The Risk of Governing Too Long
What the SNP scandal reveals about power, permanence, and political culture in Scotland
For many young Scots, the SNP represented optimism.
For my generation especially, the party often felt less like a conventional political force and more like the backdrop to modern Scottish life itself. They were the party of post-2014 political engagement, of a more confident Scottish identity, of the idea that politics in Scotland could be more progressive, more compassionate, and more ambitious than what was coming out of Westminster.
Many of us grew up knowing nothing else.
That is what makes the current scandals and investigations surrounding the SNP feel politically significant beyond the details themselves. Because the deeper issue is not simply whether individual politicians made mistakes or acted improperly. It is what happens to democratic systems when one party governs for so long that its presence begins to feel permanent.
The SNP has dominated Scottish politics for nearly two decades. That dominance was the result of hard work, dedication, and perseverance. It emerged from genuine public support, successful leadership, and a political project that many people, particularly younger and working-class voters, felt emotionally invested in. Policies such as free university tuition and prescriptions helped reinforce the idea that Scotland was capable of building a distinct political identity grounded in social democracy.
But long-term political dominance creates risks even when it begins with good intentions.
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The danger is not necessarily that voters stop criticising the government altogether. Plenty of people in Scotland remained deeply opposed to the SNP throughout its time in office. Instead, the bigger risk is that institutions themselves begin adapting to permanence.
When one party remains in power for long enough, the boundaries between government, party, national identity, and public institutions can slowly become less distinct. Not through conspiracy or dramatic corruption, but through familiarity. The line slowly begins to blur and relationships become culturally embedded. Oversight becomes softer, political assumptions harden. Continuity starts replacing scrutiny.
Eventually, a governing party stops feeling temporary and starts feeling structural.
That matters particularly in Scotland, where devolution created a smaller and more interconnected political ecosystem than Westminster. Holyrood was designed to be more collaborative and less adversarial than politics in the rest of the UK, but smaller systems can also become culturally close-knit quicker. Over time, it becomes harder to distinguish between criticism of a governing party and criticism of the national project attached to it.
For the SNP, that national project was always bigger than ordinary party politics. The party became tied to ideas of Scottish identity, democratic renewal, and independence itself. For many supporters, criticism of the SNP could feel uncomfortably close to criticism of Scotland’s political aspirations more broadly.
That emotional closeness can make democratic scrutiny harder.
Yet, scrutiny matters most when parties are successful, dominant, and widely trusted. Healthy political systems depend on institutions that remain sceptical regardless of who is in power or how electorally popular they are. No governing party should become so culturally embedded that oversight begins operating on assumption rather than interrogation.
None of this erases what the SNP achieved politically or electorally. Nor does it suggest Scotland’s political problems begin and end with one party. But the current scandal does raise uncomfortable questions about how Scottish democracy functions when power remains concentrated for long periods of time.
Because perhaps the greatest risk of governing too long is not arrogance, corruption, or scandal in isolation. It is that permanence itself slowly changes the behaviour of everyone around power, including the systems designed to hold it accountable.
