For several years now, this site has recorded how the SNP’s continued existence is now entirely dependent on UK state funding. The party would simply go bust without Westminster money. And how precarious a position that puts it in is sharply illustrated by the latest release of donations income from the Electoral Commission.
In a 12-month period running up to the last UK general election, the UK state gave the SNP a little over £1.3 million.
In the corresponding period for the last year, after the party was reduced to just nine seats, that figure plunged to just over £0.4 million, a drop of over £0.9 million.
And that’s money the SNP can’t afford to lose.
The party was kept afloat last year by the dead – it trousered £940,000 in donations from four private individuals, at least three of whom had passed away and left money in their wills. (Nobody knows who the fourth was.)
But in the last 12 months, that figure dropped to just £2,585.
The SNP is a bankrupt party walking. It’s pinned its entire “independence strategy” on next year’s Holyrood election, but it has no money to fight that election with. There’s certainly no sign of the £600,000 “ringfenced” indyref campaign fund whose whereabouts remain to be established as former SNP CEO Peter Murrell awaits an embezzlement trial for which there is still no indication of a date on the horizon, over two and a half years after he was arrested and more than a year and a half after he was charged.
(Indeed, there’s still no clue as to whether there will even BE a trial. A plea deal remains a possibility – Murrell has as yet made no plea.)
The SNP currently leads all Scottish polls comfortably, but Labour managed to deliver a shock in the Hamilton by-election by outspending and outcampaigning them, and today’s figures also revealed that Reform, who came a very close third, are absolutely swimming in cash, with a single donation of £9 million in the last quarter alone.
It’s questionable how much of their money Reform will bother splashing on the devolved-parliament elections, but if they do decide to make a serious effort it could make things very awkward for an SNP whose fortunes, in both senses of the word, are moving in very much the opposite direction to those of Nigel Farage’s troops.
Money is one of the few factors casting the 2026 election into any doubt. On polling alone the SNP will win in a canter, but they’re going to have to fight the campaign on a shoestring because nobody is willing to donate or even lend them money, and that’s unlikely to change until Operation Branchform is resolved one way or the other.
Whether Peter Murrell stands trial at all, and whether it’s before or after the election, and what the outcome will be, are all unknowns. But what we can say with considerable certainty is that even with their London funding slashed, at this point in time the SNP simply cannot afford for Scotland to be independent.
With membership down by 60% and still falling, and live donors nowhere to be seen, UK state funding is the only thing that’s (barely) keeping the bailiffs from the door of Gordon Lamb House, and increasing its representation at Westminster – which brings in a lot more money than it costs – is the only hope of improving the situation.
Readers must form whatever conclusions from those facts that they wish.
