Joanna Cherry: The SNP, Westminster, and a decade of political battles

Joanna Cherry joins us this week to discuss her newly published memoir, in which she looks back on some of the most contentious battles in British and Scottish politics in the last two decades.

She arrived at Westminster in 2015 as one of 56 SNP MPs elected in a historic landslide that transformed Scottish politics and made the SNP the third-largest party in the House of Commons. She describes the excitement – and occasional hostility – that greeted the new contingent and explains why her experience at Westminster left her believing that the Scottish Parliament could learn a lot from the Commons, particularly when it comes to cross-party working, debate, dissent, and committee scrutiny.

One of the central arguments of Cherry’s memoir is that the SNP repeatedly failed to exploit moments of political leverage and that it pursued the wrong strategy for securing another Scottish independence referendum after the loss in 2014. She sets out what she thinks the party could have done differently and why she believes support for independence has now become increasingly detached from support for the SNP itself.

Her national profile grew dramatically during the Brexit years. As a constitutional lawyer, Cherry became the lead petitioner in the Scottish legal challenge to Boris Johnson’s 2019 prorogation of Parliament. She explains why the case was brought in Scotland, why she believed the challengers would ultimately win, and what it felt like when the Supreme Court unanimously ruled the prorogation unlawful.

The conversation also turns to the bitter internal disputes that marked Cherry’s later years in the SNP. She discusses her relationship with Nicola Sturgeon, her concerns about the SNP’s governance and finances, the treatment of her former mentor Alex Salmond, and the fierce arguments over reform of Scotland’s gender recognition laws.

Having lost her seat at Westminster in 2024 and subsequently left the SNP, is Joanna Cherry finished with frontline politics? Perhaps not. She doesn’t rule out a return under a new party leader and a new culture of independent thinking.

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Parliament Matters is a Hansard Society production supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.

Presenters: Mark D’Arcy and Ruth Fox

Producer: Richard Townsend

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