Only the dead donate to the unpopular populist SNP

A party deficit, fraud squad investigations, unpopular policies and declining membership - it's fair to say the SNP are a party in crisis

Yesterday I was invited to speak with GBNews to discuss my recent writings on the Scottish National Party’s growing financial crisis. The crux here is simple, the SNP are a party running a financial deficit as fraud squad investigations occur, pushing unpopular policies amid ongoing declines in membership. When only the dead are donating to you, it's fair to say the SNP are a party in crisis.

As Operation Branchform lumbers forward - seemingly only growing in scale - there is the spectre of new fraud squad probes into the SNP. As if all of that where not enough, the SNP is weighed down by unpopular ‘legacy’ policies from the Sturgeon era. Self-Identification, which never commanded widespread public support, ended up an embarrassing farrago in the Scottish courts. Humza Yousaf succeeded in aligning Scottish public sentiment with a Westminster Tory Scotland Secretary as ‘Mr Continuity’ insisted on fighting for the unpopular policy.

The recent litany of botched (and unpopular) policies grows by the week. Self-ID, Gender Recognition Reform, Deposit Recycle Scheme debacle, heat pumps and knee-jerk anti-North Sea policy, the SNP’s leader seems preoccupied with keeping his Scottish Greens compatriots happier than his own rank and file membership.

Yet this reminds me of something Andrew Liddle of The Courier said in one of my Dean’s Discussions chats, the SNP under Humza Yousaf seems to find itself in the strange place of being an unpopular populist political force.

Whether it’s Police Scotland fraud squad investigations, ill considered policies or political entropy, the bottom line is the SNP are now a party under pressure. Over the five years to July 2023 only the dead are donating to the SNP; recording just one donation from a living person over £50,000 (the rest were all bequeaths in wills).

Further, in 2022 the SNP spent £5m but only raised £4.2m. The result was a 2023 deficit for the party to the tune of £800,000. Worse still, this means that in a non-parliamentary year (i.e. a year where no national elections are fought) the SNP far from consolidating finances ready for future election campaigns, is sinking further into the fiscal mire. For the record that 2022 deficit constitutes the biggest deficit in a non-parliamentary year for the First Minister’s party.

This increasingly severe financial picture is rendered more acute when we accept that Humza Yousaf simply isn’t the draw his party needs him to be for donors. Under Mr Yousaf the SNP has attracted less than £10k.

Perhaps this explains the sudden, secretive, appeals to anti-gay Brian Souter? Reports reveal the embattled SNP has been begging Mr Souter - who ceased donating to the party under Ms Sturgeon’s regime - to organise slap-up business dinners in a scramble to find someone…anyone…willing to become a megadonor to the SNP.

When your most enthusiastic donors are all deceased, pushing up the daises and singing with the choir invisible, while the living don’t want anything to do with you, it’s fair to say your party has a problem on its hands.

How the SNP’s arrived at its rather desperate terminal egress (financially speaking) is plain for all to see. A party that can’t tell its own membership where the ‘ring fenced’ £600,000 indyref2 fund went will discover them reluctant to dip hands in pockets to give to give again. All the more so when it’s clear even to the most tribal of supporters of the embattled SNP bunker that indyref2 isn’t around the next corner. That particular game is now a bogey.

Especially when the somewhat opaque Operation Branchform continues to lurk as a spectre over any potential party fundraiser appeals and yet more fraud squad probes into party finances threaten. The Electoral Commission has confirmed two loans from Mr Peter Murrell were late and could investigate the matter (as could Police Scotland)

With the fraud squad cops banging down the doors to SNP HQ, removing in boxes anything not nailed down while blue forensic tents appear outside the home of the Murrell-Sturgeon (former) power couple; fair to say you’d hesitate to donate.

A reality underscored by the unpopular populism on swathes of policy under Ms Sturgeon and her successor Mr Continuity. SNP donations are falling alongside their membership as the SNP has prioritised placating Patrick Harvie over his own on policy issues. It’s really very explicable why reportable donations and party membership donations have all been falling in recent years.

Last October Ms Sturgeon was gurning to the media that she wants the “traumatic” SNP finances probe “over as soon as possible”. But for the SNP more generally the central issue here is not merely that the fraud squad probe is proving a problem for fundraising, it’s that Ms Sturgeon’s broader political legacy to Humza Yousaf was a party teetering on the edge of financial crisis (scrambling to find accountants) alongside hated policies such as self-ID.

When only the dead donate, you make an enemy of Scottish feminists, pander to Patrick Harvie and are reduced to imbuing an almost pantomimesque unpopular populism, it’s fair to say folk won’t wish to donate to you. Poor Humza doesn’t even have the excuse of ‘donate to the Nats for independence’ since everybody and their dog (even comfy slippers Pete Wishart) knows that game is a busted flush now.

As we approach the next General Election, it is clearer than ever that a resurgent Scottish Labour will scarcely have a better opportunity to defenestrate her Nationalist rivals, who seemingly would struggle to even pay for their election campaign (assuming they knew what to even say).

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