Scotsman head of news Dale Miller discusses the latest membership figures for the SNP with political editor Alistair Grant
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00:00Hello and welcome to the Scotsman for this Thursday. My name is Dale Miller. I'm Head of News at the Scotsman and I'm joined by our political editor Alistair Grant.
00:09Alistair, there's been some big early breaking news on the politics front that we can get to very, very shortly.
00:17But the front page of the Scotsman today was leading on essentially an update around UK government borrowing that was announced yesterday.
00:263.1 billion pounds for July was the extent of the borrowing deficit. A huge amount of money, more than half or roughly half again of what was expected to be announced.
00:43The SNP hit back. They accused the Treasury of putting public services at risk. Obviously, Rachel Reeves has a budget to deliver in October.
00:52That will have consequences for the Scottish Government who have already had to find some money for pay deals, including to avert bin strikes.
01:00And we've heard over the past couple of weeks about the extreme financial pressure that they're under comes against the backdrop of some funding decisions that are being made by the Scottish Government.
01:12There is a real belt tightening happening. And if you think that Labor may essentially cut back on spending further, that will mean less consequentials heading north and more tough decisions for the Scottish Government.
01:26So some big weeks ahead, Alistair, but for the SNP outside of the Scottish Government, there were some membership figures this morning and maybe not unexpected, but they did make for great reading.
01:38Yeah, so this is the latest annual accounts for the SNP showing that its membership has plummeted again by nearly 10,000.
01:46And so documents show the party had 64,525 members as of June this year, and that's down from around 74,000 at the same time last year.
01:57But the bigger picture is that it's almost halved really in recent years. In 2019, the SNP had some 125,000 members, so there's been a huge drop off over the years since then.
02:10I think the other headline stuff out of the accounts is it recorded a financial surplus.
02:15People might remember there's a lot of stories last year about its deficit of around £800,000 for 2022.
02:23But last year, so covering 2023, it recorded a surplus of around £660,000.
02:30And that's mainly because it took money from its branches by kind of imposing two levies.
02:36One of them was for the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election to ensure the party could fight that.
02:41And the other one was a kind of more significant levy that it took from branches so it could fight the general election.
02:48So I think just as well, just before we go back to the membership numbers, the final interesting point is that the accounts show that the party still owes Peter Murrell, its former chief executive, £60,000.
03:01So he loaned them that money. SNP has still not paid it back.
03:04People will know that Peter Murrell was charged in connection with the embezzlement of funds from the SNP earlier this year.
03:11There's also been this long running police investigation.
03:15And the SNP's auditors actually only signed off its party's accounts on a qualified basis because some documentation from before July 2023 was missing.
03:25I think that happened last year as well, this kind of qualified setting off the accounts on a qualified basis.
03:31But back to the membership numbers, I mean, it's obviously a huge drop.
03:34I think in the interest of fairness, I should probably point out that there is a kind of wider trend of party memberships falling.
03:41There is a kind of period of mass membership.
03:43So, for example, the UK Labour Party had a huge membership under Corbyn.
03:47It's dropped off since then.
03:49UK Labour's annual accounts showing a fall of 37,000 members.
03:52So the SNP is not alone when it comes to losing members.
03:56But it's still really bad news for the party.
03:59It's always said that it's the biggest party in Scotland, and it still is by quite some distance probably.
04:04But it kind of relies on its mass membership.
04:07It's been something that it's been quite keen to highlight in the past.
04:11That's obviously been dropping off.
04:13And that will have financial implications for the SNP at a time when they already have financial troubles.
04:19It's been quite well publicised.
04:21They will have less short money from Westminster, the kind of funding they get from Westminster,
04:25because they had a disastrous general election in which they went from 48 MPs in 2019 to just nine this time round.
04:33So it's a very kind of grim picture for the party going into this conference next week.
04:38And I think there'll be a lot of soul searching going on on the back of that general election result,
04:43but also just in the back of the sense that the party is in decline from its kind of heyday under Nicola Sturgeon.
04:49And I, again, should say that that 2019 heyday was extremely unusual.
04:53I mean, we kind of talk about it now as if, you know, the SNP is kind of in decline and what does that mean?
04:59But the amount of members it had in 2019 and those scenes we saw of these huge conferences the party was holding,
05:05you know, Nicola Sturgeon addressing these huge audiences was not normal.
05:09It wasn't a normal state of affairs.
05:11So in some ways it was always unsustainable.
05:14But it has just exacerbated this narrative of decline that John Swinney is going to really have to grapple with.
05:20Speaking of conference for the SNP, we've got one coming up very soon, Alistair, about a week and a half.
05:29It feels like a really significant moment for Swinney and the SNP on the back of these figures.
05:35Also, we've had the whole discussion over the past week around Angus Robertson and Israel and Gaza.
05:42That seems to have, I guess, again, highlighted some of those rifts within the party.
05:48How critical do you think conference is going to be to the party and Swinney,
05:53actually showing that they've got a proactive or a constructive plan for coming months?
05:58I think it's going to be hugely important.
06:00I mean, conference is always hugely important to getting the temperature of the party,
06:03the feeling within the membership, how the membership feels about the direction in which the party is heading.
06:09But this year, and I think the most important thing is the general election result.
06:12Coming out of that general election result, disastrous night for the SNP.
06:16We obviously went into that election with this kind of message around independence.
06:20They've had to totally rethink that.
06:22They're going to have to address that during this conference, say something about the strategy going forward.
06:27I think it's going to be a huge moment for the party.
06:29There is this feeling that they are, as I say, in decline.
06:33John Swinney is going to have to try and address that and make it seem as if the party is turning around a bit.
06:40They're obviously going into the 2026 Holyrood election with a very difficult situation within the party,
06:47but also within the Scottish government.
06:49And we saw this, the latest Scottish social attitudes survey a few weeks ago,
06:53showing that trust in the Scottish government is at an all time low.
06:57People are not happy with public services, the NHS.
07:02Labour in Scotland will be going into that Holyrood election using its narrative of change.
07:07It proved very powerful at the general election.
07:09I'm sure it will prove powerful again at the Holyrood election.
07:12And so, yes, it's a really important moment for the party.
07:14And I think that the row over the meeting with the deputy Israeli ambassador that Angus Robertson had,
07:20has also been playing out in recent days.
07:23John Swinney, I think, met with Palestinian officials yesterday.
07:27And so I think they've obviously moved to address that.
07:30Angus Robertson came out and apologised for the meeting,
07:34or at least apologised for discussing other things at the meeting other than just the kind of situation in Gaza.
07:40So I think there'll still be anger around that.
07:42I think maybe some of this thing has been taken out of it,
07:45but I'm sure there'll still be plenty of people unhappy about that, unhappy about the fact the meeting took place.
07:50But it's just another sign of a party that's internally not that happy at the moment.
07:56You can read all the latest, including Alistair's report on the falling SNP membership numbers at scotsman.com.
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08:07And if you want a full wrap of all the latest for the SNP and the day's news developments,
08:14go out and buy a copy of The Scotsman in print tomorrow.
08:17Thanks, everyone, for joining us.