EMMA COWING: Swinney, the janitor stuck cleaning up the mess he helped create trends now
What a week. Entertaining, in the same way that watching a dog chase its own tail is entertaining: cringe-worthy, repetitive, yet somehow, you just can’t look away.
For those who have (wisely, in my view) resided under a rock for the past seven days or so, a quick recap.
Humza Yousaf ended the Bute House Agreement with his trademark only-visible-by-microscope charm, and the Greens, predictably, spat out the eco-friendly sustainable baby dummy.
After a tabled vote of no confidence in Yousaf and a weekend of backroom chatter, on Monday Yousaf fell on his sword. Several days of speculation about possible replacements ensued until on Thursday John Swinney emerged as the front runner, while Kate Forbes set aside her ambitions to back him.
Swinney's the janitor stuck cleaning up the mess he created, says Emma Cowing
I must say, the whole thing has a stench of familiarity about it, and not just the fact that we’re on to our second new First Minister in just over a year.
The problem is that however you slice it, the game is rigged. For those of us who don’t want independence, it doesn’t really matter who takes charge.
The core problem remains the same, because the SNP always was, and always will be, a one issue party. They are nationalists and they want independence.
Announcing he would run for leader, Swinney started out talking about economic growth and social justice and schools and housing and well, you know, I’d like to believe him, I really would.
Yet less than a minute later he told us, with a perfectly straight face, that all this would be far easier if Scotland were an independent country.
How? Why? Where is the evidence? Then he insisted that one of his main priorities were he to become the country’s next First Minister would be getting out and about, so that he could persuade people of the case for independence.
This refusal to accept the will of the people is, after 17 years of SNP government, exhausting. We’ve heard the case for independence. Repeatedly.
We’ve read the White Paper, listened to the speeches, perused the back of a vape packet plans for Scottish groats or embassies for unicorns or whatever nonsense some backroom wonk at SNP HQ dreamt up during their lunch break.
And we have, as a nation, rejected it. If I recall correctly there was even a vote on it, ten years ago this September.
Big hoo-hah. Months of campaigning. A decisive vote for No. It even brought down a First Minister.
But all these years later, the SNP is still playing the same, increasingly tired old tune.
Just hours after Swinney’s speech Kate Forbes announced that she would not be running for the party leadership, presumably because she’s been promised something juicy in return.
Whatever she ends up doing I’ve no doubt she will be good at it – Forbes is dedicated, thorough, bright and streets ahead of many of her party – and yet she too holds one core value deeper than any other.
Make no mistake. As a senior member of the SNP Forbes, just like Swinney, is a fervent Nationalist.
In her tweet on Thursday she spoke about ‘a passion to revitalise our party, reach out to those who feel disempowered and reinvigorate the independence movement’.
Sigh. I’d take a bet that for the vast majority of Scots, the last thing they want to see invigorated right now is the independence movement.
B UT the SNP can’t see it. Independence is their blind spot, and they genuinely do not understand – even now – why the rest of the country won’t fall in line behind them.
On top of the vast litany of dreadful governance in recent years, their foolhardy coalition with the Greens, determination to drive through unpopular policies while mishandling so many issues that people actually care about, it is the SNP’s irrelevant obsession with
