The SNP may be making a terrible mistake

As political comebacks go, this one is pretty impressive.

John Swinney voluntarily stepped down after four lacklustre years as his party’s leader back in 2004. Today it was confirmed that he will now become Scotland’s seventh first minister.

What’s more, this is no interim or caretaker position. Swinney was insistent that he would fill the vacancy created by Humza Yousaf last week only on condition that this was a long-term gig. How permanent Swinney’s tenure in Bute House is not for him or his party to say – the voters will decide that in due course. But for now, Scotland’s party of government will breathe a sigh of relief as the latest in a long line of political crises comes to an end.

It’s not the first time in recent years that a leader of the main nationalist party has been appointed by acclaim. Nicola Sturgeon, Swinney’s friend and ally, pulled the same trick in 2014 and stayed at the top for the next eight years. But those were different times. The danger for “Honest John” Swinney is that when it comes to unelected leaders, he may soon draw more parallels with Gordon Brown than with his party’s most electorally successful leader.

Which might explain the curious announcement by Kate Forbes, Scotland’s former finance secretary and Yousaf’s main opponent in last year’s leadership contest, that she doesn’t intend to stand this time round.

She is known to be ambitious for the top job, which partly explains why she has ruled herself out this time. For one of her chief qualifications for the leadership is, reportedly, her intelligence. She graduated from Cambridge and did a post-grad qualification at Edinburgh. That same intelligence that attracts a degree of support from her party (she was only narrowly defeated by Yousaf by a margin of four per cent) has been deployed to assess critically her party’s current prospects of success.

And her conclusions may not be encouraging. Although the SNP’s poll ratings have been remarkably resilient, given the sea of troubles against which the party has been forced to take up arms, a significant loss of Westminster seats is in prospect whenever the general election is called, even with modest bounce that any new leader can be expected to bestow on his or her party’s popularity.

Would Forbes really want to take the blame for that? Better, surely, to express full support for Swinney (which she has duly done), accept a senior cabinet role (which he will surely offer her in gratitude for being able to avoid a messy contest) and be safely out of the firing line when (if?) everything falls to pieces.

Aside from the prospect of losing a number of constituencies to Scottish Labour, making the next Holyrood elections in 2026 harder to call, there are many poisoned chalices awaiting the tastebuds of the new first minister. Does Forbes really want to take responsibility for the continuing farce of unbuilt, undelivered and over-budget ferries? Does she really want to take the fall for Yousaf’s most toxic legacy, the Hate Crimes Act, which only came into force three years after it was passed by MSPs because the police couldn’t work out how to enforce it?

And what about the Scottish Greens? In the absence of an SNP majority at Holyrood, they remain an important part of the political arithmetic there. Surely far better to leave it to Swinney to fret about the party’s relationship with Patrick Harvie and his various extremist, whacky political priorities, not to mention the consequences of his and co-leader Lorna Slater’s continuing hurty feelings after being unceremoniously dumped by Yousaf last week.

In fact, there are virtually no positive reasons for Forbes to risk another attempt to wrest control of the party from those who have been running it for the last 20 years – she is decidedly an outsider when it comes to the SNP’s pro-Sturgeon establishment.

And yet. It is quite possible that the SNP not having Forbes as its next leader now is a terrible mistake. To put it bluntly, the SNP may need her, marking a clear break from the past, in a way Swinney never can. On social issues, she is far more in tine with many Scots when measured by the radical policies pursued by Sturgeon, Yousaf, and supported by Swinney.

It is worth saying that Swinney is a highly-regarded and well-liked figure across all the parties and the media. Bu being first minister, leading a party into a key general election and, perhaps, a Scottish Parliament election, presents altogether different challenges than simply being the trusted uncle figure to whom successive leaders turn for advice.

Swinney turned 60 last month. His return to the back benches on Sturgeon’s departure suggested he was preparing to go gently into that good night when the next Holyrood elections arrived. Instead he is returning to the fray late in life.

Forbes need be in no hurry, given she is 26 years Swinney’s junior. In an age when ambitious politicians seem to see no virtue in delaying their gratification, Forbes’s decision to play the long game may well reap benefits – and confirm that she has another quality that many of her rivals don’t possess: judgement.

Either that, or it will be mistake the SNP will rue for a generation.