Exclusive:Kate Forbes: Returning to work as a new mother was 'beyond brutal'
Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes speaks to The Steamie podcast ahead of her stepping down from frontline politics
Kate Forbes has said returning to work after having her daughter was “beyond brutal” and that she “would not wish it on anyone”.
The deputy first minister became the first Scottish cabinet minister to take maternity leave when she had her daughter Naomi in 2022 - but said being heavily pregnant and then being a new mum while also holding down one of the most powerful jobs in the country was difficult.
Speaking to The Steamie, The Scotsman’s politics podcast, she said: “It’s really ridiculous to be very heavily pregnant in a high-powered job, which is under-reported.
“I remember being so tired standing up to do TV interviews. You have the stand for a long time, and any heavily pregnant woman will tell you that you get pretty tired.
“Taking maternity leave was a great way to just get away from it all, but going back into it was brutal.
“I think a lot of returning mums will tell you that going back into work is brutal, but with my role [finance secretary] I was going straight back into media scrutiny and having to think quickly and answer questions fast.
“I would not wish it on anyone, it was beyond brutal.”
Ms Forbes made the comments during a sit-down interview with The Scotsman as she prepares for her final weeks as an MSP. She is planning to stand down at the Holyrood election in May as she does not want to “miss any more of the precious early years of family life”.
She recalled being “totally terrified” when she was first elected as the MSP for Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch in 2016.
“Up until that point you are a candidate and your whole world is knocking on doors,” Ms Forbes said. “If memory serves me, at 3am I got an email from the parliament saying ‘congratulations on being elected, here’s the details about turning up on day one’.
“On day one I was sitting next to Mike Rumbles, who was a Lib Dem MSP, and I was so unfamiliar with everybody that I asked him if he was Conservative, which he was very offended by, but that’s how little I knew about what I was getting myself into.”
Her first big moment in the spotlight came in February 2020 when she had to deliver the Scottish budget at the last minute after the finance secretary Derek Mackay resigned in disgrace after it was revealed he sent 270 messages to a 16-year-old schoolboy over six months.
Ms Forbes said: “Up to that point, I’d always been able to refer to a boss for decisions I was making in the finance space, but that day I had to just go in and decide myself what the answer was.
“It was terrifying.
“The funny story is I always remember that I was so sure I’d look terrified so I wrote ‘smile’ at the top of every page of my speech in massive letters.
“The former first minister Nicola Sturgeon leaned over and said ‘I think the cameras might pick up on that’, so I then proceeded to scribble it out on every page of my 30-page speech.
“These are the things you learn on the job.”
Another highlight of her career came in the 2021 Holyrood election - she retained her seat by 15,861 votes, securing the biggest majority of any of the current MSPs.
“We’d just come through 18 months of Covid and I’d been responsible for providing business funding and we all remember how phenomenally difficult it was for business, so I just assumed that people would still be angry about that after they’d told me I was responsible,” she said.
“But then during the count the boxes kept piling up under my name. I thought they had the figures wrong because there were too many boxes, it was quite amazing.”
Ms Forbes, who is currently the economy and Gaelic language secretary, came within touching distance of becoming First Minister in 2023, narrowly losing out to former first minister Humza Yousaf.
She initially entered the SNP leadership race as the favourite, and had several MSPs publicly backing her - however, her fortunes quickly turned around after she said she would have voted against equal marriage and said it was wrong to have a baby outside of marriage.
Ms Forbes, who is a member of the Free Church of Scotland, said: “The way that we did the leadership campaign was absolutely true to the values that I have about being open and honest with the electorate.
“I think voters should know who their politicians or their candidates are, and then make a decision on the basis of who they really are and not who they pretend to be.
“I absolutely believe that I would always be as open as possible in any repeat of that process and let the voters decide.”
She said she bears no grudges on how the leadership election went, and said many people wrote to her afterwards to thank her for being honest. She also thinks she would not be First Minister right now if she had made different choices during the leadership campaign.
“I came very close to winning, there were only a few votes in it,” she said. “But if you win as a fraud you get found out pretty quick.
“Spending your whole career running away from difficult questions is not a great way to lead, so it would be really difficult to sustain being a leader when it is on the basis of dishonest answers.”
She also said her experience suggests the Scottish public does not have a problem with politicians being openly Christian, but said many politicians do have a “fear” of mixing religion and politics.
Ms Forbes said: “A lot of people wanted to talk about me being a victim or feeling hard done by, but I haven’t.”
While she has not set out any long-term plans for her life after Holyrood, the deputy first minister is hoping to spend the summer having family picnics on beaches in the Highlands.
She does however have advice to whoever replaces her as the MSP for Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch and any other new faces in the parliament come May.
“I’ve learned practical skills around public engagement, public speaking and public debate, but I’ve also learned that nothing is invincible in politics,” she said.
“When you come in and you’re quite young, you think things are always going to be that way, but in the last 10 years, the only norm has been unpredictability.
“Things change a lot, so that is a good lesson to learn.
“Think about what you want to use your power to achieve - if it is just to have a bum on a seat then I don’t think you will be satisfied and your constituents certainly won’t.
“So think about the two or three things you want to deliver for your communities whilst you’re there, and pursue them. Do not get turned off at the first hurdle - if things were easy to deliver, they’d have already been delivered.”
And for young women starting out in politics, they need to learn that the “currency of politics is confidence”.
Ms Forbes said: “You have to appear confident, whether you feel it or not, and confidence is an art.
“Do not wait to be invited into a conversation, do not wait to be invited into meetings, do not wait to be recognised - you’ve got thousands of people who sent you to parliament and they need a voice.
“You have to own that mandate and exude confidence, whether you feel it or not.”
Listen to the full interview on The Steamie politics podcast.
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