STEPHEN DAISLEY: Swinney has no spark, no vision and no clue. If he were to quit now he'd leave no legacy ... just consequences

Daily Mail​

16 hours ago

Reports of a plot to replace John Swinney as SNP leader prompt an obvious question: with whom?
The First Minister's pitch when he took over the leadership was that he would be Mr Stability, a safe pair of hands who could move the party on from the Humza Yousaf disaster, factional disagreements over gender and independence strategy, and the never-ending police investigation.
Now, there's a lot to be said for stability. After all, 'May you live in interesting times' is intended as a curse, not a blessing.
But whose interests are served by Swinneyean 'stability'? Certainly not taxpayers who want to see their money spent wisely on the improvement of public services.
Swinney, like his recent predecessors, is adept at raking money in and pouring it back out but the record on outcomes leaves a lot to be desired.
The finance secretary who gutted funding for local government. The education secretary who tried to fix an exams disaster by downgrading the results of working-class children.
The Covid recovery secretary who produced no recovery in hospitals or on high streets.
The first minister who, over a long and undistinguished ministerial career, has had a hand in every calamity to issue from St Andrew's House, from the educational attainment gap to the unlawful named persons scheme, the Ferguson Marine ferries to the Gender Recognition Reform Bill, the secrecy that bedevilled the Alex Salmond inquiry to the brazen deletion of ministerial messages from the Covid pandemic.
Internal rivals might be displeased with his absolutely honking performance in the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election, losing a safe SNP seat to a Labour party that he said wasn't even in the race, but if anyone is entitled to vent about the man's performance it is the general public.
They thought they were getting a political handyman, someone who would roll up his sleeves and fix the breaks, cracks, squeaks and grumbles across government. Thirteen months later, the same faults remain. Decrepitude has become the norm.
Which brings us back to the 'who' question. Let's say the plotters give Swinney his jotters. Who follows him into Bute House? Stephen Flynn is a name insiders keep bringing up, and I keep advising them to put right back down.
Flynn is a wide boy with a restless mouth and a smug manner and zero in the way of executive experience. He is a less qualified Humza Yousaf.
Angus Robertson? Cold, aloof, and unrelatable. If Scottish elections were held only in Stockbridge and Kelvinbridge, he'd romp home, but the farther you get from a university, a Waitrose or a book festival, the further his appeal diminishes.
Kate Forbes could make a decent fist of it but the green-haired brigade would sooner see Reform in government than allow a Bible-believing Christian to lead the party.
Not that any of this matters, of course. The problem is the SNP itself, its failure to govern and its shifting priorities.
Scotland will not flourish under Swinney. It will not flourish under Flynn or anyone else touted as a possible successor.
The SNP is not a party that exists to make Scotland flourish; it exists to make Scotland independent. Yet the Nationalists are no closer today to achieving either than they were 18 years ago when they entered government.
Scotland did not flourish under Alex Salmond, whose energies were directed to the SNP's raison d'etre. It was of little consolation to those who hoped for economic and social progress during those first seven years, but Salmond spoke often of independence as the necessary condition for transforming the country into a powerhouse of prosperity, innovation and fairness.
Unionists could dislike his objectives and his personality while recognising that he had ambition for the country, however misguided.
Scotland is still not flourishing but nor is it making much progress towards independence. Under the post-Salmond leadership of the SNP, the unholy trinity of Nicola Sturgeon, Humza Yousaf and John Swinney, the journey has not merely stalled, the destination has changed.
The immediate objective is not tending, growing or marshalling the independence movement, but entrenching and expanding their own ruling caste, a self-perpetuating elite whose purpose is not social or constitutional change but the acquisition of power and status for their own sake.
They are in office to be in office and every decision is taken with the maintenance of office in mind. They are embedding themselves as the new Scottish establishment, helpfully sporting yellow rather than red rosettes so they may be distinguished from the old establishment, and nothing - not the improvement of education, nor the recovery of the NHS, nor even independence - will get in their way.
That establishment was on full display last week in John Swinney's mini reshuffle, an ingathering of the inconsequential, an anointing of the adequate.
It's hard to be disappointed in the calibre of ministers, for how do you work up any kind of feeling towards a Tom Arthur or a Màiri McAllan? There is nothing there to oppose because there is nothing there.
At the head of this committee of beige sits Swinney, the beigest man of all.. No spark, no passion, no vision, no clue.
Tomorrow, the First Minister will address the Scotland 2050 conference in Edinburgh where he will urge us to reject 'another 25 years of Westminster mismanagement' and instead 'look around us at our immense potential today, and have the confidence that we can do better with the full powers of independence'.
The party that proclaimed 'Scotland free by 93', and then 'Nationalist heaven in 2007', now wants its followers to believe independence will be nifty in 2050. At some point, the party faithful will have to accept that they are not being led but strung along.
The SNP will not deliver a booming economy and radically improved public services to ordinary voters, and nor will it, in its current incarnation, deliver independence to those for whom the constitution comes before all else.
The SNP will deliver only for the nomenklatura in whose grips it has been held for more than a decade now.
That ruling elite has its priorities but they are not those of the general public nor, for the most part, of the rank and file of the independence movement. They are nationalists who put themselves before the nation.
Why remove John Swinney as leader when he is the ideal figurehead of today's SNP? A man with a lanyard, indistinguishable in ideology or political purpose from all the other men and women with lanyards, no more or less likely to grow the economy, close the attainment gap, meet A&E targets or secure another referendum on independence.
If Swinney were to go now, he would leave no legacy, only consequences, fashioned by his failings but borne by others. The young people denied a quality, life-changing education.
The local government services cut and the people who relied upon them abandoned.
The hollowed out town centres, the boarded up shops and businesses, the pervasive economic despair and societal gloom of a country where venturing beyond the major cities will bring you face to face with communities that have been given up on for so long they have given up on themselves.
A first minister worthy of the office would set about tackling these social ailments, but John Swinney is not worthy of the office, and nor are any of those who would be likely to succeed him.