Fergus Mutch is a managing partner of strategic advisory firm True North. He worked for the SNP from 2012-20 as office manager, chief of staff and head of communications.
12 min listen
We have spoken a lot on the podcast this week about how a July election could be disastrous for the Conservatives, but what about the SNP? With arrests, investigations, resignations and a recent leadership change, it looks as though a snap election couldn't come at a worse time for the Scottish nationalists. Katy Balls speaks to Lucy Dunn and Fergus Mutch, former head of communications for the SNP.
On Thursday, health secretary Michael Matheson resigned and Humza Yousaf undertook a ‘mini-reshuffle’ of his cabinet. The scandal of the £11,000 iPad bill was only ever going to end this way. That it was allowed to rumble on eroding public trust for months is symptomatic of the SNP’s wider fortunes, which began to rapidly deteriorate almost a year ago to this day. Fifty-one weeks ago a press conference was hastily arranged in the Drawing Room at Bute House. Nicola Sturgeon stood before Alexander Nasmyth’s pastoral portrait of Robert Burns, announced her resignation as first minister and set in motion a remarkable chain of events. The signs of the decline were even there in the final months of Nicola Sturgeon’s lengthy and electorally successful premiership.
