SNP failed to examine reasons for Scottish independence referendum loss, veteran MP Pete Wishart says

The SNP failed to examine the reasons why it lost the 2014 independence referendum, the party’s longest-running MP has said.

Speaking at a fringe event on the last day of the SNP conference in Edinburgh, Pete Wishart said his party didn’t properly answer where the Yes side “went wrong”.

His comments also come after the SNP lost most of its MPs at the General Election, going from 48 in 2019 to nine MPs this year.

Wishart said campaigning in the run-up to the vote in 2014 was the “most exciting time in my life”, adding it was a “different type of experience” to when he had played with Scots rock band Runrig.

Speaking about the referendum campaign, he said: “Living through it felt such a pleasure and such a privilege”.

Fantastic and mobbed fringe this morning. Discussing my book and the indyef 10 years on with Lesley Riddoch. pic.twitter.com/H9SoR3C0J0
— Pete Wishart (@PeteWishart) September 1, 2024

As membership of the SNP soared in the aftermath of the vote for Scotland to stay in the UK, he said the party got “caught up again in what was happening next” rather than properly examining the reasons for the result.

Wishart spoke out at a fringe event at the SNP conference in Edinburgh after the recent publication of his book Inside the Indyref, from diaries he kept at the time of the campaign.

It has been published as Scotland approaches the 10th anniversary of the referendum vote, which was held on September 18, 2014.

He told the conference event: “None of us knew what would happen in the aftermath of the independence referendum.

“But I don’t think we sufficiently did the work, I don’t think we sat down properly to examine what happened, where it went wrong.”

Recalling that “everyone was joining” the SNP and the Greens, the other pro-independence party which had been involved in the campaign for a Yes vote in 2014, the MP said there was also a “movement towards the general election” in 2015.

He said: “We were looking at opinion polls – the Labour vote was collapsing and we were getting close to 50% in polls, and it was right into 2015 and the success of that.”

That general election saw the SNP win a record 56 of the 59 Scottish seats at Westminster – reducing Labour, the Tories and the Liberal Democrats to having just one MP in Scotland each.

Asked if the party had made a “mistake” in failing to properly examine the reasons for the loss of the referendum, Wishart said: “I think on reflection, yes.”

He added that carrying out such work as this would have been “almost like doing the work when the sun shines, getting the roof fixed”.

Wishart continued: “There was a point we probably should have done that work at that point, but it was the good times.

“Now we are left in the situation where things aren’t so good and we are starting a bit more seriously to look at where we are and try to learn lessons.”