Stephen Flynn: I don't expect a leadership contest in the SNP for a long time

It so happened I was having a glass of wine with Stephen Flynn at Westminster as the furore broke around his shock announcement that he was challenging an SNP MSP for her seat at next year’s Holyrood election. And that, controversially, he planned to hold the dual mandate of sitting both as an MP and an MSP, should he be elected. Coming just four months after his party had suffered a catastrophic defeat in the general election, returning just nine MPs, of which he was one, it was a typically bullish move from the SNP Westminster leader.

And it’s fair to say that in the face of the clear consternation his surprise move had created among the SNP MSP group he remained sanguine about the reaction, simply asking me why a sitting politician shouldn’t be challenged. For which I had no answer. But it wasn’t just that he was breaking some unwritten code about treatment of party colleagues, it also followed a row about ‘double jobbing’ and SNP MPs having to stand down if they wanted to fight an election to be an MSP, a decision which prevented Joanna Cherry standing for the Scottish Parliament in 2021 but now appeared to not just be an election-specific party edict but also a person-specific rule too, i.e. anything to stop Cherry.

And while she courteously wished her former group leader well, his move sparked a major backlash within the SNP group at Holyrood, not least because the woman he was challenging – Audrey Nicoll – was well-respected but also appeared to be taken as much by surprise as the rest of them. The words most bandied around by his prospective Holyrood colleagues to the media were “arrogant” and “entitled” and many questioned just who Flynn thought he was. Others pointed to the fact that Flynn himself, writing on the SNP website just a matter of months previously, said that: “Being elected as an MP is a privilege and must never be treated as anything less than a full-time job.”

Accusations of hypocrisy notwithstanding, Flynn announced his intention to become a candidate for the Holyrood seat of Aberdeen South and North Kincardine in 2026 – even though Nicoll, who was first elected in 2021, had not yet announced whether she intended to seek another term. In addition, Flynn said he intended to remain the MP for Aberdeen South if he was elected to Holyrood, albeit he would not take a second parliamentary income. 

While party colleagues at Holyrood quietly raged, MSP Emma Roddick, a former equalities minister, posted an acerbic social media post which when the capital letters at the start of each sentence were decoded, spelt out exactly how she felt about the move: 

“Party members set this rule for good reasons. 

Rightly, Douglas Ross was criticised for holding two roles simultaneously. 

I hope Stephen Flynn rethinks.

Can’t imagine spending half my time in London and being a good MSP.

Key that rules apply to everyone equally; men and women.”

Flynn laughed it off at the time, but it was clear the reaction had had an effect and he later capitulated on the idea that he would continue as an MP if elected as an MSP, saying “hands up, I’ve got this one wrong”, but not before the Scottish Conservative MSP [now Reform MSP] Graham Simpson had stymied the idea of ‘double jobbing’ anyway by tabling an amendment to the Scottish Elections (Representation and Reform) Bill which would prevent the practice of sitting MPs or peers also becoming MSPs.

And just as that row died down, further controversy ensued when media reports circulated claiming that Flynn and his ‘boys’ club’ allies were behind a ‘hit list’ of female SNP MSPs they hoped to replace with former SNP MPs who had lost their seats at the general election. A claim he has flatly denied. Regardless, in February of this year Nicoll announced she would be stepping down at the 2026 election and dismissed the idea that she had been pressurised into standing aside. The former police officer said: “By the time you reach my age and especially having worked in a male-dominated work environment for 31 years, I’m not in the game of being pressurised by men into doing something that isn’t right for me.” 

Flynn was subsequently selected to be the SNP candidate to contest the Aberdeen seat that Nicoll will be vacating, and while he has something of a confected ‘hard man’ image, the whole experience leading up to his selection was undoubtedly a bruising time for the SNP Westminster group leader. Until then he had been something of an SNP golden boy. Seen as a rising star in the party, he had become a recognisable figure, a seasoned media performer, and was repeatedly tipped as a future leader. This was his first, albeit it fairly limited, taste of negative headlines, and I ask if the experience had clipped his wings any. He tells me now in a rare moment of personal candour that, at the time, much of the controversy flew over his head as he was dealing with the fact that his father, Mark Flynn, then SNP leader of Dundee City Council, had been diagnosed with cancer and that put everything else into perspective.

