The MP for Ross, Skye and Lochaber said First Minister Humza Yousaf now had to be a man of action, not words, after the party’s mishandling of ferries, roads and recycling schemes.
And the veteran SNP politician said his party need to work with Labour to kick out the Tories at the next general election, contrary to the views of some of his colleagues.
He said: “I’m not going to defend failure. When things have gone wrong, you’ve got to accept it. If you look at the polling, you can see that SNP support has dipped over the recent past – you can’t deny that.
"People will be asking the question as we go into the election next year, ‘Is the SNP, is Humza, is the team he’s got… are they people who can be trusted?’ We’ve got a year to 15 months to show that and we have to do it.
"My message to Humza is, if you’re serious about doing the things you want to as First Minister, then you’re in the driving seat in this. It’s not about words, it’s not about saying, ‘We’ll build a relationship with the business community’. In the end, it’s about actions.”
Looking ahead to the next election, Blackford said it was incumbent on MPs to work for their constituents, even if that meant working with opposition politicians. He said: “My SNP membership card – the original paper one – used to say ‘Scottish independence and the furtherance of all Scottish interests’.
“I want to get independence but if I can find ways of furthering Scottish interests and I have to work with other people to do that, why wouldn’t I do it? As long as they’re not the Tories.
“You want to defeat people with elections, you want to win, but your job is to make things better, so if I can work with people to make things better then I’ll do it.
“What I would say, whether it’s Keir Starmer or anybody else, if we have a mandate for an independence referendum, as we do particularly from the Scottish election in 2021, then Westminster must respect. But yes, I’ll get round the table. I don’t want a Tory government.
“I never want a Tory government.”
Blackford, 62, announced last week he would be stepping back from frontline politics at the next election “with a heavy heart” but said he no longer felt he could offer enough from the backbenches after being ousted as Westminster leader at the end of 2022.
He said he made the decision to step down despite a well-documented campaign by a clique of SNP MPs to remove him. The former investment banker acknowledged the past nine months have been challenging and describe a tough time for him personally.
He said: “There’s no denying that. It’s been interesting – the comments from people [since making the announcement]…the kind things people have said but often it’s not people in your party saying them.”
Although not best friends with some Westminster colleagues, Blackford does count former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon as a pal and said he has kept in touch with her during the last few months as police probe the party’s finances.
He said: “I’ve spoken with her over the last few weeks and obviously this is not easy. She’s a remarkable woman and she’s still got an awful lot to give. The public image that people have of Nicola isn’t all her... she’s actually really good fun.
“Whatever happens, she will come through this and she’ll have a lot to give to the SNP, to the independence movement and I suspect more widely.”
Asked if he believed Sturgeon would remain an MSP until the end of the current Scottish parliamentary term, Blackford said he had “no particular insight” into the subject but stressed the former SNP leader was “getting on with the job”.
The MP, who runs a croft on Skye with his wife Ann, said the weekly 18-hour commute to and from Westminster was one he could no longer justify.
He said: “I’m really passionate about independence but I was asking myself, ‘If I go back to Westminster, what am I going to do? You’re on the back benches’.
“I’ve loved being an MP and representing my constituents. For anybody that’s got a Highland seat, it’s not about you as an individual. Those kinds of communities own you and expect certain things from you.”
Blackford said his proudest achievements have been helping those he represents like Gregg and Kathryn Brain and their son Lachlan. The family had been threatened with deportation by the Home Office but were allowed to remain after he intervened.
He said: “The first time I thought they were going to be deported, I sat in my car and cried. I told myself, ‘You need to get a grip, you’ve got a job to do’, and they’re still here.”
He also helped Fort William athlete Lindsay Jarrett to get a double lung transplant and said: “I’ll never forget the Sunday morning she phoned me and said she’d got the offer of lungs and we need to get to London now.
“That’s given her years that she otherwise didn’t think she would have.” It hasn’t always been plain sailing though for the MP, who was criticised heavily for his handling of the Patrick Grady case.
A covert recording showed him telling fellow SNP MPs they should support Grady after he had been found to have sexually harassed a staff member. He said: “I will reflect on whether or not things could be done differently.
“When you’re accused of these things it’s not nice but the single most important factor is what does the accuser think? It was a very difficult set of circumstances.”
In 2021, he suspended Margaret Ferrier, the former SNP MP who broke the law by travelling on a train while knowingly infected with Covid.
Blackford said he stood by his call for her to resign but admitted her treatment had not been necessarily fair in comparison to the seeming lack of consequences for the current and former Prime Minister, who were fined for breaching lockdown rules in Downing Street.
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