SNP will be stupid to accept snake oil salesman John Swinney as leader

As a snake oil salesman John Swinney has done a first-class job, one that would have made the likes of Michael Heseltine or Neil Kinnock green with envy.

The trouble with his performance was that the vacancy he’s bidding for is first minister of Scotland and anyone who was conned by his bid for that job is set for a major disappointment.

The simple reason is that having been driven off a cliff by Humza Yousaf as Nicola Sturgeon’s continuity candidate, the SNP look to be acting like, well mugs, by plumping for another from the same mould by deciding they want Swinney as their leader. Just as I said they would.

The party seems ready to swallow, whole, the view that not only will the former deputy leader seek to deliver more of what they’ve grown used to, but that he’ll unite the party in doing so. In other words, it will be a “same old, same old” outfit… but with the difference that they’ll be led by the man who seems to think he’s the most successful nationalist politician who’s ever drawn breath.

However, in doing that he’s omitting to recall his time as leader when he notched up 19 per cent of the popular vote in the 2002 EU election - the lowest ever in the SNP’s recent history. Nor the fact that it took “men in kilts” - as distinct from the “men in suits” who do such dirty deeds at Westminster - to quietly approach him and tell him he was sacked.

To be fair, he has been good at winning constituency elections and with the opinion polls predicting a dire result for the SNP in the next general election, that ability will score well with those MPs who are on the verge of losing their seats.

But of the Swinney stamp on policy in all those years where he’s been a big Nat name, there’s not much to see. Yes, he did manage a decent bit of horse-trading to get minority budgets through, but where is his influence on the policies that have brought his party to its current low point in the opinion polls?

There is none. No sign of Swinney telling Sturgeon that her appalling gender reform legislation was a mess and would rebound not just on her government but on Scotland as a whole. The entire country was humiliated by that measure as it has been, lately, by the nonsense of the Hate Crime Act.

As far as the public is concerned there was not a cheep from the Swinney corner.

And that must surely be the problem with a Swinney platform for leadership. He has been so much Sturgeon’s yes man - lapdog even - that he went along with everything she said and did.

In effect, there have been two John Swinneys.

Mark 1 was the self-proclaimed moderate Leftie who was an efficient finance minister and a super-efficient campaign organiser.

But 2014 and the advent of the Sturgeon leadership saw a different creature emerge. This was Mark 2 Swinney, someone who went along with her obsession with identity politics and with never a cross word from him.

Out and out Sturgeon loyalists may have gone along with this but there was widespread unhappiness among party veterans while the public was simply outraged.

Party members may be prepared to accept that the Swinney they’re being asked to vote for is the Mark 1 version, but he is long gone. And surely wiser heads can understand that this Swinney retread is a phoney.

For nearly a decade Swinney served Sturgeon without ever challenging her policy agenda with even a murmur. And with him as leader the Union is safe.

It’s a pity Kate Forbes has decided not to stand. She supports independence but also believes that “basic” properties like education and the economy should be a higher priority.

Unfortunately, we won’t see much of that with the accession of Swinney. The SNP seem happy with the soiled Sturgeon agenda. Will they still be laughing come election time?