John Swinney pledges SNP ‘soul searching’ over ‘very poor’ election results

The SNP’s result at the General Election has been “very poor”, First Minister John Swinney has said, adding his party will have to do a lot of “soul searching”.

Mr Swinney told the BBC at the count in Perth: “It’s a very poor result for the SNP tonight.

“There will have to be a lot of soul searching as a party as a consequence of these results that have come in tonight.”

It comes as the party was beaten in a number of seats by Labour, whose Scottish leader Anas Sarwar said he was “confident” of winning a majority of seats north of the border.

The SNP, Mr Swinney said, has to be “better at governing on behalf of the people of Scotland”, adding that the party was not “winning the argument” on Scottish independence.

He said: “Although we’re going to have a bad election result tonight, I still believe in my head and in my heart that Scotland will be better off as an independent country.

“But we’re obviously not winning that argument with the public to make that a priority at this moment, so we’ve got to think long and hard about how we address that question and I don’t think that in the early hours of the morning after a General Election I can give you the definitive answer to what we do in that circumstance.”

Speaking as he arrived at the Glasgow count, Mr Sarwar said the push for change will begin on Friday.

It comes as his party beat the SNP in the early results in Scotland, with substantial swings to Labour.

“I’m confident we’re going to win this election in Scotland and I’m confident we’ll have a majority in Scotland,” he said.

Sir Keir Starmer’s party has taken Kilmarnock and Loudon, West Dunbartonshire, Paisley and Renfrewshire South and East Kilbride and Strathaven in the early hours of Friday morning, each with substantial swings between the two parties.

Among the Labour victories was former international development secretary Douglas Alexander, who won with 23,555 after losing his seat in 2015.

Elsewhere, the SNP’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn was re-elected in Aberdeen South and Kirsty Blackman retained her Aberdeen North seat.

The SNP’s campaign centred around calls for talks on another independence referendum if the party won a majority of seats at the election.

Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross told the BBC the exit poll predicts a “historically bad” result for the Tories across the UK.

He said he does not regret his last-minute decision to stand in Aberdeenshire North and Moray East, but predicted an “extremely close” result.

Speaking from the Aberdeen count, he said: “It is a historically bad night, there is no shying away from that at all and there will be a huge amount of reflection on the campaign and also clearly the last few years.

“It has been particularly difficult and there’s no denying that and whoever forms the next parliamentary party will look at the options going forward and will assess the current state of play in the Conservative party and how it rebuilds after this election result.”

He said he does not regret his last-minute decision to stand but predicted an “extremely close” result.

Scottish Greens co-leader Patrick Harvie said the exit poll was a “hopeful” sign for his party at a UK level where it predicted two Green MPs.

Speaking to PA from the Glasgow count, he said any gain from the one English seat the Greens won at the 2019 general election would be “something to celebrate”.