Now SNP grandees turn on Sturgeon over ‘wasted years’

fORMER grandees of the SNP turned on Nicola Sturgeon last night for making a ‘bad gamble that hasn’t paid off’ after her defeat at the Supreme Court.

Alex Salmond and Jim Sillars accused her of a failure of leadership in her bid to hold a second independence referendum.

former first Minister and SNP leader Mr Salmond said the court case had led the nationalist movement ‘down a blind alley’.

Mr Sillars, who was deputy leader to Mr Salmond in the 1990s, launched an extraordinary attack on Miss Sturgeon for ‘six wasted years’ in office.

He called for the first Minister to resign following the Supreme Court’s unanimous verdict, calling her a ‘failed leader’.

Mr Sillars also accused Mrs Sturgeon of having ‘hollowed out’ the party after her plan for a referendum next year was rejected.

He said: ‘Now that the Supreme Court has spoken a legal and constitutional truth, the independence movement will at last grasp a necessary fact: that it has been a victim of a gigantic kid-on for six wasted years at the hands of Nicola Sturgeon.

‘That iron grip on MSPs, MPs and the membership has intellectually hollowed out what was once a vibrant organisation and rendered it incapable of the innovative and aspirational leadership required to take support for independence to a level that could not be denied.

‘In the six wasted years in which Nicola Sturgeon has led the movement down the referendum road, support for independence has not moved upwards with any consistency. At best we are where we were in 2014, a long way short of winning.’

He added: ‘Having invested so much time, and spent so much political capital, in pursuing and failing to get a referendum, Nicola Sturgeon is a failed leader, and should go.

‘Whether she will, as previously stated, make the 2024 Westminster election a de facto referendum, with a target of a majority of both seats and votes, will require a rethink. What the SNP is to place in front of the people in 2024 is a decision for a strategist with a record of sound judgment and the patience to wait and see the political lie of the land nearer the time – not qualities, as the Supreme Court defeat demonstrates, that Sturgeon has in abundance.’

Mr Sillars, a Brexiteer, has previously predicted that nationalists would lose a second referendum if it were held in 2023. A Panelbase

survey from last month showed 49 per cent support for Scots remaining in the Union compared to 46 per cent of those wishing to leave.

Mr Salmond, who quit the SNP in 2018 to form the Alba Party, claimed the Scottish Government should have forced Westminster to challenge a referendum Bill.

He said: ‘The decision of the Supreme Court today is the result of a bad gamble that hasn’t paid off.’

In a press conference yesterday, Miss Sturgeon described the ruling as a ‘tough pill to swallow’ for supporters.

She said she will call a special conference next year to discuss her party’s next steps.

But Joanna Cherry, Nationalist MP for Edinburgh South West, said a constitutional convention set out by Bute House in 2020 should be convened.