The Scottish National party will lose the next Holyrood election without a fundamental rethink of purpose and policy while carrying out long-delayed internal reforms, senior figures have warned. However, some have expressed doubt that the party’s leader, John Swinney, is strong enough to direct the scale of change required. Before the SNP’s annual conference at the end of August, the Guardian spoke to more than 20 influential voices within the party, including current and former Scottish government ministers, senior activists and those ousted in July’s catastrophic general election defeat – in which the SNP was reduced from 48 MPs in 2019 to nine as Labour swept the board across the country. Many predict the SNP, which has enjoyed stratospheric electoral success over the past decade, faces “a doing” at the Scottish parliament elections in 2026 as Scottish Labour capitalises on the UK party’s Westminster win. “The way things are now, we run the real risk of not winning in 2026,” said one senior MSP. “We have to change course and John needs to be decisive.” Stewart McDonald, a former MP for Glasgow South, who had cleared his Westminster desk before 4 July because he was so certain of defeat, said: “What does an SNP that has learned its lesson look and sound like? I don’t think it’s possible to overstate the scale of the challenge we are facing as a party.” Almost all argued that countering the Labour message of change to voters who were desperate to get the Tories out of Downing Street was “incredibly difficult if not impossible”, as one former MP described it. There is also wide acknowledgment that voters were turned off by the police investigation into SNP finances – during which the former leader Nicola Sturgeon was arrested and her husband and former chief executive Peter Murrell charged with embezzlement – and the recent expenses row involving the former Holyrood health secretary Michael Matheson’s £11,000 iPad bill. “I found myself on the doorstep trying to contextualise scandal after scandal,” said another former MP, with voters telling a number of candidates “we expected better of your lot”. SNP supporters were left homeless, disappointed by the loss of integrity and the impasse on a second independence referendum, compounded by an unfocused campaign where “the message changed every 20 minutes”, as one former MP put it. But the defeat was longer in the making than six weeks in the summer. “We failed to learn the lesson from Rutherglen,” said one former MP, referring to Labour’s overwhelming victory over the SNP at last October’s central belt byelection. “For several years we’ve looked vain, self-indulgent and out of touch with voters’ priorities. Yes independence was line one of the manifesto, but we offered no credible roadmap to deliver it.” Now there is a concern that the party will squander its moment for reflection, or that any postmortem examination at next week’s conference will descend into infighting, “contributing to the view amongst the wider electorate that we are shambolic now”, as one former minister predicted. Morale is reportedly “very low” on the Holyrood backbenches, while other insiders describe a party “exhausted” by government. All-pervasive is the worry that there is simply not enough time to turn around the party’s fortunes. For if this is to happen, there is an urgent need to focus on delivery before 2026. A key event will be the programme for government, suggests another senior SNP figure: “For 2026 we need to run on a platform of competence first, which then amplifies the independence message.” The challenge of incumbency will be huge. “It’s hard after 19 years to badge yourself as offering something new and different. We need to pick three or four things that we’re going to fix and do them well,” another former minister said. There are also some concerns about a “bunfight” between current MSPs and the sizeable cohort of recently jettisoned MPs over selections for Holyrood. There is also a demand for behavioural change – interviewees stressed repeatedly that in order to succeed the SNP had to return to its previous discipline and seriousness. “The Scottish government has still time to turn things around,” said one parliamentarian. “But that needs grit at a leadership level, stop imagining you can ride out every problem, accept the need to cut people loose and enforce discipline – the party needs to be up for winning rather than keeping every single member happy.” Another repeated frustration is how poorly the SNP has explained to the electorate what it can and cannot do as a devolved government. “We’ve spent millions mitigating the worst effects of austerity but don’t explain it,” said another senior figure. This will be key with the Holyrood budget in crisis and punishing cuts already trailed by the Scottish government, adding to questions about Swinney’s capacity to handle these escalating pressures. As for the party’s founding principle: “Even if the SNP get an absolute doing in 2026 I don’t think independence is off the agenda,” said one former MP. “But for too long there’s been silence on ‘what if Westminster say no?’ The SNP has got to start getting real with people.” Anne McLaughlin, a former MP for Glasgow North East, said: “A lot of people say we got our messaging wrong on independence, but it’s easy to explain the link between independence and the cost of living crisis, what’s hard is explaining how voting for us will achieve independence when the UK political class won’t engage at all.” In learning these lessons, the SNP must ask itself some fundamental questions, according to those who spoke to the Guardian. “The party changed dramatically with its huge membership increase after the 2014 referendum but never answered the question: is it a political party or a campaigning organisation?” said the SNP parliamentarian. It is a recurring theme that the nuts and bolts organisation of the party is “appallingly bad” and that Murrell in particular “didn’t care” about the membership. Figures released last week revealed the party had lost 10,000 members in the past year alone, with the total halving in the past five years. “There was a massive base of people who came to us after 2014 and we’ve not harnessed that in the way we could,” said the former MP for Livingston Hannah Bardell. “The Labour challenge requires a psychological shift in the SNP,” said McDonald. “We have behaved like we are the sole constituency of change because we support independence, but voters no longer see us as the natural vehicle for their aspirations.” A number of MSPs have said that, even if the SNP narrowly wins the most seats at Holyrood, the parliamentary arithmetic is such – especially after the fracturing of the relationship with the Scottish Greens when the former leader Humza Yousaf ditched their governing partnership – that Scottish Labour is more likely to be able to form a minority government. “Nobody wants to work with us,” said one MSP. A few colleagues remain more optimistic. “If our core vote is around 30% then that’s a good starting point for Holyrood,” said one veteran party organiser. Younger activists who place themselves on the progressive, gradualist wing of the party believe this is “a opportunity to rebuild” after shedding some of the party’s more divisive figures, including the outspoken leadership critic and gender-critical feminist Joanna Cherry. Some are already reframing a loss in 2026 as an opportunity. “Would it be the worst thing if we lose in 2026?” asked a former MP. “We could spend that time in opposition training our activists to campaign, strengthening our base, working on other countries accepting us, and use the next Holyrood election for a big push on independence.”