JOANNA Cherry has called on the SNP to have a “major rethink” on strategy ahead of next year’s Holyrood elections.
Writing exclusively in The National, the Edinburgh South West MP warns that despite recent polls showing a comfortable win for her party in 2021, the coronavirus crisis could leave voters in Scotland seeking a “radical change”.
The SNP, she says, must be the party offering that radical change.
READ MORE: Joanna Cherry: SNP need a new strategy so Scotland can thrive
A YouGov poll published last week pointed to the party being on track for a majority at next year’s Holyrood election.
The survey found 54% plan to give their first vote to the party, while 45% would pick them for the regional vote. Ballot Box Scotland said the result would give the SNP 68 seats – up five on their 2016 result.
Meanwhile a Panelbase poll, carried out for Wings Over Scotland and published on Monday, found 50% of Scottish adults now back a Yes vote, once “don’t knows” were removed from the results.
In her column, Cherry compares Nicola Sturgeon to Winston Churchill, who led the UK through the Second World War, but was turfed out of No 10 in the 1945 general election.
Cherry writes: “Currently, we are at the peak of a crisis led by a leader who is widely respected and trusted. However, when the peak of the crisis is over and we start to return to some degree of normality, that won’t be enough.
“After the Second World War was won, when Britain went to the polls, voters chose not the leader who won the war but Clement Attlee, who had a radical plan for the peace.
“After this crisis is over, people may well be in mood for radical change in Scotland. We need to make sure the SNP is the party of that radical change.”
While “the public health emergency and saving lives must be the priority of the Scottish Government”, Cherry adds, “the SNP as a party rather than as a government should be looking to our overall strategy and our policy direction.”
The MP says her parliamentary colleagues “have more bandwidth than usual” to look at strategy because Westminster and Holyrood are running to very reduced timetables.
Cherry also criticises the party’s election efforts at the snap General Election in 2017. She says the SNP was “ill prepared to defend our record”.
“We struggled to articulate the benefits of having such a large representation at Westminster with the result that we lost 21 seats and some very talented colleagues.
“In the end, that proved a setback for independence because First Minister Nicola Sturgeon felt impelled to ‘reset’ the indyref2 timetable.”
Cherry also says the biggest lesson of her five years in Westminster is that winning elections “under the current constitutional set-up of the United Kingdom is not enough to further the cause of independence”.
Last month Cherry’s Westminster colleague, Angus Brendan MacNeil, said the SNP was being “hopelessly naive” to think they could pause the case for a Yes vote just because the world was in the middle of a pandemic. The unionists, he said, had not stopped campaigning.
The Scottish Government had long said they planned on holding indyref2 this year, but have since postponed because of the coronavirus outbreak.
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