Sillars condemns leader's 'one-man band'

Published on Friday 7 November 2008 21:26

SNP activists revealed yesterday who and what they blamed for the SNP's election defeat.

Jim Sillars, the former SNP deputy leader who fell out with Mr Salmond, said he believed the SNP's problem was that it had become a "one-man band", adding that Mr Salmond's prediction of victory was also a problem.

"It became not Labour's to hold but the SNP's to lose. Since the Glasgow East by-election, the leadership of the party has been infected by hubris."

And he added: "I don't think that they (the SNP] possibly could win. The important point was that they said they would win. It became an expectation."

Mr Salmond spent a whole hour in a press conference insisting that it was Labour's local campaign which had secured victory, not a "Brown bounce".

But Mediawatch2008 – a nationalist lobbying group – contradicted the First Minister's views, saying: "It is not rocket science to appreciate that the international financial crisis was a principle factor in the Labour recovery." They also blamed the bad weather and imported Labour activists from England.

And one Nationalist blogger, 'A Justified Spinner', put part of the blame on the way the Liberal Democrat "vaporised".

He concluded by asking: "Is the SNP bubble burst?" And he answered: "Sorry, it isn't."