A former SNP Cabinet Secretary has urged John Swinney to “grow a backbone” and back North Sea drilling after the party’s humiliating by-election defeat in Aberdeen South. Alex Neil warned voters were furious at politicians on both sides of the border treating the sector – which supports more than 60,000 north east jobs – as a “sacrificial lamb”.
It comes as the Scottish Conservatives swept to a shock victory in Thursday’s by-election after billing the vote “a referendum on the oil and gas industry”. Former MSP Douglas Lumsden won a thumping majority of more than 6000, defeating the SNP’s Richard Thomson for the Tories’ first Scottish by-election win since 1973.
Neil, who served in SNP Cabinets under both Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon, called on Swinney to renounce the “economic madness” of Sturgeon-era opposition to new oil and gas projects, such as Rosebank oil field and Jackdaw gas field.
He told the Sunday Mail: “It’s about backbone. Swinney needs to stand up to the Greens and to Sturgeon because he’s sitting on the fence and that’s the worst of all possible worlds. If you sit on the fence, you don’t please anybody. You’ve got to come off the fence, especially when Scotland’s economy demands it.
“Now the people are demanding it. A clear majority of people in Scotland think that we should continue to develop our oil and gas fields as long as we possibly can, as long as they’re profitable, as long as they’re producing good, high earning jobs.
“There’s public support for this, but I think John’s feart. We are making ourselves the sacrificial lamb when no one else in the world is contemplating such a stupid policy. I just think we’ve got it completely wrong on oil and gas and we’re going to pay a much heavier political price in the future if we don’t get it right.”
View 5 ImagesScottish Conservative Party MSP Douglas Lumsden (front row centre) celebrates with supporters at P&J Live in Aberdeen(Image: PA Wire/PA Images)
Recriminations have burst into the open over the Aberdeen South defeat – where the Nationalists’ vote tally plummeted from 15,213, when Stephen Flynn won the seat in 2024, to just 8258 on Thursday.
Ex-SNP Westminster leader Flynn triggered the by-election after resigning to stand for Holyrood. Now an MSP and economy minister under Swinney, Flynn took to X to describe the result as a “tough night” that “some will need to reflect on, quite heavily”.
But former SNP special adviser Kate Higgins hit back: “I do hope that ‘some’ includes you… the by election was, after all, caused by your choices.”
Flynn is believed to be frustrated by the Scottish Government’s mixed messages on oil and gas. Under Sturgeon and her successor Humza Yousaf – both of whom ran power-sharing administrations with the Scottish Greens – the government came out against Rosebank with Sturgeon branding the scheme “environmental vandalism”.
View 5 ImagesStephen Flynn addresses the 2024 SNP party conference(Image: Lesley Martin/PA)
Eighty miles off Shetland, the site is the largest untapped oil field in Britain containing an estimated 300million barrels. It is yet to gain consent to start drilling at Westminster after previous approval by the Tories was thrown out by the courts as unlawful.
A draft energy strategy published under Sturgeon said SNP ministers could adopt a symbolic “presumption against” new oil and gas drilling in 2023. The final strategy still hasn’t been published and Swinney is seen as having softened the government’s North Sea stance.
View 5 ImagesThousands of jobs depend on Scotland’s North Sea oil and gas industry(Image: Andrew Milligan/PA Wire)
Meanwhile, the Labour government under Keir Starmer and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has introduced a controversial ban on oil and gas exploration in the drive for Net Zero. Following Andy Burnham’s seismic by-election win in Makerfield, the former Greater Manchester mayor is strongly tipped to oust Starmer from No 10.
Attention is already turning to his possible Cabinet picks with Miliband, a close Burnham ally, currently the frontrunner with bookies to become Chancellor.
Neil, 74, said: “The worst possible thing Andy Burnham can do is make Ed Miliband the Chancellor of the Exchequer because he’ll then be in an even more powerful position to destroy the oil and gas industry.
“It’s quite clear that is on his agenda and that has huge implications. He couldn’t care less what happens to Scotland, the Scottish economy, or the people in Aberdeen and the northeast of Scotland.
“He just doesn’t care because he’s ideologically obsessed with getting rid of the oil and gas industry. My strong advice to Andy Burnham is not to touch Miliband with a barge pole, don’t let him near the Treasury, because that will be Burnham’s downfall.
“Make him foreign secretary and let him go and travel the world as much as he likes. But don’t give him a say in economic policy because he’s absolutely out of tune with the people.”
View 5 ImagesAndy Burnham won emphatically in Makerfield(Image: Peter Byrne/PA Wire)
Figures from the North Sea industry and trade unions have said the result in Aberdeen South must be a “wake-up call” to politicians to back oil workers.
David Whitehouse, chief exec of industry body Offshore Energies UK, said: “The debate around oil and gas has become too toxic, too polarised. It is wrong to divide our workforce into ‘clean’ and ‘dirty’ labour, into good jobs and bad jobs. That kind of dismissive language helps no one.
“This is not a choice between oil and gas or renewables. It has to be both. I hope this moment creates space for a reset.”
Louise Gilmour, GMB Scotland secretary, said “It was entirely predictable that a Tory would win this by-election by promising to protect the North Sea. The only thing more predictable is ministers at Westminster and Holyrood continuing to promise green jobs tomorrow while thousands of well-paid, highly skilled workers in oil and gas are being abandoned today.
“Their rushed and needless rundown of the North Sea is continuing despite an industrial catastrophe unfolding in plain sight.”
The union warned a Westminster committee last week of a cliff-edge “calamity” for the jobs in the industry with the pace of redundancies increasing at an alarming rate.
GMB said it has been involved in 28 redundancy consultations so far this year compared to 11 in the same period in 2025 – and pointed out for every worker formally made redundant, another two jobs are quietly lost offshore and in supply chains such as casual workers.
A previous Robert Gordon University study forecasted 200 jobs being lost in oil, gas and related industries every week for the next five years.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “The Aberdeen South result is a direct result of Labour policies on oil and gas, which have been an abject failure. The tin-eared approach to the concerns of workers, by letting go of one rope before we have hold of another, has been absolutely shameful.
“Unite will not accept a jobless transition. Until there is a credible plan for jobs the anti-North Sea policies must be consigned to the bin.”
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