FM may face SNP criticism if he doesn't progress independence
John Swinney will mark his first anniversary on Thursday since he was sworn in as Scotland's First Minister.
His return from the backbenches to take up the role as head of the government took most people - even perhaps himself - by surprise.
To most observers Mr Swinney is seen as bringing calm to the SNP after a rocky period which followed the resignation of Nicola Sturgeon in March 2023, the bitter leadership contest of Humza Yousaf, Kate Forbes and Ash Regan, and the stepping up of the Police Scotland investigation into party finances.
Thanks to the combination of a drop in support for Labour after unpopular UK government decisions such as the axing of the universal winter fuel payments and increase in employers' national insurance contributions - and the rise in popularity of Nigel Farage's Reform UK - polling suggests the SNP is now on course to remain in power after the 2026 Holyrood elections.
READ MORE:
But what of Mr Swinney's work on independence?
And could his lack of progress on achieving the goal mean he may face a backlash from inside the SNP, as Professor James Mitchell of Edinburgh University told The Herald on Sunday at the weekend?
Since coming into office the First Minister has been pretty quiet on his party's founding goal.
He scrapped Ms Sturgeon's Building a New Scotland series, documents aimed at updating the 2014 independence prospectus and axed the post of independence minister from government.
Indeed's he's been so quiet on independence since coming into office, that back in January Ms Sturgeon declared that independence was "off the radar".
Her claim was swiftly and unsurprisingly rejected by Mr Swinney.
But it's hard to see what Mr Swinney's strategy on delivering independence actually is.
Some in the SNP say the strategy is to simply try and quietly drive up support among undecided Scots for the aim without actually addressing it explicitly.
They argue that by governing well and showing the merits of being a competent devolved government support for independence will inevitably rise.
Maybe so. But what about the mechanism of delivering it?
It's far from clear what the SNP process is currently to achieving independence.
If it's demanding a Section 30 order to transfer powers to Holyrood to hold a second independence vote, repeated calls by former FM Ms Sturgeon to the UK Government didn't work even after the SNP won major elections at Westminster and Holyrood.
So it's hardly likely to be a goer should the SNP win the next Holyrood elections even if the UK government is led by Labour rather than the Conservatives.
Another possible option, namely the holding of an advisory referendum by Holyrood without the UK Government's agreement, had to be jettisoned when the Supreme Court ruled that the Scottish Parliament did not have the powers to do so.
Since then, there has been little public discussion by the SNP about the process of achieving independence.
In December, Mr Swinney called for Scotland to have some form of formal mechanism to allow the country to hold an independence referendum similar to that which Northern Ireland has in the Good Friday Agreement.
I'd be sceptical whether these demands will be met.
They didn't succeed during the Brexit debates when the Scottish Government sought a special arrangement for Scotland on the grounds Northern Ireland one.
Both Conservative and Labour politicians opposed such a deal arguing the two states had very different histories in terms of their connections to the Union with Northern Ireland suffering 30 year of violent conflict.
Twelve months since becoming First Minister Mr Swinney is a popular figure inside the SNP, appreciated for bringing stability after turmoil.
