Debt-laden SNP fears it will struggle to fund campaign
The Scottish National Party fears that it will struggle to afford its general election campaign because of its financial woes.
Some candidates have already resorted to crowdfunding to raise money to pay for basic election material such as posters.
“There’s no money,” one SNP source said. “The party isn’t in a good financial position.”
Scotland’s First Minister, John Swinney, has acknowledged the SNP’s lack of resources – but insisted the party would “find the money” for its campaign from supporters. Accounts published last year revealed that the SNP was in the red, making a loss of just over £800,000. It followed a loss of more than £730,000 the previous year.
SNP candidates have crowdfunded in recent months in an attempt to pay for window posters, leaflets, letters and events in their local areas. But several senior SNP politicians have so far struggled to meet their own crowdfunding goals.
The Westminster leader Stephen Flynn has raised only £1,000 of his £2,000 target for his campaign in Aberdeen South, according to the SNP’s Crowdfunder hub. In Glasgow South, Stewart McDonald has raised only £365. In Glasgow North, Alison Thewliss has only £548.
The party is expected to be hugely outspent by Labour and the Conservatives in Scotland when it comes to online advertising campaigns. “The candidates will be able to cover a lot of the stuff you need to do at a local level,” said the SNP source. “We’ll have to see if any large donations come in,” they added.
“But the party won’t come anywhere near matching Labour and the Tories in national spending. We don’t have the resources.”
Party sources previously admitted that donations had “dried up”, having received only £77,000 from backers during Humza Yousaf’s year in charge. They said that
Alison Thewliss, the SNP candidate for Glasgow North, has raised only £548 fundraising efforts were damaged by a Police Scotland investigation into party finances.
Asked about the SNP’s financial difficulties on Thursday, Mr Swinney told the BBC: “Don’t you worry about the money – we’ll find the money to fight the election campaign.” Yesterday, Sir Keir Starmer challenged the SNP’s election pitch at Scottish Labour’s campaign launch in Glasgow.
He said: “Send a message – that is the height of the SNP ambition. I don’t want Scotland to send a message. I want Scotland to send a government, a Labour government.” The SNP’s Ms Thewliss said in response: “Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is prioritising no change at all and offering nothing to the people of Scotland beyond more of the same.” Mr Swinney was accused of a major campaign “blunder” over his refusal to back the punishment of Michael Matheson, after the then-SNP minister racked up an £11,000 data roaming bill on his parliamentary iPad.
The First Minister claimed that the process was “prejudiced” by public criticism of Mr Matheson by Annie Wells, a Tory MSP and member of the committee.
Some in his party are frustrated that the issue has become an unnecessary distraction in the first days of the campaign. “It will go down like a lead balloon with the public,” a source said.
Cock-a-doodle-doo! The dust is being blown off dressing-up boxes and any minute now a Tory worker dressed in a chicken suit will probably be strutting behind Sir Keir Starmer. Rishi Sunak has gone public with a challenge to face-off in six TV debates, one a week, between now and the general election. The Labour leader retorts that he’s agreed to only two, on the BBC and ITV, just like in 2019.
The Tory big guns have opened with the party chairman Richard Holden making headlines with charges that “Spineless Sir Keir” needs to “grow a backbone”. TV debates may be a routine feature of campaigning in dozens of countries, from Iran to the US, but they have only taken place properly in one general election here: in 2010, when debates left the electorate better informed about the policies and the personal style under pressure of their would-be-leaders. To declare an interest I was part of the Sky News team which brought about the 2010 leaders’ debates between Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg as a public service for all broadcasters. It took tough tactics including the threat to “empty chair” any leader who wouldn’t take part.
Crucially, Sky fixed it all long before an election was likely to take place. That prevented the question of debates becoming a political football between self-interested parties and TV channels, as is happening once again this year. We have been here before. With no established framework to make election debates automatic in this country, it is usually the underdog who challenges the frontrunner – who of course has more to lose. For 2024 that is the struggling Tory Prime Minister Sunak.
In 1997, it was struggling Conservative prime minister John Major who demanded a debate with a rising Labour opposition leader. Tony Blair turned him down. Enter the chickens, or people in chicken suits, mocking Blair’s alleged