GRAHAM GRANT: How did this ruthless consigliere ever earn the nickname 'Honest' ... trends now
He has the carefully cultivated air of a mild-mannered chartered accountant – which helped to earn him the nickname ‘Honest John’.
But John Swinney is a seasoned operator with a talent for survival who became a trusted – and ruthless – consigliere to both Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond.
Last year he quit as Deputy First Minister after Ms Sturgeon resigned, shortly before the SNP was plunged into multiple crises – including an ongoing police fraud inquiry into the SNP’s finances.
He had been looking forward to a peaceful spell on the backbenches, allowing him to spend more time with his family.
Now, in an astonishing twist to his long career, he may be about to take on the highest political office in the land.
John Swinney may be about to take on the highest political office in the land in an astonishing twist to a long career
Many in the SNP see him as the ultimate continuity candidate, a cool-headed elder statesman who can help a fractured party to move on from a tumultuous period of psychodrama and civil war.
But Mr Swinney – who joined the SNP at the age of 15 after becoming convinced Scotland was getting a raw deal as part of the Union – is no stranger to leadership, even if his time at the helm is rarely cited as his finest hour.
His tenure as SNP leader between 2000 and 2004 saw the party’s fortunes flatline, only to soar thereafter when his predecessor, Mr Salmond, rode back to the rescue to succeed him.
When electoral success did come under Mr Salmond, the failed former leader re-cast himself as the highly dependable lieutenant, assuming the demanding role of cabinet secretary for finance, employment and sustainable growth, which took in energy, tourism, climate change and public transport.
Ever-prudent as finance secretary, he was praised for balancing the books, even though this was a strict legal requirement.
He later became indispensable to Ms Sturgeon as her deputy, though ironically even a cursory study of his time in government shows his reputation as a safe pair of hands was often unmerited.
As education secretary in 2020, he presided over an exam results fiasco that led to the Scottish Government reversing a decision to downgrade 124,000 results for 76,000 pupils.
Exams were cancelled because of the pandemic, meaning teachers were asked to grade pupils before the Scottish Qualifications Authority put estimates through a moderation process, which led to mass downgrading, disproportionately affecting pupils in some of Scotland’s poorest areas.
Mr Swinney apologised and survived a vote of no confidence in August 2020, with the help of the Greens.
When a major global study found Scottish pupils lag behind those in Latvia, Slovenia and Estonia in maths – and are outperformed by children in England – Mr Swinney responded by claiming that we were on ‘the right track’.
It didn’t damage his standing in the party: in 2021 he was handed the new and crucial job of secretary for Covid recovery – and he continued in his role of Cabinet enforcer.
When parliament demanded legal advice on the Government’s ill-fated bid to contest Mr Salmond’s judicial review against its deeply flawed harassment probe, it was Mr Swinney who oversaw the process of piecemeal publication, which carried a high risk of political damage.
Back in 2021, he ignored two votes urging him to publish the documents and later caved in – or appeared to – only at the 11th hour after he faced the Tory-led threat of a no confidence vote, which
