John Swinney needs a win to foil frustrating run-up to crucial SNP conference
Even small hitches could feel like mountains to climb going into next May’s election
First Minister John Swinney has endured a frustrating few days in office.
That’s not to say there haven’t been setbacks before - last year’s crushing general election defeat and more recently, June’s surprise loss in the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election, will have been hard to swallow.
But as the SNP and its rivals head into full election mode ahead of May’s pivotal poll, likely to be the most unpredictable in a generation, the slightest hitch can easily feel like a mountain to climb.
That’s not to say Labour doesn’t have its own Everest to scale - with the Scottish public yet to be convinced a change of management in Bute House would be any better than the grossly unpopular premiership of Sir Keir Starmer in Downing Street.
Last week, SNP minister Jamie Hepburn quit after being accused by former Scottish Conservative leader and chief Holyrood clype, Douglas Ross, of a “physical assault” and “verbal abuse”.
It may have simply been a minister losing his rag, probably not for the first time, at Mr Ross who upset survivors and families by making the sombre moment Holyrood finally abolished the ‘not proven’ verdict all about seagulls. But whatever actually took place between the two rivals, Mr Hepburn crossed a line and had to resign - before finally issuing a full apology on Tuesday.
Asked by journalists on Wednesday about Mr Hepburn’s behaviour and whether any other minister repeating the behaviour would see themselves on the scrapheap, a seemingly deflated, Mr Swinney simply said: “I just think people need to behave properly.”
Matters for the SNP were dealt a further potential blow earlier this week when leader of Perth and Kinross Council, Grant Laing, quit his role and the party after being charged with embezzlement.
Mr Swinney refuted a claim that the SNP is in “chaos” and given what the party has been through over the last two years, we are witnessing a period of relative calm - despite this week announcing the fifth chief executive since Peter Murrell quit in 2023. But as Mr Swinney prepares to give the conference speech of his life in less than three weeks' time, some positivity, which has been gold dust of late, would be embraced.
Party conferences rarely live up to the billing of petty in-fighting and while the SNP had certainly had its moments over the years, one benefit the SNP has enjoyed from the late Alex Salmond’s disastrous Alba party project is that most of the madcap activists, albeit a small number, are no longer in the room.
But Mr Swinney could still be poised for an almighty showdown over his independence strategy which is essentially the same as the last SNP blueprint that was shrugged off by the UK government. The FM insists that an SNP majority will make all the difference, but that prospect looks outside the scope of reality, as things stand. A rebel amendment will be considered, which would likely render the SNP’s strategy laughable.
Amid the internal disruption and distraction, Mr Swinney is keen to keep policy priorities and his new favourite talking point, foreign affairs, the focus.
The First Minister’s ability to get hundreds of people in the very room at Glasgow’s SEC Anas Sarwar failed to fill for his Scottish Labour keynote conference speech last year, to set out one important but non-headline grabbing speech on child poverty, is proof Mr Swinney’s priorities are aligned with the Scottish public’s.
But Mr Swinney is crying out for a victory he can harness for his conference speech that could set the tone for whether he keeps his job next May.
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