SNP MP Stephen Gethins: “I've Got No Feeling Of Britishness"

Harriet Symonds

@harriet_symonds

“I've got no feeling of Britishness. I've got a European identity,” says the SNP’s Stephen Gethins. “I carry a passport for a country with which I don't really identify, even though my wife is from Kent and I've got lots of family south of the border.”

First elected in 2015, Gethins nearly lost his North East Fife seat in 2017, clinging on by just two votes before eventually losing it in 2019 to the Liberal Democrats. How did he find that experience? “It was fine, genuinely,” he replies. 

“It wasn’t brilliant in the sense that you work hard and you lose, but the vote had gone up very significantly. There's not much more you can do apart from trying to get more people to vote for you this time than they did the last time.” 

For the last four years Gethins, 48, has been working as an international relations professor at St Andrews University and did not plan on returning to Parliament.

“I loved my time at the university – it wasn't a job that I was in any rush to leave,” he explains. “I realised that I was enjoying my life outside so much that, had I not stood, I wouldn't have stood again. And I wasn’t ready to never stand again.” 

As the SNP MP for the new seat of Arbroath and Broughty Ferry and just one of nine SNP MPs now in Westminster, Gethins will be at the forefront of rebuilding the case for independence.

“The union is so unpopular with younger people, people of working ages,” he says. “Young Scots no longer identify with the state for which they carry a passport, and that state is doing nothing, that I can discern, to try and win back their trust and support.”

In the 10 years after the Scottish referendum, support for independence has often fallen below 50 per cent. In December a Norstat poll put support for independence on 51 per cent – the highest it has been since 2023. “The support of 45 per cent [in 2014], which at the time was very high, has now become a floor, not a ceiling,” says Gethins. 

“You can continue to say Scotland shouldn't have a say on its own future, but where does that leave the union? We were told this is a voluntary union, just like the EU is a voluntary union, but where's the UK's Article 50?” he asks, referring to the mechanism enabling a member state’s withdrawal from the EU.

Westminster’s attitude towards Scotland, Gethins says, was evident when Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff Sue Gray resigned from No 10 last year and was offered a position as the Prime Minister’s trade envoy for regions and nations – although she did not ultimately take up the role.

“It was quite disrespectful to the Secretary of State for Scotland,” says Gethins. “If you’re being cynical, it was a quick political fix to a problem they might have had, rather than an actual thoughtful approach to how they might build a sustainable union. That tells you an awful lot about the thought process that goes on in Whitehall sometimes.”

But the once dominant and mighty SNP – which has governed from Holyrood for nearly two decades – has faced a challenging few years mired with scandal, throwing the fight for independence into increasing uncertainty.

Having lost its position as the third-largest party in Westminster, and faced with a Labour supermajority, the SNP will need to find ways to exploit Labour’s increasing unpopularity if it is to win back support.

“As a group we've come back obviously smaller, but on issues like Brexit, Gaza, child poverty, winter fuel allowance – on all these issues – we've got it right and we continue to get it right,” says Gethins.

Breaking from the UK Government, the SNP recently announced plans to scrap the two-child benefit cap in Scotland.

The party is now starting to rebuild support with new First Minister John Swinney whose leadership has made a “big difference”, according to Gethins. “John is rock-solid. He's dependable. He's the sort of person, regardless of your politics, that you want running things.”

In what way is there a migration crisis?

In addition to taking the fight to Labour, the rise of Reform poses another challenge for the SNP, with Nigel Farage setting his sights on both Wales and Scotland in the upcoming elections. “Stop pandering to them. It drives me nuts down here when we pander to them,” says Gethins. 

“Migration is a good thing. We should be encouraging skilled migrants to come here and yet we get all this nonsense about who can be tougher on migrants,” he adds. 

“Stop giving Reform the space. Brexit has been a disaster, isolationism a disaster, and Trump's not great. So, take Reform on and don't pander to Reform. That's the way the far right has been successfully dealt with in other parts of Europe.”

Does he accept that there is a migration crisis?

“We can't get care sector staff because we're cracking down on migrants. When you say there's a migration crisis, try telling that to somebody who can't get care for a disabled child or an elderly relative. I mean, in what way is there a migration crisis?”

In terms of boat crossings and their tragic consequences; not being able to process applications quickly enough; people waiting years to have their claims considered?

