Swinney avoids bruising leadership contest but faces many hurdles

John Swinney has managed to avoid a bruising leadership contest in his bid to reclaim the SNP leadership.

Almost two decades on from when he resigned the post, after leading the SNP party to a disastrous result in the 2004 European elections, a coronation is likely on Monday.

While one potential problem looks to have been avoided, after Kate Forbes threw her weight behind Mr Swinney, the 60-year-old is set to face a bulging in-tray when he becomes Scotland’s seventh First Minister as soon as next week.

Minority government

When Humza Yousaf tore up the SNP’s coalition agreement with the Scottish Greens, he threw away a parliamentary majority that ensured the government could pass legislation, budgets and survive confidence voters.

While the Greens have indicated that they will be willing to negotiate with Mr Swinney, they would struggle to support the centrist agenda which he indicated he would now pursue.

Mr Swinney also plans to hand a significant role to Kate Forbes – who many in the Greens loathe due to her social and economic conservatism – and she may well be in charge of negotiating budgets.

Mr Swinney will likely face a choice of being dragged to the left by the Greens or attempting to strike deals with one of the Unionist parties, which would all be highly reluctant to do him any favours.

Operation Branchform

The police investigation into the SNP’s finances has hung like a black cloud over the SNP since Nicola Sturgeon’s home was dramatically raided by police more than a year ago.

Ms Sturgeon’s husband, the SNP chief executive Peter Murrell, has been charged with embezzlement offences while Ms Sturgeon and former party treasurer Colin Beattie are both still under investigation.

Should damning revelations emerge, Mr Swinney may struggle to disassociate himself from them, given he has been a central figure in the party for decades and has worked closely with all those under suspicion.

If Ms Sturgeon, who strongly denies wrongdoing, is also charged, Mr Swinney would face a major dilemma over to what extent he would distance himself from one of his closest friends.

Ms Sturgeon has previously described Mr Swinney as “the most important person in my adult life outside my husband and family”.

Mr Swinney may also come to regret attempting to downplay questions over party finances.

He claimed in May 2021, as police were considering launching an investigation, that there was a “huge amount of scrutiny” over how SNP money was spent and denied there was any cause for concern.

General election

For the first time in more than a decade, the SNP is heading into an election it is expected to lose.

Opinion polls suggest that Labour is set to overtake the SNP in Scottish Westminster seats, a result that would end a remarkable era of dominance for the SNP.

One of Mr Swinney’s most immediate priorities will be to come up with a strategy which makes the SNP relevant in a UK election in which Labour is likely to sweep to power.

There are also logistical difficulties, with the SNP’s finances believed to be in a dire state as large donations have dried up.

Mr Yousaf’s pitch to voters to make Scotland “Tory free” was widely derided, given the threat to the party came mainly from Labour.

A poor result would be unlikely to lead to immediate pressure on Mr Swinney to stand down as leader, given he will have only been in the job a few months.

However, a disastrous result, in which the SNP won fewer than 20 seats, would leave him with no momentum heading into the 2026 Holyrood elections.

Independence

Ever since the independence referendum, SNP leaders have faced a dilemma over how to satisfy party members desperate for a second vote and a country which is far from convinced it wants one.

Ms Sturgeon arguably dealt with this by deliberately misleading her grassroots, promising them a referendum was just around the corner while repeatedly failing to deliver it.

Mr Yousaf claimed he would lead Scotland to independence within five years, a claim he made to appeal to party members but which lacked any credibility.

While Scottish independence is Mr Swinney’s lifelong passion – in 2015 he won planning permission to fly the saltire from a 20ft flagpole outside his home – the lack of a leadership contest means he will not be forced to make promises he cannot keep.

He injected some realism at his campaign launch when he acknowledged that “more people need to be convinced” about the merits of independence and that “obstacles remain”.

He said that he accepted that a lack of cohesion in the SNP meant it was not yet ready to achieve its ultimate goal.

Culture wars

There is an increasing realisation within the SNP that a focus on identity politics, for example around trans rights and gender self-ID, is damaging the party’s standing with the public.

Many in the party admit privately that voters think the SNP has become too focused on pushing fringe issues unpopular with voters rather than their priorities, such as the economy, cost of living and sorting out the NHS.

While Mr Swinney voted for many of the controversial policies enthusiastically championed by Ms Sturgeon and Mr Yousaf, such as gender self-identification and hate crime laws, he has largely avoided wading into the culture wars.

Mr Swinney’s pitch as returning the SNP to the “moderate centre-Left” of Scottish politics while focusing on economic growth suggests he wants to move the party away from divisive identity politics.

He is also set to give Kate Forbes a senior role in government, who is known to have concerns about a planned conversion therapy law, for example.

She has said she would have quit government to vote against gender self-ID, had she not been on maternity leave.

Mr Swinney faces a challenge in ditching unpopular and divisive policies while avoiding a rebellion from some in his party, particularly younger members, who strongly believe in them and denounce opponents as bigots. He refused to say at his campaign launch whether he believed trans women were women.

Net Zero

Under Ms Sturgeon’s leadership the SNP effectively became a party that championed an end to the North Sea oil and gas sector.

She opposed new drilling, such as the Cambo oil field, welcomed the far-Left Greens into her government and courted Greta Thunberg at COP 26 in Glasgow.

However, the stance has caused significant problems for the SNP, particularly in the north-east of Scotland where tens of thousands of jobs rely on the sector.

Mr Swinney said on Thursday that while the climate emergency was “a real and present threat to our society, we must take people and business with us”.

That assessment was later echoed by Kate Forbes and could just as easily have been made by Sir Keir Starmer or even Rishi Sunak.

However, rolling back further on environmental commitments could upset some in his party and the Scottish Greens, whose votes he may have to rely on in Holyrood.