Following the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election in late 2023, I was asked to speak to SNP MPs and staffers at Westminster about the Scottish polls and the party’s electoral prospects. I was repeatedly told that they lost that by-election because of turnout: voters who had voted SNP in 2019 had stayed at home, not switched to Labour. If they could find a workable independence message, they would get “their” vote out.

As the July general election proved, they were greatly mistaken. A 20.4-point swing from the SNP to Labour in Rutherglen and Hamilton West, the fourth largest in Scottish postwar by-election history, became a 15.8-point swing across Scotland in July, and a further 35 SNP-held seats flipped to Labour. If there were lessons to be learned from defeat in Rutherglen and Hamilton West, the SNP failed to understand them.

Electoral defeat, particularly when it is unexpected or on a massive scale, can be traumatic for a political party. On top of the emotional scarring and loss of sense of purpose that can come with rejection by the electorate, many of the party’s elected members and their staff lose their jobs, and the spine of the party – the activists – who have spent months pounding pavements and knocking doors can feel that that expense of energy was a pointless waste.

As a result, in the immediate aftermath of defeat often comes recriminations and relitigation of old disagreements, whether about policy, strategy, or personality.

Read more by Mark McGeoghegan

Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of those who weigh in in the days immediately following defeat will find its roots in their pet concerns or long-standing........

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