Members overwhelmingly endorse leadership motion that majority at next Holyrood election is only route to second vote
SNP members have overwhelmingly backed leader John Swinney’s “clear and unambiguous” independence strategy that a majority election win is the only route to another referendum.
On the first day of the party’s annual conference in Aberdeen, the vast majority of members backed the leadership’s motion that next May’s Holyrood elections should be fought on a “clear platform of national independence” and that winning a majority in the Scottish parliament – by securing 65 seats or more – would be “the only uncontested way to deliver a new vote on Scotland’s future”.
After a passionate – and at times highly technical – debate, the conference rejected a rebel amendment put by more than 40 local branches that set out a more fundamentalist strategy of treating next year’s election as a de facto referendum, meaning that if the SNP and other pro-independence parties win a majority of the popular vote in 2026, it should be treated as a mandate to open independence negotiations directly.
This de facto idea was first promoted by the former party leader and first minister Nicola Sturgeon, who acknowledged it as a “mistake” in her recent memoir.