“People in boats – tiny number,” he says. “This is a crisis entirely of Westminster’s own making. That sits at the heart of it. Pandering to the far-right for far too long. It makes me really angry.”

A poll in The Times last year found that Scots are Trump’s biggest supporters in western Europe, with 25 per cent in support. 

“There are people who've felt left behind by politics and that’s a challenge for every political party,” Gethins admits. “I'm not saying this of Trump, but if somebody's throwing them snake oil salesmen and easy solutions, you can see why people go for it.”

This year Britain is expected to step up to become a bigger player in Europe following the return of Trump. But would Scotland exiting the union weaken Britain’s position? “If you said to any EU state, ‘do you want to give up your independence because Russia is on a rampage and China is looking a bit threatening?’, they would all tell you ‘No’,” Gethins argues. 

“If there's going to be a trade war, do you think you're better off sitting outside, or do you think you're better off sitting within a massive trading bloc with other like-minded democratic states?”

The betrayal of Brexit still runs deep, he says: “People struggle to understand elsewhere just how schismatic Brexit was because there was that breach of confidence and breach of trust in the relationship.”

Gethins maintains that an independent Scotland would be stronger back in the EU – which he admits would take years – and that this outweighs Britain’s strength as a union.

“It's much stronger being inside [the EU], and yet we are stuck on the outside with a country that has structural flaws and is not making our citizens better off or giving them more rights,” Gethins insists. “As Alex Salmond would say, England would lose a surly lodger and gain a good neighbour.”

It's not a big secret that SNP MPs aspire to ultimately be in another Parliament

At the end of last year, SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn said he would look for a seat at the 2026 Scottish elections, but later backtracked. It was reported that Gethins was mulling Holyrood candidacy too. “There are no vacancies where I am at the moment and I've been very clear I'm not challenging any colleagues,” he says.

MSPs have since backed plans to end so-called ‘double jobbing’, barring MSPs from sitting as MPs or members of the House of Lords. 

“I've got no plans to stand at the moment,” Gethins insists, without denying he may stand as an MSP in the future. “It's a privilege to be doing the job I'm doing at the moment, although it's not a big secret that SNP MPs aspire to ultimately be in another Parliament.”

Before becoming an MP, Gethins worked as an adviser to former Scottish first ministers Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon. “They're both very different. I spent longer with Alex, and I would argue to this day that it was difficult to spend time in Alex's company and not learn something. Nicola was formidable as well. The one thing I always look for in a boss is, can you learn something from them?”

In the years prior to Salmond’s death last year, the former first minister faced allegations of sexual misconduct, including sexual assault and attempted rape. In 2020, after a criminal trial, he was acquitted of all charges against him, being found not guilty on 12 while another charge was not proven. While giving evidence, Salmond said incidents in question were “being reinterpreted and exaggerated” but he wished he had been “more careful with people’s personal space”.

“That was a really difficult period. I gave evidence; my evidence was that I’d never seen anything criminal in nature. Obviously, Alex was found not guilty, but I think some of the evidence that came out about the treatment of individuals that Alex talked about, the stuff that he admitted to, was disappointing to hear about,” says Gethins.

The SNP’s civil war aside, Gethins expresses alarm over foreign affairs. Global uncertainty and aggression from countries like Russia have prompted fears Britain could soon end up in the middle of a conflict. “I think we’re at war,” the MP warns. “Attacks that you see around polarisation, disinformation, the attacks on cables, internet, and energy. These are acts of war.”

As part of previous NGO work, Gethins is one of few MPs to have sat down and spoken with senior Russian officers. “Be under no illusion the kind of administration that you're dealing with, for whom the lives of their own citizens or those of another country are cheap.” 

Freeing up the $300bn of frozen Russian assets in the European banking system would be “game-changing” for Ukraine, says the former SNP spokesperson for international affairs, “especially at a time when Europe doesn't take its own security as seriously as it should”.

But the EU is still our strongest asset to manage growing global conflict, he insists: “Outside it, we are poorer, less secure, we've got fewer rights. What on earth are we getting that’s the upside to all of that?”

“As a politician, what we can all agree on – regardless of where you sit and what you think – is that you leave your citizens better off than when you started,” Gethins adds. “I'm not sure anybody in the UK can really argue that’s where we're heading at the moment.”

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