A FEW new faces joined the SNP ranks in Parliament last week. There are few SNP faces on the green benches of the Commons full stop.
But in some bittersweet victories for the party, they welcomed Graham Leadbitter, Seamus Logan and Stephen Gethins as new and returning MPs in the new Parliament.
Gethins, who took the new seat of Arbroath and Broughty Ferry, returns to Parliament having previously served as the MP for North East Fife between 2015 and 2019.
The two newbies are Logan and Leadbitter. Logan managed to take Aberdeen North and Moray East for the SNP, seeing off a challenge from Douglas Ross after the Scottish Tory leader’s disastrous campaign which saw him steal the nomination from his colleague David Duguid, who was recovering from serious illness.
Logan is new to politics, let alone the Commons. By the point of his election earlier this week, the Antrim-born nationalist had served as an Aberdeenshire councillor for a little more than two years.
Local government was his first taste of elected office after a career in the health service.
He told the Sunday National that he wanted the SNP to carry out the first stages of their election post-mortem – which saw them reduced to just nine seats – in private. And he was quick to dismiss some of the theories of those who had already stuck their oars in.
“There are far too many people coming out and making ridiculous statements about what’s gone wrong and where the party needs to go,” said Logan.
But he was insistent that independence had not been written off by the result.
'Keep indy focus sharp'
'AS far as I’m concerned, the SNP exist for the purpose of achieving independence, so it’s not on the back burner for me at all,” he said.
“I’ll be discussing with my colleagues in Westminster how we can keep that focus sharp and bright.”
But Logan said he believed that “for many, many voters independence was not the number one concern at that moment in time”.
“That doesn’t mean to say they’ve given up on it because the polls consistently show at least half the people in the country want independence.”
Like many others in the party, he has called for a “period of reflection and consultation and engagement with people right across the country to find out what we need to do better and what direction we now need to take”.
A ship-steadying meeting was held last week to discuss the structure of the new SNP group in Westminster. Stephen Flynn was reappointed as leader, with Commons veteran Pete Wishart – the party’s longest-serving MP in Parliament – made deputy. Kirsty Blackman - who is Flynn’s constituency neighbour in Aberdeen - was made chief whip.
One silver lining some of the remaining MPs have identified is that they have suddenly found themselves with far more time on their hands, with the SNP having lost their status as the third-largest party to the LibDems.
One Scottish LibDem insider told the Sunday National that normality had been restored to Parliament, with the party having held that position from the formation of the SDP-Liberal Alliance formed in 1981 to their humbling in 2015.
While the prestige of third-party status gave the SNP far greater media coverage than they had previously enjoyed, it saddled MPs with lots of extra parliamentary work, including seats on committees and guaranteed slots at question times and in legislative scrutiny.
Some saw that as a distraction from the party’s core purpose as a campaigning force for Scottish independence.
And others see other reasons to remain optimistic. Leadbitter, the newly minted MP for Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey, said he was “well reminded” of the result of the 2010 election, in which the SNP kept at six seats under Alex Salmond’s leadership.
This was despite a UK shift away from Gordon Brown’s Labour Party and came after Salmond had taken the SNP into government in Scotland for the first time ever.
'Huge amount to be positive about'
BUT just one year after, the party were propelled to a never-since replicated majority in Holyrood – “breaking the electoral system”, as Leadbitter had it in an interview with the Sunday National in his new Westminster office last week.
He added: “I think there’s a huge amount to be positive about in terms that the party has already made and how we’ve responded in recent months and applying those changes.”
Leadbitter is more long in the tooth politically than Logan, having been the leader of the SNP group on Moray Council and serving in past roles working for Angus Robertson, Richard Lochhead and Richard Thomson at various points.
He said his victory over council colleague Kathleen Robertson was “tinged with the sadness of losing colleagues from many other seats across Scotland”.
But he added: “Politics can be brutal at times.”
He was sanguine about the party’s prospects in the next Holyrood poll, which is just under two years away now.
Full of praise for John Swinney (below), the new MP said the First Minister’s brief spell as leader before the election was “no time to allow anybody to make a mark with the leadership”.
“That timescale should never be used to judge anybody,” he added.
Reflecting on the July 4 result, Leadbitter said: “It’s always difficult for us in a UK election. We’re the party of Scotland and we campaign in every constituency to win.
"We’re campaigning in some areas against Labour, in some areas against the Conservatives, in some areas against the LibDems and that can be a real challenge in terms of how you get your message across.”
He said the party must not “rush to conclusions”.
“We need to know exactly what we could influence and what were out of our control,” said Leadbitter.
“Do we need to do more internally? Possibly. Do we need to think about our messaging? Possibly.
“The things that are out of our control, the likes of the media coverage – having a head-to-head and Rishi Sunak with no SNP involvement despite the fact that we were the third party.
“That is a real frustration that the national broadcast media push you out to the edge, when you should be entitled to a much fairer crack at it.”
Hopes for Holyrood
LOOKING forward to 2026, he was sunnier. “Clearly a head-to-head in a Scottish election is going to involve John Swinney because he is the First Minister and the leader of the SNP, who are the biggest party in the Scottish Parliament.
“The dynamic and the context is very different in terms of the media coverage and the campaign and whose messages have been put up against each others'.”
Given the new shape and diminished status of the SNP – they have become a party consigned, with the exception of Argyll, Bute and Lochaber, to the north east of Scotland – they will “have to feel our way through” their new role.
Leadbitter said that while there would be areas of agreement between the new Labour government and the SNP, he and his colleagues still had “a real job of work on our hands to hold the government to account”.
So far, the signs point to a more consensual and collegiate relationship between Scotland’s two governments – but for Leadbitter, it is “too early to say whether that’s going to play out as has been stated”.
As for the new leadership of the party, which sees Flynn, Swinney and Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes in the most powerful positions, Leadbitter is approving.
“Stephen Flynn and John Swinney’s performances in the debates that they were involved in were top-notch and widely recognised as being significantly better than their opponents,” he said.
