Nicola Sturgeon has fired a warning shot at her own party over its shifting stance on North Sea oil and gas, and it has sparked a genuine debate about where the SNP stands on one of Scotland’s most politically charged issues.
Under John Swinney’s leadership, the SNP has moved away from its previously hardline green position on fossil fuels. The party now backs scrapping the windfall tax on North Sea producers, officially known as the Energy Profits Levy. For many long-time SNP supporters, that is a significant shift from the direction Sturgeon was steering the party when she was in charge.
Sturgeon built much of her later political identity around climate action. She regularly positioned Scotland as a leader in the transition away from fossil fuels, and the SNP under her watch was broadly supportive of measures that pushed the oil and gas industry to contribute more during a period of record profits. The windfall tax, introduced by the UK Government in 2022 as energy bills soared, was seen by many as a fair response to companies making billions while ordinary households struggled.
So when the SNP under Swinney came out against that same tax, it raised eyebrows. Sturgeon has made clear she thinks the party is making a mistake, and her warning carries weight given she led the SNP for over a decade.
But how accurate is her concern, really?
The argument from Swinney and those backing the new position is straightforward. The North Sea industry supports tens of thousands of jobs in Scotland, particularly in the north east around Aberdeen. The windfall tax, they argue, has hammered investment in the sector at a time when energy security is already a major concern across Europe. Companies have been pulling back from new projects, and there are real fears about long-term decline in an industry that still matters enormously to the Scottish economy.
From that angle, the SNP shifting its position is not a betrayal of principles but a pragmatic response to economic reality. The party has always had to balance its independence ambitions with the fact that North Sea revenues would be central to any future Scottish state’s finances. Backing the industry is not exactly a new instinct for the SNP, even if the rhetoric has changed over the years.
Sturgeon’s concern, though, is about more than just the economics. Her warning touches on the SNP’s credibility on climate change. Scotland has set ambitious emissions targets, and the SNP has used its environmental record as a key part of its pitch to younger voters and to those who might otherwise back the Greens. If the party is seen to be rowing back on that commitment to protect fossil fuel producers, it risks losing those voters and damaging the broader case for independence as a route to a greener future.
There is also a political calculation here. The SNP lost significant ground at the last general election, and the party is trying to rebuild. Swinney’s team clearly believe that appealing to workers and communities dependent on the oil and gas sector is part of winning back support in areas where the party has struggled. Whether that strategy works without alienating the party’s more progressive base remains to be seen.
Sturgeon’s warning is not without foundation. The SNP spent years trying to detach the independence argument from over-reliance on oil revenues, partly because the volatility of oil prices had been used against them during the 2014 referendum campaign. Swinging back toward a pro-oil stance, even if it is framed around jobs and investment, opens the party up to accusations of inconsistency.
At the same time, politics rarely rewards ideological purity over practical concerns. The communities around Aberdeen and along the north east coast are not abstract figures in a policy debate. They are voters with real anxieties about their livelihoods, and the SNP knows it cannot afford to ignore them.
What Sturgeon’s intervention does is remind everyone that the SNP is not a monolith. There are genuine tensions within the party about its direction, and those tensions are playing out publicly. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does add to the sense that the SNP is still finding its footing after a turbulent couple of years that saw Sturgeon resign, her successor Humza Yousaf come and go, and Swinney step in to steady the ship.
Whether the new oil and gas position turns out to be a smart pivot or a damaging misstep will likely depend on what happens next in the energy market, how the independence debate develops, and whether Scottish voters end up rewarding pragmatism or punishing the party for what some see as a broken promise to the planet.