A SENIOR SNP MSP has called on Nicola Sturgeon to commission a report for the party identifying what went wrong in its election campaign.

Richard Lochhead, the former Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, urged the First Minister to ensure a study is carried out to establish why thousands of former supporters switched to the Tories in last week’s General Election.

Lochhead is the most influential figure in the party yet to voice concerns over the campaign, with his comments following interventions from more critical figures such as ex-ministers Alex Neil and Kenny MacAskill.

Despite the Conservatives losing support across the UK, the party got 12 extra seats in Scotland, including six in the north-east, bringing its total number of Scottish MPs to 13, its best result since 1983.

Former First Minister Alex Salmond and Westminster leader Angus Robertson, who represented Gordon and Moray respectively, were the highest-profile SNP casualties of the night which saw the party on 35 seats after losing 21.

Salmond and Robertson both lost to Tory candidates.

“I think the First Minister should be commissioning some work into the dynamics in this election campaign,” Lochhead told The National.

“There was a very complex backdrop to the campaign but we have ended up in a situation where on the one hand we have achieved the remarkable result of winning a General Election campaign in Scotland for the second time in a row, but at the same time we have large swathes of Scotland where people turned to the Conservatives and we have lost major personalities who were invaluable to our cause such as Alex Salmond and Angus Robertson.”

He said he was “gutted” the Tories won seats such as Moray and believed the SNP needed to demonstrate it was listening to the electorate and understood the reasons why so many former supporters had moved to the Conservatives.

“Two key issues of course were the timing of an independence referendum and our message on Brexit, which particularly in Moray was a key factor in our defeat,” he added.

Reflecting criticisms made by others, he said the SNP message – in particular on a second referendum – was not sufficiently clear to counter the arguments made by the Unionist parties.

“We didn’t seem to have a message for SNP supporters in particular who were willing to hold their nose and vote Tory due to a fear the SNP would prevent us from leaving the EU,” he said.

He added: “There is no doubt we failed to come up with a clear message to counter the impression [made by the opposition parties] we were going to press ahead with a second referendum come hell or high water, and perhaps that was due to the timeline associated with it rather than circumstances Brexit would have on Scotland."

A SNP spokesperson: “The SNP won the election in Scotland, with a majority of seats – more than all the other parties combined.

"At the same time, we have made clear we will reflect on the overall result, including those seats which were lost, and what that means going forward – which will obviously entail consideration of local and national factors.”

Lochhead has been an SNP MSP since 1999 and previously worked as an office manager for Salmond.

He stood down from his regional seat to fight and win the Moray constituency by-election in April 2006.

He was appointed Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and the Environment in May 2007 and held the position until May last year.

The SNP lost six seats to Labour amid a late surge in support for UK leader Jeremy Corbyn, who managed to win over considerable number of Yes supporters, and three to the Liberal Democrats.

Sturgeon’s party won 59.3 per cent of the seats with 36.9 per cent of the vote.