But having done so, it is likely he will start to face pressure inside his party to make progress on independence and should he not do so he may find support begin to wane.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
Labour's 1970s employment rights bill could send Britain over the edge
Rachel Reeves made vast spending pledges last week in a bid to placate fellow ministers, Labour MPs and party activists and save her political skin. She made no effort whatsoever to explain how she will pay. Yes, this was the Chancellor's spending review. We will get more detail on taxation and borrowing, the other side of the Government's ledger, during her next annual Budget, expected in late October or early November. Given how borrowing has ramped up over recent months, though – with debt interest payments surging as gilt yields have soared – it's astonishing that Reeves said absolutely nothing to reassure financial markets during her House of Commons speech. Back in March 2024, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecasted borrowing for the financial year from April 2024 to April 2025 of £87bn. After the first Labour budget in 14 years last October – during which Reeves increased borrowing and taxation by a combined £70bn, green-lighting hefty public sector pay deals, net zero projects and much else on her party's ideological wish-list – the year's borrowing forecast ballooned to £127.5bn. Spool forward to the March Spring Statement and estimated 2024-25 borrowing was up another £10bn, to £137.3bn. And by the time the financial year ended a month later, the total had surged again to £148.3bn, a rise in our national debt in a single year more than £60bn up on the forecast Labour inherited on entering government last July. Reeves claims endlessly to have 'discovered a £22bn black hole in the public finances left by the Tories' on taking office. This is fictitious nonsense, used by ministers to justify tax rises not mentioned in Labour's election manifesto. But even if you accept this rhetorical tosh, which I don't, the £60bn-plus rise in borrowing in 2024-25 alone is almost three times bigger. The more Reeves drones on about 'the black hole we inherited', as she did yet again at the top of her speech last Wednesday, the more she undermines her fast-diminishing credibility in the eyes of financial markets. That's yet another thing she simply can't afford. Before last October's budget, the 30-year gilt yield – the rate of interest charged by investors to lend the UK government long-term money – was about 4.35pc. Yields in recent weeks have moved in a range of 5.25-5.5pc, having been above the 4.85pc peak during the height of the 'Liz Truss mini-Budget crisis' for the whole of this year. Yes, sovereign bonds yields have risen in other highly-indebted Western nations since last autumn. But 30-year yields in France, Germany and Italy are all considerably lower and have gone up far less (by less than half a percentage point in each case). Plus, about a quarter of the UK's sovereign debt is index-linked, far more than other G7 economies, which makes us uniquely vulnerable, with debt-service costs spiralling rapidly upward as inflationary pressures rise. After what shadow chancellor Mel Stride rightly called a 'spend now, tax later' spending review, we're now in for 'a cruel summer of speculation'. Cash-strapped companies and households will now angst about yet more Labour tax rises in this autumn's Budget. The fine print of last week's Treasury documents shows Reeves's plans are predicated on council tax in England rising by 5pc every year during the rest of this Parliament. The only way the UK can avoid a really serious fiscal crisis is to get economic growth going on – with more consumption and investment driving tax receipts up and a larger economy then more able to shoulder our huge national debt stock. Yet the day after Reeves's statement came news the economy shrank 0.3pc during April – the first monthly drop in headline GDP for six months and the worst single month since October 2023. Labour's 25pc rise in employer national insurance contributions (NIC), implemented from April, has seriously hammered hiring. Provisional data shows payroll employment fell by a vast 109,000 in May alone, with employment having fallen every single month since this ill-judged NIC rise was announced last October. And now, just as we really need to get people back to work, to kick-start growth, Labour's employment rights bill is set to clear Parliament. Deeply counterproductive, this legislation takes the UK back to the 1970s by significantly increasing trade union influence, a sure-fire route to stagnation. Championed by 'Red Queen' Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister, this bill removes qualifying periods for sick pay, maternity pay and unfair dismissal, granting all of these from day one of employment. No wonder countless employer surveys point to fears of lawsuits and greater reluctance to take on more staff. The legislation repeals plenty of the trade union controls from the early-and mid-1980s onwards that rescued Britain from the dystopian and destructive industrial relations of my childhood. The 50pc threshold for strike ballots is set to go, along with vital minimum service levels during industrial action, handing ever more bargaining power to Labour's trade union paymasters. Creating new finger-pointing quangos to chide employers, and requirements for companies to implement endless 'equality action plans', there are also insidious 'opt out' clauses designed to maximise worker contributions to unions and therefore the Labour party, with scant disclosure. It is yet another example of how the Government is determined to replace enterprise, prosperity and opportunity with regulation, entitlement and state overreach. I'm amazed this ghastly legislation has attracted so little media attention. It must be vigorously opposed and called out by the leadership of both the Tories and Reform, the only two parties likely to acknowledge the dangers. Because unless the economy gets going, and the UK escapes this low-growth, high-borrowing, high-tax doom loop, we're heading for a serious fiscal crisis.