“Look, I had it in my mind that I wanted to be able to put myself forward and we have a democratic party, and it’s perfectly legitimate to do that. I’ve known Audrey for years and she’s really good, but I think you’ve got to have confidence in yourself and your own abilities to do things. And, you know, I guess that throughout my life, people have said I should stay in my lane but I’ve kind of broken out of the lane a few times and maybe been a bit unconventional in that regard. 

“So, I went for it. The fallout was what the fallout was. People were saying things about me that were a bit unfair, but I’ve got quite a thick skin anyway, Mandy, and I’ve spoken about this to you before but I was disabled for a very long time in my life and I’ve had a lot of abuse thrown at me because of that and I’ve gone through a lot of physical and mental pain to get to where I need to and as a result, I don’t tend to wilt or shake very easily. 

“So yeah, there was the response and it wasn’t great but at the time, if I’m honest, I was very focused on other issues. It was around that time that my dad was diagnosed with cancer, and I guess if I’m honest, my mind and my emotions were more focused on that. My dad’s a huge part of my life and of my sister’s and my brother’s and that was weighing very heavily on all of us and so, of course, I was aware of what was going on about the other stuff, but I guess I just blocked it out to focus on what was important. 

Flynn in his Westminster office | Louise Haywood-Schiefer

“I was just more thinking about him and his health. My dad’s quite a young man… it was very hard for all of us…but look, he’s still here, he’s doing alright, and we are thankful for that. He’s got blood cancer, so it’ll never be cured because there isn’t a cure, but it’s being managed and he’s doing remarkably well to keep going and doing what he needs to do, being a great father and fantastic granddad. He’s a constant presence in my life. I phone my dad all the time. I don’t live in Dundee any more, but I speak to him when I’m walking in and out of work, and when I’m walking the dog, and all the rest of it. My kids dote on him. And when he called me to let me know about the cancer, I don’t know, it was just surreal, overwhelming, to hear him tell me the diagnosis. It was a gut punch, that’s for sure.

“He’d not been well, but I just thought that it would be something to do with something else. I didn’t consider that it was going to be something really serious. And probably, like most stereotypical guys who don’t get overly emotional and stuff unless it’s something to do with my kids, I didn’t quite take it in. I couldn’t speak to anyone about it; I could barely speak to my wife about it. 

“And it’s strange, I ended up doing what I did when I was a kid whenever I was worried about stuff or, you know, was scared, like when you watched a scary movie or something, and I would go and find my big sister and she would hide me and look after me. So yeah, like a big kid, I phoned her and we had a good old cry down the phone.

“And then I had a hell of a time trying to get in touch with my wee brother because he works shifts and he lives down in the central belt, and he eventually phoned me back at like three in the morning or something and obviously panicking because he’d missed multiple calls not knowing what was going on. So yeah, it was really tough. I focus on a lot of things in my own way, handle things a certain way, sometimes not always the right way maybe, but at that particular moment in time I was much more checked into personal things than anything else that was going on.

“I think what that did was just reaffirm to me about what’s important. And as a family, we are very, very private and he’ll hate me for saying this, but I almost had to convince my dad that because of his position in the council, he needed to go public with this because you can’t have expectations put on you that you’re going to do things and be staying at work for four or five hours a day when that becomes impossible. He needed to make people aware and that was hard for him, for us all, to be more public than we would like, but David Clegg [editor] at the Courier was absolutely wonderful and my dad was able to trust that his words would be accurately quoted and that he was able to say publicly that he had cancer. And a couple of his colleagues on the council have sadly got cancer as well, and they’re all kind of fighting through together and getting on with their jobs and serving folk, because that’s just in their nature.
“So yeah, it was a tough period, but my real focus was on what mattered and that was my dad.”

All in all, 2024 was probably Flynn’s annus horribilis. His father’s diagnosis followed the catastrophic result for the SNP in the general election which saw the SNP group at Westminster decimated from 47 MPs to just nine and the harsh reality of having to shed up to 20 staff jobs. I ask Flynn how that impacted him as group leader and whether he considered being the fall-guy and stepping down as leader.

“I think the toughest thing for those of us who came back was the immediacy of the decisions that we had to take, particularly around the people who kind of mattered most to us: the staff, the teams who we worked with for years, and the fact that we’d no longer be in a position to keep them on, just because of the impact of losing so many colleagues on the finances. And that was a really tough because we had really good relationships with them but simply didn’t have a have a way financially of keeping them on. 

