STEPHEN Flynn urged SNP members to stop “pointing fingers” and instead focus on providing voters with “hope and optimism”, admitting the party had failed in this regard.
The Westminster party leader has warned his colleagues that they must shift their focus from themselves to their voters ahead of the party conference this week.
In a column for the Daily Record, Flynn called for action from his SNP colleagues, who have been in crisis since the general election in July, in which the party lost 38 seats in Westminster.
Flynn said the party must now look forward, not inward, ahead of the convention, which begins on Friday and ends on Sunday.
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He said: “Of course, our party conference offers us the first opportunity to review what has gone wrong recently. One could perhaps argue that a weekend is not long enough for that!
“But we have to be careful not to spend too much time talking about ourselves and forget about the public. Their needs, their hopes, their future.”
In recent weeks, party leaders have come under heavy criticism over Foreign Minister Angus Robertson’s secret meeting with Israel’s deputy ambassador to the UK.
Leading party figures condemned the meeting as unrealistic, with former MP Mhairi Black calling it a sign of “stale” thinking and John Swinney publicly backing Robertson.
Flynn now said the SNP must regain the “gradually eroded” trust of its voters and prove as a team that things can get better for the people of Scotland.
He said: “Politics is always a personal matter and it is time we refocused on providing the people of Scotland with hope and optimism that is in such short supply.”
“The hard truth now is that we have failed on this front recently. The trust that took the SNP to unprecedented heights has gradually eroded. That is a burden we all have to bear and accept, whatever our role in it.
(Image: PA)
“In a team, you don’t point fingers at others, but accept that other people’s mistakes are your own too. Just as it is our common burden to bear, it is now also our common challenge to restore the trust that has been lost.”
He added: “I believe the tasks required were already clearly set out by the public at the general election.
“They want ambition to be at the forefront. They want to know that things can and will get better.”
