Former Scottish Government minister Alex Neil has backed Stephen Flynn to replace John Swinney as SNP leader, saying the party is "not ready" to consider a leadership change after its "very poor" election campaign.
The SNP emerged as the largest party at Holyrood following the May election but fell seven seats short of a majority and saw its vote share drop by 10 points. Nicola Sturgeon claimed the party's pitch lacked "vision or big-picture thinking" and was "detached from the big issues bearing down on people's lives".
Neil calls for change at the top
Neil, a former MSP, argued that members would eventually see the benefit of a change at the top, even though they were "not ready" yet to have that debate. He said: "Nicola has to answer for her own record. She promised a lot but, quite frankly, delivered very little. As far as the election campaign is concerned, I agree with her - it was a very poor election campaign."
He disagreed with Sturgeon's suggestion that more "woke" policies and following the Greens on energy policy would have won votes, saying: "People like Stephen Flynn would have found that totally unacceptable, and quite rightly so. Apart from everything else, we need to address the impact of the run-down of the oil and gas industry. So I don't think her energy policies would have been vote winners among the traditional working class communities that vote SNP."
Flynn tipped as better leader
Asked if Swinney was still the right man to lead the SNP, Neil responded: "I think it's time for a change - but I don't think the party, at the moment, is ready for that change. To John's advantage, there's not a huge amount of people up to the job."
Pressed on who could do a better job, Neil continued: "Well, I think Stephen Flynn would be better, quite frankly. He's a new generation. He's dynamic, he's fast on his feet, and I think he's right on energy policy. As he said at his count on election night, he said he would be the champion for the North Sea. He's now got an opportunity here to make a name for himself and deliver."
Sturgeon's criticism dismissed
Swinney has previously insisted he plans to serve a full five-year term and lead the party into the 2031 Holyrood election. Sturgeon used a 6,000-word foreword to the paperback edition of her memoir, Frankly, to criticise her successor's campaign, writing that the SNP "rightly put Scottish independence centrally as an objective, but didn't always bring alive the opportunities it offers for people in a tangible sense".
But Mairi McAllan, the Education Secretary, described Sturgeon's comments as "nonsense", saying: "We have just been returned to government with an absolutely whopping endorsement of our manifesto. It was a historic election result for the SNP, the largest ever gap, if I remember correctly, between us and those who came into second place, so I was really proud to stand in that election alongside John Swinney on a positive future for our country, on always standing up for Scotland."