“I had never had to get rid of staff before and it was a pretty grim experience. That was a personally very challenging thing to have to do and meanwhile there was so much commentary in the public domain and people gleefully saying, ‘oh, the SNP, have got less money’, and I’m sitting there looking in the eyes of the people who are bearing the brunt of the fact that we had less money, and that lack of empathy that those in the public sphere had for other people losing their jobs, maybe because they just didn’t consider it, or think about it, was pretty tough to take. 

“And of course, on top of that, you’ve got to deal with a new parliament and figure out how you’re going to get on with your job and make an impression. But I think in that regard, we actually did really well. Obviously, we had the vote in parliament almost immediately on scrapping the two-child cap which we had tabled as an amendment and led to Labour having a little bit of a civil war right at the start of the King’s speech and having to suspend some members. 

“And maybe it was just a marker in the sand about where we were going to go and also where the Labour Party wasn’t going to go. And I guess that kind of led into a wider conversation about the challenges they faced. Then, of course, you’ve got the context of building towards the Holyrood election and how John [Swinney], who’d been thrown in at the deep end prior to the general election, gets the public to come back and support us, to give us a hearing, and to trust us with their vote again.

“So, there’s all these things going on, and meantime, you’re just absolutely shattered because you’ve been traveling the length and breadth of Scotland during the campaign, and in my case, being down here too and constantly doing lots of media engagements. So, it was a really personally challenging experience. I think I learned a lot about myself in that regard, and I know some of my colleagues learned a lot about me during that period, when we had to pull together and deal with the pressure of the staff situation whilst also maintaining a focus on the political situation. 

“Honestly, I look back and think that Pete [Wishart] and I kind of huddled together and supported each other through that – he was absolutely brilliant and a great foil for me because for the first time, he’d see me get a little bit animated, shall we say, because I’m usually relatively calm, but that was a mark of how challenging it all was. 

“Pete was the first person I phoned after the result because I knew what we were going to have to do. And he was just a great support, and the situation probably brought the nine of us together really closely, and still, more than a year later, we have a really close bond, which in politics is really difficult to achieve. The circumstances made it a necessity. We were meeting on an almost daily basis at that point to discuss the situation and how to handle it compassionately.

“But the harsh reality was that we were having to let 15 to 20 folks go. Good people. And then there were the people that had lost their seats. Some huge personalities. People that you spent your social time with, your professional time with, because obviously it’s a long time away from home and politics can be a lonely place so you do rely upon your colleagues at certain moments when you’re down here, just to have a chat with about things that are going on in your life and in their lives. And when you go from a big group of folks to a relatively small group of folks, you think that’s going to be difficult. And it was. I did spend time thinking about why we weren’t able to retain their seats. And of course, you’ve got those thoughts about, did we do enough? Did I do enough? Did we collectively say and do the right things?

Flynn speaking in the Commons | Alamy

“But we also didn’t have time to dwell on that because the very next day, I was having sleepless nights about how on earth are we going to pay the bills. There’s not time to wallow in self-pity in those circumstances because you’ve got a responsibility to other people, and you need to step up and make sure that their lives are and their livelihoods are protected as best as you possibly can, and that was just really important to me.”

Notwithstanding the need to deal with the immediate practical consequences of the election defeats, surely as group leader he would have considered the reasons for the result?

“Of course, and I think there’s a multitude of factors. I think there was a tide that was against us, UK-wide, the desire for change. I don’t think people really knew what that change was, and I guess we’ll come to that, because that’s probably been the challenge that the Labour Party faced, is trying to create a narrative, because they didn’t have one. So, the public wanted change, and of course that involved changing MPs in Scotland as well. My party had its well-documented challenges: we had Nicola, we then had Humza, then had John, and that was just shortly before the election. 

“There were the difficulties in Holyrood with regards to the stability of government and certain aspects of policy, and I think when you add all of those things together, it makes it really difficult to say to folk that we’re best-placed to help you with the issues that you have and to fight your corner. And I think it’s testament to John that we actually were able to get ourselves, in such a short period of time, into a position where we could fight with a message and keep the seats that we were able to retain. And, you know, maybe if we’ve had a little bit longer, we might have been able to keep some more folk, but we’ll never know.”

