SNP avoids another bruising leadership contest but relief will be short-lived

John Swinney and senior Scottish National party deal-makers have scored an initial success in avoiding another bruising leadership contest, which would have been potentially disastrous in a general election year.

But that relief will be short-lived, as the new leader faces a series of immediate practical challenges. Chief among them are convincing voters the party is genuinely focused on their concerns, and rebuilding cross-party trust at Holyrood in minority government.

Polling has consistently suggested the SNP will face heavy losses to the resurgent Scottish Labour party in the general election.

There is also the more existential conundrum of healing fault lines over the party’s internal politics and policy direction that opened during the contest last March to replace Nicola Sturgeon and which the outgoing leader, Humza Yousaf, ultimately failed to resolve.

What is expected now is a swift and unfussy coronation, with an understandable urgency in steadying the ship in a term packed with bills and with a general election just around the corner.

Swinney is likely to spend the weekend pruning back existing policy commitments, in particular those that threaten to reprise the sort of rows seen recently around gender recognition reform and hate crime. Both Swinney and Kate Forbes signalled in their statements on Thursday a change of emphasis. Forbes, who had been considered a potential leadership candidate, used her announcement that she was backing Swinney to speak about a “return to governing from the mainstream” while Swinney said the public wanted government from the “moderate centre-left”.

The Scottish Greens co-leader Patrick Harvie made it clear on Thursday that some bitterness remained over the way Yousaf “threw away” the governing partnership between the two parties and the “progressive, pro-independence” majority it had cemented at Holyrood.

Harvie said “the only way to have stability and get a majority across the Scottish parliament … is a progressive, pro-independence government” which would mean accelerating climate action and progressive taxation.

This matters because one of Swinney’s main political challenges is building vote-by-vote alliances with opposition parties. The SNP is two votes short of being a majority government, requiring him to constantly negotiate with his rivals.

The Scottish Liberal Democrats, the second smallest of Holyrood’s parties, with four seats, have an opportunity to win policy concessions to support the SNP, particularly if Swinney pushes for centre-ground policies that the Greens will refuse to support.

The Lib Dems are interested in relaxing restrictive measures on housebuilding pushed through by Harvie when he was tge housing minister.

Swinney’s greatest challenge overall will be freeing up money for new policies or increased spending in his core areas of health, schools and the economy. The Scottish budget is heavily squeezed, with spending on nearly all non-core areas already being cut.

He made clear on Thursday he was unlikely to lean on the Scottish Conservatives after coming under direct, personal attack by their leader, Douglas Ross, who implied at Holyrood that Swinney had a record of lying about policy.

Swinney said, somewhat sarcastically, he was “slightly pessimistic” about finding common ground with the Tories, and told reporters his emphasis would be on working with Holyrood’s centre-left parties.

It is worth noting that Ipsos polling carried out after Yousaf’s resignation found that while SNP voters were most likely to favour Swinney as Yousaf’s successor, when the wider public were asked who would make the best first minister Forbes had a six-point lead over him.

Opposition leaders are already sharpening their attack lines; the downside of Swinney’s vast experience in government is that it gives his critics plenty of ammunition, with Ross describing his pending coronation as “back to the future”, and the Lib Dems’ Alex Cole-Hamilton saying he has “more baggage than an airport carousel”.