The Scottish National party can only move on from the successive scandals that resulted in heavy election losses by focusing on the issues that matter to the people of Scotland, the party leader, John Swinney, has said.
The first minister acknowledged that SNP members had blamed the party’s disastrous election result – plummeting from 48 seats to nine – on scandals such as the embezzlement charges against former chief executive and former health secretary Michael Matheson’s £11,000 iPad expenses claim.
Members vented their anger and frustration at a private session on Friday after voters abandoned the party in July’s general election for Labour’s more compelling offer of change.
Describing the session as “a constructive discussion about a very difficult experience”, Swinney told reporters on Saturday: “The main thing the party felt was that we weren’t at our best at the election campaign. We’ve not had our troubles to seek and that was pretty obvious to voters.”
His challenge now was “to rebuild that relationship of trust with the public, which has been really strong for our party, one of the greatest foundations of what we are”.
Swinney was speaking before a challenging week, as the Scottish parliament returns from recess. The finance secretary, Shona Robison, is expected to announce deep cuts to tackle an acute spending crisis, having already imposed tough emergency controls on all non-essential spending.
On a visit to Glasgow last week the new Labour chancellor Rachel Reeves said the SNP government was “as guilty as the Conservative government of spending more than they were bringing in”.
But Swinney rejected this outright, saying: “The Scottish government has balanced its budget every year since 2007, a lot of them under my stewardship, so the idea that we have lived beyond our means is baloney.”
Swinney insisted that his government would balance its budget this coming year likewise, having already increased income tax for higher earners “to ensure fiscal sustainability” in previous years, but would be forced to make “tough choices” to do so.
Swinney said budgets had never been adjusted to take account of sky-high inflation, a point that Reeves herself had made in the Commons.
He denied that the financial crisis was down to the SNP’s spending choices – despite Scotland’s financial watchdog, the Scottish Fiscal Commission, saying last week that Scottish ministers are largely responsible for the crisis, for example spending on above inflation public sector pay deals without proper planning.
After Robison’s anticipated cuts, which have already drawn criticism from the arts sector and charities, Swinney will deliver his first programme for government – the equivalent of the king’s speech – since he was elected first minster in May.
He said the “tone and substance” of the programme would be about “focusing on people’s priorities” – strengthening the economy, ending child poverty, addressing net zero and improving public services.
After a recording of Friday’s private session was leaked to the Times, in which Swinney said the SNP had spent too long focusing on the process of independence, he said the party needed to do more “to ensure urgency around the case for independence”.
Later on Saturday the Westminster leader Stephen Flynn, who is regularly spoken about as a potential successor to Swinney, told members to “embrace the humility and honesty of defeat in order to renew our relationship with the Scottish people”.
Flynn suggested earlier in an interview with Holyrood magazine that the SNP would have won even fewer seats at the general election if it had continued its power-sharing arrangement with the Scottish Green party, which was scrapped by the former first minister Humza Yousaf in April, a move which ultimately resulted in his resignation.
