Independence should be a priority for John Swinney’s newly-returned Scottish Government, one of his MSPs has insisted.
Stephen Gethins pointed to the record 73 MSPs elected on Thursday who support independence – with the SNP winning 58 seats and the Greens taking 15.
The SNP will now go on to form the next government at Holyrood, despite its tally of MSPs being down from the 64 the party won in 2021.
While Mr Gethins said that tackling the cost-of-living crisis would be a priority for Mr Swinney when he begins a new term as First Minister, he also said independence should be another key focus.
Throughout the election campaign, Mr Swinney said repeatedly he was seeking to win an overall majority for the SNP so he could press the case again for another referendum on Scotland’s future as part of the UK
Mr Gethins, who was elected as MSP for Dundee City East, said: “We’ve got the biggest pro-independence majority that the Parliament has ever had, the people have spoken and the weekend after an election is a good time for us all to reflect on that just a little bit.”
Mr Gethins, currently also the MP for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry, where a by-election will now have to be held, told BBC Radio Scotland’s Breakfast programme there was now a “a bigger pro-independence majority than there was in 2011” – when then Tory prime minister David Cameron granted a referendum.
Pointing to the Scottish Greens’ support for independence, the SNP MSP added: “If you start counting the Green Party as unionist votes, that is not what they said.”
While he said that Holyrood’s PR system means opposition parties and the largest party “need to talk to each other”, Mr Gethins insisted: “More than anything else we need to listen to the electorate as well.”
He added that although the SNP had won the election “emphatically in every single part of Scotland”, Thursday’s ballot also saw independence-supporting parties make “fantastic progress”.
Pollster Mark Diffley, meanwhile, said that while the SNP vote had been “pretty robust”, Mr Swinney’s party had been helped by the rise of Reform.
Mr Diffley, founder of the Diffley Partnership, said “the SNP were fortunate in that the the rise of Reform really did help the SNP”.
Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland, he added: “We saw in seat after seat as they were being announced and declared yesterday the SNP winning constituency seats on relatively low vote shares, 31%, 32%, and that is because exactly, as we thought from the polling, Reform UK, at the constituency level at least, was a big disruptor, splitting the anti-SNP vote.”
Mr Diffley continued: “Overall although the SNP has lost about a quarter of its voters from 2021, the rise of Reform has meant it has remained in power relatively unscathed, losing just six seats.”
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