SNP campaign conference - are they back in 2019?

Humza Yousaf’s campaign conference in Perth focused on getting the Tories out of Scotland – but that’s not what the story of this election will be.

Listening to Humza Yousaf’s campaign speech, you would be forgiven for thinking it was copied and pasted from the 2019 election campaign.

So much has happened in Scottish politics in the last year - most notably, Labour has gone from a party not worth worrying about, to being a legitimate contender for the biggest party in Scotland.

And the SNP seems to have ignored … well, all of that.

Humza Yousaf at the SNP's campaign conference. Image: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images.

The First Minister’s speech focused on making Scotland “Tory-free” at the upcoming general election.

He said: “Most seats across Scotland are a straight fight between the SNP and the Tories.”

This is probably not going to be true - the most recent polling puts Labour on course to win in huge swathes of the central belt and the west of Scotland.

It’s a message that sits well with the die-hard SNP voters in the audience.

And it’s going to be true for the constituency where he was making the speech - for years now, Labour has struggled to make much noise in Perth and Kinross-shire, whereas it has had Conservative MPs and council administrations in the past decade.

The Scottish Conservatives have criticised the speech as “predictable”, and it’s difficult to argue against this.

The only mention of Labour was to say Sir Keir Starmer winning the keys to 10 Downing Street merely means a different person heading up a broken Westminster system, and took a pop at how Wes Streeting would head up the NHS.

He also branded Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar “Labour’s branch manager” and joked that Sir Keir Starmer is “terrified” of Mr Sarwar - which got a good few giggles from the audience.

Nevertheless it went down well with the audience, who gave multiple standing ovations, cheers and applause.

He was branded the “SNP’s first activist” and said being amongst the SNP was “like being with family” - so his speech was always going to sit well with them.

But perhaps this sums up the whole day - I overheard one delegate remarking “he’s not as good as Nicola”.