Recently in Scotland, Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes announced that she will stand down as an MSP. Meanwhile, former SNP MP Mhairi Black has left the party altogether. Why are these figures resigning? And what does this tell us about the SNP?
Forbes has served as Deputy First Minister in Holyrood since 2024 – a position that she was offered in exchange for supporting continuity candidate John Swinney as SNP leader, in order to avoid another disastrous leadership contest for an already-fractured party.
She is seen as the main representative of the SNP’s right wing, who base themselves around an openly pro-business agenda.
For example, Forbes has thrown her weight behind the establishment of deregulated freeports in Scotland, despite this being a Tory initiative to allow big business to underpay workers and dodge taxes.
The SNP used to oppose freeports. But Forbes has supported their implementation in Scotland as long as they are officially called ‘green freeports’, and are accompanied by a list of totally tokenistic, non-binding rules.
Forbes has publicly stated that she won’t be seeking re-election as an MSP next year, citing a desire to spend more time with her young daughter as the main factor in her decision.
We may never know if this is the real reason for her step back from frontline politics. Nevertheless, Forbes’ resignation will likely come as a relief to SNP chiefs.
Had she retained her seat in Holyrood, Forbes was likely to be the forerunner in the next SNP leadership race. This would have widened the fissures in the party, given her divisive position on a number of issues.
Demoralisation
The SNP are already very worried about the upcoming Scottish Parliament elections next May.
With Keir Starmer’s Labour despised, the Tories reduced to a rump, and Reform yet to make massive inroads in Scotland, the SNP should be guaranteed a landslide.
Their inability to provide Scottish workers with a decent standard of living, however, alongside their complete lack of strategy for delivering independence, has led them to haemorrhage support.
This helps to explain why Mhairi Black is quitting the party.
Black was elected as a Westminster MP in the 2015 general election, as part of an SNP landslide, at the age of just 20.
As a working-class student from Paisley, she epitomised this wave of new SNP MPs – many of whom were ordinary workers who had become politicised for the first time as part of the independence campaign.
Her maiden speech, where she laid into the Tory government for their savage austerity cuts, and slated Labour for abandoning the working class, has been viewed over 10 million times on YouTube.
The young self-proclaimed ‘socialist’ MP soon hit up against the harsh reality of so-called ‘democracy’ under capitalism, however, seeing first hand that it is impossible to end poverty, austerity, or oppression through bourgeois parliaments.
Consequently, Black stepped down as an MP before the 2024 general election, saying that her experience of being in Parliament was “beyond demoralising”.
Exodus
The announcement that Mhairi Black now sees not just Westminster, but the SNP also, as a hopeless vehicle for change will be a huge blow to the party.
Black has highlighted the SNP’s lack of action over Palestine as a key reason for her decision to leave the party.
While the SNP leaders like to harp on about how they support Palestine, their recent actions – including secret meetings with Israeli diplomats, or abstaining on the vote to proscribe Palestine Action – show that they are little better than Starmer’s Labour.
Black has also spoken about feeling let down by the SNP – a sentiment that no doubt reflects the feelings of many Scottish workers.
In recent times, the SNP has maintained support amongst working-class people because of two factors: their ability to deliver reforms, and their promise to fight for independence.
Given their refusal to break free of the fiscal restrictions handed to them by Westminster, however, the reforms they can afford are ever diminishing.
As a result, Scotland has been left with a crisis-ridden NHS (now only 3 percent better funded than its English counterpart, compared to 22 percent in 2001), and a collapsing education system.
The SNP leaders’ slavish obedience to the 2022 Supreme Court ruling on independence, meanwhile, means that they have no strategy or plan for achieving this either.
These are the real factors behind Mhairi Black’s resignation from the party, and similarly for the exodus of tens of thousands of SNP members in recent years.
Revolution
These recent announcements reflect a crisis-ridden SNP that is stumbling into the next Holyrood elections.
Whether it be their promises of socio-economic reform or of independence, the SNP’s adherence to capitalism and its institutions has left the party in a blind alley.
Given the lack of any alternative, many will hold their nose and vote for the SNP again next May. Many more will stay at home on election day.
While some workers and youth will be demoralised by SNP’s failures, others will have learned an important lesson through these experiences.
Over the past decade, ordinary people in Scotland have clearly seen what little change the SNP are actually able to achieve.
The belief that millions held in 2015 – that the SNP could change the system from within – has been completely smashed.
