Yes it’s been unedifying, but the SNP’s strife has been both cathartic AND funny

THERE is an argument to be made that the SNP leadership race has been an unedifying experience from start to finish – that it was shambolic, hubristic, intellectually bereft and indicative of the poverty in Holyrood’s Nationalist talent pool.

Much of it may be true but I don’t intend to make that argument. I’ve found it all rather bracing – cathartic even.

While, close up, the oft-repeated Nats-in-a-sack descriptor may be accurate, from a distance many will conclude the past month has been a tonic for those on both sides of the constitutional divide.

A dirty great boil has been lanced – and both sides knew it had to happen. Fetid air has been cleared – and everyone knew it stank. An acknowledgement of the failures of Sturgeonism, finally, has been wrung and they are accepted by all but the most crazed of her loyalists.

That seemingly impregnable SNP fortress has had its locks picked by its own people. Its Doors Open Day has lasted a month and we are, all of us, better off for knowing what has been going on inside.

We have seen candour: the SNP has ‘lost its way’, said one candidate. ‘Continuity won’t cut it’, insisted another. Decisions were made by the queen bee and far too tiny a coterie, says almost everyone now.

Denial

We – and I mean every Scot – have witnessed mendacity at the party’s heart and had ring-side seats at its unspooling. You don’t need to be a Unionist or a Nationalist to know the party’s denial last month of a massive drop in members made it a hostage to the truth in the heat of battle this month.

For all his bluster, everyone knows the now ex-party chief executive Peter Murrell absolutely did indeed intend to mislead friends and foes alike over the collapse in SNP membership.

Not even the birds believe Nicola Sturgeon when she says this same man – her husband – didn’t happen to mention to her that the party she leads was haemorrhaging members.

The leadership race has opened eyes to pathetic lies rolling insouciantly off tongues into a public domain where far too much credulity existed among far too many.

We should almost pay tribute to their brazenness. People get it now. The leading players in this too cosy cabal were willing to take their own supporters for fools.

No less instructive for what remains of the SNP membership is the opportunity this contest has given them to stare into each other’s eyes and learn, to their apparent amazement, that they are very different people with wildly diverging politics.

Beyond independence there is not a single issue on which all agree. The idea of an SNP belief system, of a likethinking,

Left-leaning, wokerthan-thou army of Westminster fight-pickers, has been exploded. It turns out that many are aghast to discover that not everyone in the party was created in the image of Nicola.

Good knowledge to have. I mean it. The party finally stands before its bedroom mirror naked.

The leadership race has thrown up belly laughs for both sides to enjoy – a glorious release of tension. My personal favourite was the press release from Ash Regan which included linguistic flights of fancy with which I had not previously associated her.

It turned out, almost word for word, to be plundered from a speech by President Bartlett in the TV show The West Wing. From the bottom of my heart, Ash’s campaign, thank you for this wonderful moment.

We have had a complete and long overdue clear-out at the top of the party – highly appropriate for spring – and it feels like a weight has shifted, not just for the politics-weary population of the country but for whoever is about to run it.

Errors

By dint of the party’s own strategic errors, the new leader has a largely clean slate on which to plot his or her way forward. A fresh dawn is at hand should they wish to embrace it.

But, more important than any of the above, this contest brought a peace offering. It was made by the candidate who is streets ahead of the other two on any metric which should matter in choosing a national leader.

Kate Forbes is not only more astute, a better communicator, surer-footed in marshalling her arguments and – let’s face it – more likely to appeal to a wider cross-section of the public than either Humza Yousaf or Ash Regan, she is also the only one who appears to have time for No voters.

Just because we don’t agree on independence, that doesn’t mean I don’t like and respect you, she says.

I don’t want to call you names. I want to try to persuade you and, if it doesn’t work, well, friend, there is still more that unites us than divides us. Go well.

This approach is anathema to the past decade or more of SNP governance. While it may do more harm than good to her chances of winning, let the record show the offer was there.

A candidate – the most honest one for my money – made a gesture towards healing.

This weekend may be our last glimpse of this potential peace for quite a while. The fortress doors and windows will likely soon be secured again. Continuity, heaven help us, may be our lot.

But the interruption to normal service has proved an enlightening interlude. I’m grateful.