Is the SNP falling apart?
The News Agents
Global
4.1 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 17 March 2023
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
After nearly a decade of stability spearheaded by Nicola Sturgeon, why do the SNP look like they're imploding? The three candidates after her job are spending day after day taking lumps out of each other. Polling suggests that the only thing that they're hurting though is their common goal: Scottish independence.
We speak to one of the candidates who's attack on the independence of the leadership process has been called 'Trumpian'. And we speak to a senior SNP MP about what this is doing to the political party that, just seven weeks ago, resembled an immovable object in the way of both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer.
And for some weekend listening. We ask a Labour grandee and parliamentary history-maker what it was like to be the first female Black MP in the House of Commons.
You can watch our episodes in full at https://global-player.onelink.me/Br0x/Videos
The News Agents is a Global Player Original and a Persephonica Production.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. |
| 0:08.2 | This is a global player original podcast. Your words will be on every single conservative |
| 0:14.8 | flip. And yet the future... Well, unless everybody else is hearing something else, Ash. |
| 0:18.5 | They are hearing something else. No, I have never |
| 0:21.0 | contradict to myself. How are you going to deliver independence if the public don't have |
| 0:24.4 | confidence in you? That is the sound of something which you don't hear very often. You might never |
| 0:30.2 | have heard it at all. Yellow on yellow. SMP politician taking on SMP politician, taking seven bells out of each other. There has |
| 0:41.5 | been a lot going on in Westminster these last weeks, but as one political stage has been filled with |
| 0:47.5 | Sunac, Moore Johnson, the Windsor framework of Hunt's budget, of yes, even Gary Lineca, another perhaps more interesting show |
| 0:56.2 | has been playing out as well, the SMP leadership election. The race to succeed, First |
| 1:02.4 | Minister, Nicholas Sturgeon, the first contested SMP leadership election for 20 years. And it's as |
| 1:09.9 | if all the tensions, all the disagreements, |
| 1:12.3 | all the petty frustrations, even a bit of political bloodlust have finally boiled over, |
| 1:18.8 | even with suggestions of the race, perhaps, being stacked in favour of one candidate. |
| 1:25.1 | On today's show, we're taking you inside that contest and asking whether |
| 1:30.6 | the SMP are finally running out of road. It's Lewis here. Welcome to the newsagents. |
| 1:39.8 | The news agents. You're not scared of Labour? No. |
| 1:45.0 | I don't need to be complacent, but I've not really had any reason as an SMP leader to be. |
| 1:50.4 | Kirstama doesn't strike you as a more formidable opponent for the SMP. |
| 1:54.8 | Than who? |
| 1:55.6 | Than previous Labour leaders over the last decade? |
| 1:58.0 | No. |
... |
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