The SNP will fear they have further to fall as lower-key party conference gets under way
A decade ago, Nicola Sturgeon was banging drums and giving speeches in front of some 12,000 people. Now, just 1,500 people are expected at this year's SNP conference.
Saturday 31 August 2024 15:10, UK
The SNP is in a very different place to previous years. Quite literally.
Cast your mind back a decade to the party's hope-filled post-referendum boom days.
Then, Nicola Sturgeon was packing out the Hydro arena in Glasgow - banging drums and giving speeches in front of some 12,000 people.
It's an altogether lower key affair at the party's conference this weekend.
Just 1,500 people are expected in Edinburgh as the ruins of last month's general election are raked over and a course is set towards the 2026 Holyrood elections.
The first session of conference was devoted to picking apart what caused the party to lose 80% of its Westminster MPs on 4 July.
While senior figures praised the session, other members adopted a spikier tone.
"We're suffering from the consequences of Nicola Sturgeon, who gathered round her a cabal," said one woman - who called for more power to be given to the grassroots.
"I don't think two hours on a Friday morning is going to sort out what's wrong with our party," she added.
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Others called for a renewed drive towards independence above all else.
Asked if the leadership was focused enough on achieving separation from the UK, another delegate said: "It hasn't been for the last couple of years as much as we would like it… members feel that should be at the forefront of everything."
There was already some grumbling ahead of this gathering about the lack of time devoted to debating independence on the conference floor.
Asked by Sky News if it was still a priority, SNP leader John Swinney was perhaps more circumspect than some would like.
"I've got to accept the fact that people didn't support [the independence proposition] in the election in July," the first minister said.
"But it doesn't stop us from making the argument for independence and making sure that our country is persuaded by the merits and the advantages."
In reality, the more pressing electoral battle is now the 2026 elections for control of Holyrood. Labour sense the chance of seizing power in Edinburgh for the first time in almost two decades.
But the overlap between Scots going to the polls and the UK general election cycle means much of the 20-month run-in to the Holyrood vote may well be taken up with talk of Westminster-led doom and gloom as the new Labour administration frontloads the bad news to clear the way to campaign for a second term in 2029.
That presents a political opportunity for the SNP.
Paul Hutcheon, political editor of Scotland's biggest-selling paper The Daily Record, says the SNP's approach for the coming years will be a "reprise of what they've done over the last 14".
"They will say that Labour has continued austerity north of the border, they're continuing with Tory cuts, and they'll try and make it maybe a referendum on Keir Starmer and his government," the journalist said.
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We're already seeing some evidence of that as the party's Westminster leader Stephen Flynn firmly trained his fire on Labour.
"Things can and must be better... this austerity 2.0 which the Labour Party are promoting and accepting isn't as good as things can be - and I think that is where the hope and optimism for the future has to lie", said the Aberdeen South MP.
But hope and optimism in politics are quantities that are difficult to earn and easy to lose.
The SNP has learnt that the hard way over the past 18 months.
The fear is they may still have further to fall.