Nicola Sturgeon has been accused of being "more Green than SNP" after the former first minister hit out at John Swinney's election strategy.
The SNP again came out as the largest party at Holyrood after May's vote, but lost six MSPs and saw its support fall by 10 points. That prevented Swinney from securing the outright majority he wanted to call a second independence referendum.
Sturgeon's manifesto attack
In the paperback edition of her memoir Frankly, Sturgeon claimed the party's pitch to voters had no "vision or big-picture thinking" and was "detached from the big issues bearing down on people's lives". She also said the SNP was "lucky" the Greens did not field more candidates, as that could have made the party's worst result in 19 years even worse.
Despite a heavy defeat in a recent Aberdeen by-election, Sturgeon insisted it would be "a massive electoral blunder… for the SNP to soften its left-of-centre environmentalist credentials".
Alex Neil hits back
Former SNP minister Alex Neil disagreed, saying Sturgeon was "wrong" to think "more woke policies" would have helped the party. He branded the campaign "pathetic" and said the SNP benefited from the lack of "credible" pro-independence alternatives.
Neil said: "However, Nicola gives me the impression these days that she's more in line with the Green party on all issues than she is with the SNP." He added that she did not mention independence, and that his main criticism was the party had not updated the case for independence and had handled the question very poorly.
He also said: "I agree with her that the party had a terrible campaign. But I don't think it's because people were particularly favour of Green policies like self-ID. If she thinks that, she's out of touch with who the typical SNP voter is today." He said the former first minister was wrong to think the promise of "more woke policies" would have motivated voters.
'Pathetic' manifesto
Neil agreed with Sturgeon that the manifesto lacked "big picture thinking", saying: "The manifesto was pathetic, which is why they got no where near a majority and their share of the vote went down by 10 per cent."
Sturgeon also used the new edition of her book to predict that today's "obvious contenders" to succeed Swinney may not prevail. Those mentioned include Stephen Flynn, a frequent critic of the Sturgeon era, her close friend Jenny Gilruth, and her former special adviser Mairi McAllan.
