SNP's Tartan Tories may soon move to replace Humza Yousaf with Kate Forbes – Euan McColm

SNP left-wingers look set to lose seats at the general election, which could prompt small-c conservatives in the party to look to Kate Forbes, the Rishi Sunak to Humza Yousaf’s Liz Truss

Scottish nationalism is the perfect ideology for the narcissist. Adherents to the independence cause are positively encouraged to design their own beliefs and to envision a country shaped by their personal values. SNP leaders describe this as a “broad church” approach to politics.

The malleability of modern Scottish nationalism means young socialist radicals see no problem with campaigning alongside ageing “Tartan Tories”, who were first attracted to the party in its small-c conservative past. Each of them believes their vision of independence will come to be. Neither of them troubles themselves with thoughts of financial practicality. All will be well when the world is just as they want it.

Over the past couple of decades, the idea of the SNP as a “progressive” party of the left has dominated. Party bosses capitalised on a voter backlash against Labour – usually over either Iraq or the party having “left me behind” – and told them: “We’re what Labour used to be.”

Right-wing SNP supporters could look to Kate Forbes, pictured during the SNP leadership contest last year, if Humza Yousaf struggles to lead the party after the general election (Picture: Jane Barlow/pool/Getty Images)

This was, and remains, nonsense. Those at the top of the SNP have done much more, since winning power at Holyrood in 2007, to help the middle class than any other sector of society. The party’s major policies may have the faint whiff of the left about them but close examination shows they’re not all they appear.

Free prescriptions for the wealthy

Take, for example, the much-trumpeted free prescription policy. SNP ministers continue to hold this up as an example of uniquely compassionate Scottish “values” in action. But what’s progressive about a policy that helped only the wealthiest?

Before the SNP extended the provision of free prescriptions to include the rich, half of patients – receiving 80 per cent of prescribed medications – faced no changes. The creation of a £50 million-plus-a-year hole in the NHS drugs budget so that New Town lawyers can get their Anusol free isn’t much of a win for those at the bottom.

A new poll, conducted by research firm Redfield and Wilton Strategies, sets a timer on the SNP’s days as a party of the progressive left. The organisation predicts the nationalists will lose as many as 24 seats, half the number it secured in 2019. Crucially, those losses will be concentrated around the Central Belt.

The SNP’s “progressive left” wing faces a hammering while those MPs in more conservative, rural seats look likely to survive. The balance of power in the SNP is likely to tip towards the centre-right for the first time in decades.

Forbes waits in the shadows

When Humza Yousaf barely scraped a victory over Kate Forbes – an MSP who has spoken of her opposition to gay marriage – it became clear that the SNP right was not, as the party’s own narrative had it, irrelevant. When, as would appear inevitable, the SNP suffers substantial general election losses, Yousaf will face having to regain his authority or go.

And he’ll have to persuade a surviving Westminster group he’s the man for the job despite its majority representing seats where the party members rather like Forbes, who waits in the shadows, the Rishi Sunak to Yousaf’s Liz Truss.

Yousaf faces a left-right battle within the SNP in the months ahead. I’m not sure he can win it.