests over party fundraising, it suffered its worst election reverse since 1979.
It lost half a million supporters and its vote share fell by a third to 30 per cent in July, while Labour gained 36 seats and pushed the Nationalists into a distant second place.
A Norstat poll for the Sunday Times found Labour is now on course to oust the SNP at Holyrood in 2026. Although the SNP would have one more MSP, Labour would be able to form a minority government with the backing of other pro-Union parties.
Scottish Conservative chairman Craig Hoy MSP said: ‘Stephen Flynn has finally admitted what is blindingly obvious to everyone else: that after 17 years of failure, the SNP has lost the public’s trust.
‘On their watch, our public services are getting worse, as skyrocketing A&E wait times and the widening attainment gap in education prove, while hard-working Scots are saddled with the highest taxes in the UK.
‘It is hardly surprising that Scots are growing tired of an incompetent SNP government that continues to ignore Scotland’s real priorities.’
Scottish LibDem leader Alex Cole-Hamilton said: ‘The SNP are in a sorry state and it looks like their conference will bring these splits bubbling to the surface.
‘Years of focusing on constitutional division has taken its toll on Scottish public services.
‘At the general election, nationalist chickens began to come home to roost.’
Scottish Labour Deputy Leader Dame Jackie Baillie added: ‘The SNP is hopelessly divided and out of ideas.’
Mr Swinney and the SNP hierarchy are also under fire from Alba leader Alex Salmond.
He said his old party’s leadership was ‘brain dead’ and lacked the fight to win independence.
He cited a new FindOutNow poll suggesting a quarter of SNP supporters want the party to work with Alba’s MSP to pass Holyrood’s budgets.
Almost two-thirds of SNP voters want the party to revive the joint government deal with the Scottish Greens that Mr Yousaf axed in the spring.