This has radicalised an entire generation, with a growing layer, in Scotland as in the rest of Britain, now open to revolutionary ideas as a result.
The truth is that nothing fundamental can be changed within the limits of the capitalist system.
Real change, genuine democracy, and the building of society where poverty and want are a thing of the past: all of this can only be achieved under communism. And many workers and youth are now beginning to draw this conclusion.
Trump’s Scotland trip widens cracks in the SNP
Orla Thomas, Edinburgh
Donald Trump’s recent visit to Scotland has further exposed the faultlines within the SNP.
On the day of Trump’s arrival, The National – Scotland’s leading pro-independence paper, in which SNP First Minister John Swinney had just announced his empty ‘three-point plan’ for independence – had a frontpage with the headline ‘convicted felon to arrive in Scotland’. This proved popular with some of the indy base.
Tomorrow’s front page📰
Convicted US felon to arrive in Scotland pic.twitter.com/EEwAZaPXgC
— The National (@ScotNational) July 24, 2025
Swinney is cynically trying to face in two directions at once. On the one hand, he falls in line with other European leaders in fawning over Trump, begging the US President to make concessions over trade.
This appeals to a more zealously pro-market wing of the SNP, who push for deregulated freeports in Scotland and more inward foreign direct investment.
On the other hand, the SNP leader panders to liberals and reformists like the Scottish Greens, who are whipping up hysteria around figures like Trump and Farage. Swinney has positioned himself, in this respect, as someone who can stand up to right-wing demagogues and prevent Reform UK from winning north of the border.
One minute Swinney is playing nice with Trump to try and protect Scotland’s whiskey exports; the next, he is putting on a show of standing up to the playground bully.
With this flip-flopping, Swinney has made himself mightily unpopular within his party. And he has sowed doubts in the minds of voters, leaving many SNP MSPs rightly worried about keeping their seats at next May’s Holyrood elections.
Swinney is solidifying himself as part of the establishment, at a time when the establishment has never been so discredited. This is chipping away at the SNP’s support base, causing the party’s foundations to fracture.
Workers and youth in Scotland need to topple the entire crumbling capitalist system, and join the fight for revolution.
SNP hypocrisy on Palestine revealed
Sara Al-Disi, Edinburgh
After a 10-month freedom of information (FOI) battle with the Scottish Government, The Ferret was able to get its hand on minutes from a secret meeting that occurred last August between Israeli Deputy Ambassador, Daniela Grudsky, and the Cabinet Secretary for External Affairs, Angus Robertson. At the time, the revelation about the meeting resulted in public anger.
Although the minutes were heavily censored, it still revealed that the Scottish Government views and presents itself as a “critical friend” to Israel.
It also showed Robertson taking a softer tone than the public SNP stance, speaking only of “reducing civilian casualties”. Further, the meeting discussed “areas of mutual interest, including culture, renewable energy”.
Thank you @AngusRobertson for welcoming us to wonderful Scotland.
Discussed the unique commonalities between 🇮🇱-🏴 and also emphasized the urgent need to bring back our 115 hostages.
Looking forward to cooperating in the fields of technology, culture and renewable energy. pic.twitter.com/sh2KeqRa9j
— Daniela Grudsky🎗️ (@DanielaGrudsky) August 12, 2024
Disgracefully, the First Minister John Swinney “actively sought a meeting” with the Israeli Ambassador herself, but the meeting was called off when she cancelled her visit.
He later responded that the acceptance of a meeting was just an opportunity to express the SNP’s position “on the killing and suffering of innocent civilians”. It seems Robertson didn’t get the memo.
The Scottish government was at pains to prevent the minutes from coming to light, using the excuse of “releasing details of the meeting could damage UK-Israeli relations and even be seen as ‘antisemitic’”.
The response to the FOI requests was coordinated with the Israeli embassy, who did not consent to details being shared “in order to allow the fruitful and open discourse”.
It’s no surprise the SNP are embarrassed to share the details of this meeting, and see FOI requests as “using a lot of [their] time”.
After all, it was only due to diligent investigation from journalists at the Ferret and other outlets that the Scottish Government was revealed to have given arms companies at least £2.7m since 2022.
What the secret meeting and its content reveal is that the SNP’s marginal support for Palestine, which they consistently use to appear better than Labour, is nothing but lip service.
We can’t trust these politicians to extend any help for Palestinians, we must do it ourselves.
