NEW SNP IS A POWERFUL AND SINISTER BEAST:

THE SNP has gained a great deal since the referendum – most notably 75,000 new members. But what had not become apparent until this weekend is what it has lost. Even just a couple of years ago, SNP conferences were ever so slightly parochial affairs but it was this that gave them their charm.

They were friendly and comfortable. They took place in semi-rural centres like Perth and Inverness where everyone seemed to know everyone else.

The oddballs were there, that was for sure. There were men in kilts with wild eyebrows and feathered bonnets. There were large women in Bannockburn T-shirts who cried at any rendition of Scots Wha Hae and dogs with tartan waistcoats and Saltire flags tied to their collars.

Indeed, it was that slightly bonkers edge of woad and romanticism that gave the SNP its rather homely appeal.

Now, though, as the SNP finishes its Spring conference in Glasgow today, it has become depressingly apparent that the party has changed.

That tweedy edge of oldfashioned rural Nationalism has gone, replaced by a hard-edged, urban separatism.

The old kilt and sandal wearers have disappeared. They have either been chased away by the power of the new mass membership or simply so overwhelmed by the numbers that they cannot be seen beneath the tide of furious activists determined to overthrow the British state.

As the SNP has moved from the rural fringes of Scotland like the North East to its densely populated urban centres in the Central Belt so its conference has changed in character, too.

All that rural amiability has gone and in its place there is a harder, more focused and less convivial feel.

Angus Robertson, the SNP’s Westminster leader, looked around at the 3,000 members packed into the hall yesterday morning and asked all those who had never been to conference before to make themselves known. Between two thirds and three quarters of the crowd raised their hands showing that this is indeed a New SNP.

But while Tony Blair created New Labour from the top down, this New SNP has been created from the bottom up, from all those thousands of new members who have flooded into branches all over the country and taken them over.

Prospective SNP candidates now talk about how difficult it is now to get a message round to all the members in each constituency because there are so many of them.

In the past, the candidate would have known every one of the party members in their area. That was part of the chumminess of the party.

Now, though, the SNP is no longer a party. It is a mass movement with more members in its London branch – its London branch – than attended the Liberal Democrat conference in Scotland earlier this month.

Although this huge expansion has brought activists, money and the prospect of extraordinary success, it has also brought problems. As far as the leadership was concerned, the party used to

AGGRESSIVE: Nicola Sturgeon, at yesterday’s conference, focused on destruction of the British state act something like a rather placid donkey. Sometimes it would be stubborn and object to the direction the leadership wanted to go – but really it rarely did any more than dig its heels in for a bit. It always came round in the end.

Now the party is like a big and powerful thoroughbred, pushing and pulling at the reins with the leadership clinging on to the saddle hoping it will run in the right direction, but not entirely sure it will be able to control it when it sets off.

That is because this new breed of supporter is more driven, angrier and, crucially, less attuned to the minutiae of party rules to object to anything like that.

Every single member there was aware of the state of the polls before they arrived and each one went to Glasgow expecting the party to wipe Labour in Scotland off the map. Not only that, but they were relishing the thought with a hardness and a determination that has never really been there before.

IN place of that rather likeable old Tartan Toryism has come a movement based on aggressive opposition to the British state. For them, Nicola Sturgeon is the perfect leader with her desire to smash rural landlords, tax the rich and abolish everything from the House of Lords to any private sector involvement in any public services.

It was instructive that her speech yesterday contained hardly a word of support for business or enterprise yet paragraph after paragraph dedicated to the destruction of the British state and its institutions. She insists that her new SNP is based on the principles of consensus yet, if the evidence of this weekend is anything to go by, it appears to be propped up more by the politics of hate than anything else.

The referendum signalled a break with the past in many ways but it is only now, now that we have seen the Nationalists come together for the first time since then, that we can really see how much the SNP has changed too.

The Old SNP is no more. The New SNP has arrived in its place. It is big, it is hard and it expects success in May. It is entirely a new beast as far as Scottish politics is concerned and everyone should be wary because no one – not even the party’s leaders – really know where it is going to take them.