An OurKingdom symposium: see also articles by Gerry Hassan, David Torrance and Gareth Young

Scotland must seem like a place apart to readers of many newspapers in England. News that reaches the English public on the activities of the SNP Government often portrays Scotland as almost a foreign country. How else to explain the enduring popularity of a Government hell bent on picking fights with London, tartanising everything that moves led by a megalomaniac?

If this was anywhere approaching an accurate description of the SNP, it would be nowhere near power. So who are the SNP?

In order to begin to answer that question, colleagues in the Universities of Strathclyde and Aberdeen conducted a survey of the party's entire membership and conducted in-depth interviews with around 80 senior party members. The conclusions from this research are not startling, though there are some surprises, to anyone who follows Scottish politics seriously. But the findings are authoritative and shed light on a party that came to power in the Scottish Parliament in 2007 and shares power at local level, with the largest number of councillors, across the length and breadth of Scotland.