SNP plunged into bitter civil war following 'independence day massacre' which saw nationalists lose 39 Westminster seats

Civil war has erupted within the SNP in the aftermath of its humiliating July 4 General Election wipeout.

Dubbed the ‘independence day massacre’, senior nationalist figures laid much of the blame at the door of former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.

The bitter recriminations began just days after voters turned against the the SNP, which was left with just nine MPs after losing dozens of seats across the country.

Prominent MP Joanna Cherry led the criticism of Nicola Sturgeon yesterday, by calling for the former leader to apologise for her role in the collapse in support.

Other former SNP politicians also linked the decline to her ‘authoritarian’ style of leadership, which saw the party being run like a ‘personality cult’.

Ms Sturgeon’s own former chief of staff even yesterday distanced herself from the former First Minister’s claim that the SNP leadership should have talked about independence more during the campaign.

The bitter round of infighting comes despite John Swinney pledging to unite his party when he became leader.

Scottish Conservative MSP Douglas Lumsden said: ‘Following their drubbing on Thursday, the SNP are fighting like Nats in a sack, while Scotland’s real priorities are being ignored.

‘With the SNP’s political elite clambering to distance themselves from the Sturgeon years, John Swinney’s claim that he has united the party has become laughable.’

‘Scotland needs a government that is focused on the real issues facing Scotland, not one obsessed with infighting and independence.’

During an appearance on the Trevor Phillips on Sunday programme on Sky News yesterday, Ms Cherry, who was defeated in Edinburgh South West after nine years as an MP, said the SNP’s core support was ‘disillusioned at the party’s failure to progress the cause of independence’.

She said the SNP previously won support from people who didn’t support independence because they saw the party as a ‘strong and competent’ government, but added: ‘I am afraid to say, and ashamed for my party, that both our reputation of governing competently and our reputation for integrity - that we are different from what went before - has taken a severe battering in the last couple of years.’

She said that if Mr Swinney is to maintain support ‘he is going to have to acknowledge the enormity of this setback and address the reasons why it happened’.

Asked if Ms Sturgeon owes MPs who lost their seats an apology, Ms Cherry said: ‘I think she does.

‘I don’t think you can ever blame a setback like this on one person. However, Nicola Sturgeon was a very strong leader who brooked no debate and no dissent, as I know to my considerable cost. She ran the party the way that she wanted it.

‘She inherited an incredible legacy from Alex Salmond and after the independence referendum, where although we had lost the independence referendum, we had advanced support for it very considerably.’

Ms Cherry said Ms Sturgeon was ‘presented with a series of opportunities’ after the EU referendum and in the early years of Boris Johnson’s leadership that should have been exploited to push forward the cause of independence - but said there was a ‘huge strategic failure’ on that.

She also claimed that people with legitimate concerns about gender reforms proposed by Ms Sturgeon’s government were ‘demonised’, and added: ‘It was an ill-thought through policy, it was never debated or voted for on the floor of the SNP conference, legitimate concerns were dismissed, those who had legitimate concerns were demonised, and we failed to take the public with us. That is a microcosm of how she governed.’

During an appearance as a pundit on ITV’s general election results programme, Ms Sturgeon condemned the SNP’s general election campaign because independence ‘wasn’t really put front and centre’.

But Liz Lloyd, former chief of staff to Ms Sturgeon and one of her closest allies, yesterday told BBC Radio Scotland: ‘The SNP needs to be a bit careful about rushing to the judgement that more independence would have been the answer in this campaign.

‘I’ve heard that from a number of people over the course of Thursday night and I’m not convinced it would have been.’

She said Mr Swinney was ‘locked in’ to a position set by Humza Yousaf where independence was ‘page one, line one’ of the SNP manifesto, but said: ‘People know it’s not happening. They know that this side of the next Holyrood election it’s not going to move forward, they know there is not going to be a referendum in the next year-and-a-half.

‘So as you talk up independence and you talk up what this election might mean for independence, the public are going “aye right, that’s not coming, that’s not happening”.

‘It is a longer journey now. It is time to, we say step back, reflect, take a breath about a lot of things, but it is actually time to look at how the party moves forward on this.’

Former SNP MSP Joan McAlpine described the July 4 election reversal as ‘an independence day massacre for the SNP’.

Writing in the Sunday Post, she said: ‘The loss of 39 MPs represents a collapse of trust in a party which, not long ago, was the political force promising change.

‘The rot can be traced back to Nicola Sturgeon’s authoritarian style of leadership. It camouflaged internal difficulties which imploded with her resignation and subsequent leadership race.’

She said a focus on ‘divisive fringe issues’ like gender reform made the party a ‘laughing stock’ and led to an exodus of members, and the police probe into the SNP’s funding and finances ‘further eroded trust’ and the party became ‘distracted by internal difficulties’.

Angus MacNeil, the former SNP MP who was defeated as an independent, said people have been ‘too scared to speak out’ against Ms Sturgeon, Mr Swinney and other senior figures.

He added: ‘The personality cult of Nicola Sturgeon has to end - people saying “I’m with Nicola”. The SNP was allowed to become a group to follow Nicola.

‘They suspended their critical faculties and it is time now to go back to reason and good arguments and sound thought and make up policies that way, rather than doing whatever pops into Nicola Sturgeon’s head.’

Former Health Secretary Alex Neil called for a ‘fresh start with a leader who isn’t associated with the failures of the Sturgeon years’.

At the weekend, one SNP candidate claimed there would be a ‘massive revolt’ against SNP headquarters because of the lack of support during the election campaign.

Stephen Gethins, who was elected as an SNP MP in Angus and Broughty Ferry, said he ‘can understand that people are frustrated’ but insisted the HQ team ‘worked extraordinarily hard’.

He added: ‘We didn’t get the result that we might have wanted but I think that is something to reflect on as well and I’ve spoken to people in headquarters who are reflecting themselves on the result and what they can do better, and that is something that we should always be doing.’

During her appearance on ITV’s election programme, Ms Sturgeon said it would be the ‘easy solution’ for people to ‘take refuge in somehow it’s all my fault’.

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