I’ve interviewed Flynn a number of times over the last couple of years, got to know him privately too, and not seen him quite as reflective and willing to reveal more of himself in terms of emotion because he normally holds himself quite tight. There’s a degree of humility born from the blow his party felt at the ballot box last year but also a softness that wasn’t always apparent previously. I wonder whether all of the knocks of the last year fed into his decision to stand for the Scottish Parliament and potentially exit Westminster, although he does confirm that if he doesn’t win in May, he will continue as an MP.

“Maybe it did… I know that I spent a lot of time over the summer thinking about what was the right thing to do. I’d just been re-elected to Westminster. I had a duty and a responsibility to my constituents and how to best maximise my voice on their behalf on key issues. And there’s some massively key issues in the north east of Scotland and Aberdeen in particular right now, with energy being the most obvious one. And basically, I came to the conclusion that serving in Holyrood would hopefully allow me to do even better by them. Obviously, I initially thought it was doable, and it was viable, and possible to do the two things at the same time – be an MP and an MSP – perhaps that was me not wanting to let down the people who just re-elected me. But I said shortly after I’d announced that I got that wrong, and sometimes in politics that’s a pretty hard thing to say.

“But to your point, probably the most significant political thing to happen in the last wee while which really resonated with me was Kate [Forbes] announcing that she wasn’t going to stand again. I read her letter and thought I could pretty well cut and paste most of what she said about family and what you miss and apply it to myself, and I’ve spoken to Kate about that in the past because it’s really tough. 

“I say goodnight to my kids at least a few nights a week on FaceTime. It’s not nice. And I know that I represent a city where people go away and work for two, three weeks at a time – my brother-in-law does that, working offshore, and I remember growing up, my dad being away working quite a lot and all the rest of it, but regardless, it’s tough and I miss time with my kids.

“It would be nicer to know that when my wife picks up the phone and says, ‘I really need you home’, that I can actually go home, as opposed to being like, ‘okay, I’ll look at flights tomorrow, and I can hopefully be there in 18 hours’. It’s just little things like that, and what we have been able to do since the general election is to get a much better balance in our lives without that extended pressure of having the third party leadership at Westminster being there, which has been good for us. I’ve felt a lot less guilty because the most important thing in my life are the two wee kids that me and my wife have. They’re still very young and they’ve got absolutely no idea what I do as a job. I know I’ve brainwashed them into being Dundee United fans and they run around with their wee Scotland kits on, but seriously, beyond that, their whole world is informed by what me and my wife and our grandparents and our friends are able to share with them. And that’s really precious. We don’t get long where that’s the case and when I saw Kate’s letter, to go back to where I started, it did make me think, and I guess knowing that I can maybe maximise that time with my boys a little bit more would be quite nice.”

Spending more time with your family can often mean different things in politics but Flynn genuinely expresses what so many politicians are now saying, maybe feel they have now been given permission to say, but where does that fit with continued speculation about him as a future leader?

“When Nicola stood down as leader, I was one of the first to pick up the phone to John to say, ‘you’re best placed to do it.’ John didn’t want to do that at the time for a variety of reasons, which he’s spoken about. Then, when it was apparent that Humza wasn’t going to be in place as leader going forward, I placed the same call to John. 

“And the reason I did that on two separate occasions was because I believe that John is the best politician in the party, the best politician in Scotland, and one of the best guys I’ve ever met. And when you put those things together, you simply conclude he should be the first minister of Scotland. He should be the party leader. I was unequivocal in my mind that he’s the go to for that job.

“My focus was always on John and what he could achieve and I think I’ve almost been proved right by the fact that he has turned the party around to the point where we are getting a hearing from the public again, which is so hard to get, and I think he could do something pretty special next year, if the stars align and we get our pitch on everything, not just independence, right.

“Look, to your question: folk are still going to speculate about me, but let them. I mentioned my wee boys earlier and Kate’s letter and, firstly, I don’t expect there to be a leadership contest in the SNP for a long time and so I think we’re going to win the election under John’s leadership and I think he’ll serve out his full term, and who knows beyond that, because he’s still a young man. But in my view, success breeds success and you should never try and interrupt the success that you’re having, and he’s going to bring us that success.

“I love my party and collectively it has given me so much, so many opportunities, but I’ve got a greater sense of duty to those wee boys and making sure that they have a dad who’s there and able to help shape their lives. That’s maybe something which will surprise some people because I am very private. But for those who know me, they’ll not be surprised by that at all.”