Nicola Sturgeon has been urged to apologize for the SNP's General Election drubbing.
Joanna Cherry, who was ousted in Edinburgh South, said the nationalist party was punished due to its failure to advance the independence cause.
Ms Cherry, who has been among the loudest internal critics of her party's former leadership, also claimed the SNP-run Scottish government was no longer seen as competent.
It comes after the SNP fell to just nine seats at Westminster, down from 48 in 2019.
Asked if Nicola Sturgeon should apologise, Ms Cherry told Sky News's Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips programme: “I think she does.
“I don't think you can ever blame a setback like this on one person.
“However, Nicola Sturgeon was a very strong leader who brooked no debate and no dissent. As I know to my considerable cost. And she ran the party the way that she wanted it.
“She inherited an incredible legacy from Alex Salmond and after the independence referendum, where although we had lost the independence referendum, we had advanced support for it very considerably.
“She was elected on a wave, she was re-elected as first minister in a wave of optimism, as we were those of us who were elected in 2015, when the SNP got 56 out of the then 59 Scottish seats, and then thereafter , she was presented with a series of opportunities after the Brexit referendum and during the particularly early years of Boris Johnson's premiership before he got his majority in 2019, that ought to have been able to have been exploited to forward further the cause of independence.
“And there has been a huge strategic failure to do that. And there's also been a failure to win over those who were as yet unconvinced of the merits of the cause.
“Now, when the SNP was riding high, it was because we were seen as competent. People started to have more confidence in the idea that Scotland could be a self-governing nation because the SNP had performed competently.”
Ms Sturgeon, who was part of ITV's General Election coverage, said on air that it would be the “easy solution” for people to “take refuge in somehow it's all my fault”.
The party was plunged into chaos by her shock resignation last year and a police probe into its finances.