Measuring the mood as SNP support stutters

There is a feeling among the SNP faithful that no one is quite sure what mood they should be in as they gather in Glasgow for their conference.

If you look at how their rivals are faring there is much to be optimistic about.

The Tory Cabinet crisis is the gift that keeps on giving and the battle for the Labour Party is in a nervous ceasefire, while its Scottish leadership contest exposes those divisions on the Holyrood front.

Both sides are ripe for picking apart over Brexit, as one struggles to keep negotiations on track and the other gets itself twisted up in its stance over single market membership.

The polls out over the weekend paint a mixed picture, but do not inspire much hope for the party’s flagship cause of independence.

They are perhaps not as bad as feared, with the SNP still comfortably emerging as the biggest party in Holyrood, albeit with slightly fewer seats.

That stems the flow of lost votes in the general election, in which half a million people turned away from the Nationalists.

Crucially though, the SNP would lose its pro-independence majority in the Scottish Parliament if the Yougov poll results for the Times were to bear out in the 2021 election, thanks also to declining support for the Greens.

That would make Indyref2 impossible without a shift in the constitutional position from another Holyrood party, and offers a deadline argument for those in the party pushing for a fast return to the polling booths.

It lends itself to an emerging split in the party.

There are those who want to capitalise on the aligning stars of Brexit and a leadership vacuum in the Conservatives and want to hold a referendum before 2021, while others favour the gradualist approach and think the best bet is to patiently rebuild the case for secession.

That debate will be held in the bars and cafés surrounding the SECC, but will not be found in the venue itself.

The issue is not being formally discussed at conference, as the party seeks to prove itself again as one that can be trusted to govern.

That is not going to be an easy one when it is being repeatedly hammered for shortcomings in what are the two most important domestic policy areas for any government – health and education.

Scotland is by no means unique in this respect but there are stubborn shortages of teachers and GPS that if unresolved by 2021 could destroy them at the ballot box.

Mr Swinney went some way at conference by making a bold intervention on the school recruitment crisis, in offering £20,000 bursaries for people making a career change to retrain as teachers of certain subjects.

We saw last week in The Courier how patients are being forced to queue up outside surgeries to get an appointment amid a lack of family doctors.

These crises have been brewing for years.

In the absence of serious progress in these most fundamental areas of public service provision, the SNP risks being the party to kill independence stone dead.

The SNP risks being the party to kill independence stone dead

SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon and her deputy John Swinney have to plot a course between those who want a referendum sooner rather than later and those who want to rebuild the case for independence.