The Herald Scotland
an hour ago
- The Herald Scotland
Dark day for SNP if Falkirk added to Proclaimers song's litany of loss
Irvine was where Sturgeon grew up. She witnessed its degeneration, and she came to believe that only the SNP and independence could restore the country's position as a manufacturing powerhouse. This post-industrial decline turned much of central Scotland into the equivalent of the US rust belt: an urban fallout zone, blighted by generations-deep unemployment and heroin, which seeped into the cracks created by economic upheaval. Sturgeon's own experience, which chimed with others', coincided with a gradual shift within the party, towards the left and from rural to metropolitan. It also instilled a conviction that workers must never again be abandoned to their fate. As awareness of the impact of climate change grew, it was clear Scotland was going to have to distance itself from the black, black oil: the totem in which so much political faith had been invested. But this time round, the SNP assured us, there would be 'a just transition', with jobs lost in fossil fuels matched by jobs created in renewables, and support for retraining. How hollow that pledge must feel in Falkirk today, as the town and its surrounds face up to a double whammy of closures: first the Grangemouth refinery, which stopped processing crude oil in April, and now, if no-one steps in, bus manufacturer Alexander Dennis. The company, which is threatening to move its Larbert and Falkirk factories to Scarborough, employs 400 people across the two sites, while 450 are being made redundant at Grangemouth. But many more livelihoods are linked to their supply chains, or dependent on their workers having money to spend. The impact of big closures ripples out through communities, and filters down the generations. (Image: Alexander Dennis president and managing director Paul Davies Image: ADL) SNP EVASION HOW galling, too, to watch the Scottish Government try to exculpate itself from blame. In its efforts to evade responsibility, it has exposed how little it has done to support the beleaguered labour forces. When Westminster pushed through emergency legislation to prevent Scunthorpe steelworks from closing, John Swinney called for the same quasi-nationalisation for Grangemouth. But his remarks were countered by owner Petroineos, which said: 'If governments had wanted to seriously consider different ownership models, the time to start that work was five years ago when we first alerted them to the challenges at the refinery.' This was nothing compared to the humiliation meted out by Manchester mayor Andy Burnham when he revealed his city had bought four times more Alexander Dennis buses than the Scottish Government. Burnham's flaunting of his Wee Bee electric fleet, which Alexander Dennis helped to create, was particularly embarrassing, given the poor state of our own public transport network, and the fact Burnham's drive towards creating the UK's first fully electric, zero-emission, integrated public transport system by 2030 feels like a model for what a 'just transition' should look like. NOT A REALITY SCOTLAND, and particularly Glasgow, has been fantasising about the creation of a similar network for years, but it has not yet managed to translate it into reality. Further reddening Scottish Government faces was the revelation that 208 orders from the Scottish Zero Emission Bus Challenge Fund – set up to accelerate the transition to zero-emission buses – had gone elsewhere, including China. This must have hit Alexander Dennis hard given one of the challenges it says it faces is 'strong competition from Chinese electric bus manufacturers whose share of the market [has] risen from 10% to 35%'. Grangemouth and Alexander Dennis have much in common. They both have foreign owners: PetroChina had a 50% stake in the oil refinery, while Alexander Dennis was bought over by Canadian company NFI Group Inc in 2019. This means decisions about their future were/are being made outside Scotland, with the UK and Scottish governments left scrabbling about trying in some way to respond. 'I think if we are going to allow these sectors to be run in this way, it ought to be with much more dialogue and agreement,' Dr Ewan Gibbs, senior lecturer in economic and social history at Glasgow University, told me. 'If we think these sectors and these workforces are so important we should be devising longer-term forms of planning.' Climate change made the demise of Grangemouth oil refinery all but inevitable. In this case, it is the failure to prepare that shocks. PROJECT WILLOW THE much-vaunted Project Willow – a £1.5 million feasibility study funded by the UK and Scottish governments – is less a plan than a menu of potential low-carbon opportunities such as hydrogen production and plastics recycling. Its belated delivery rendered one of its options – the production of sustainable aviation fuel – nigh-on impossible because the processes necessary for it to be carried out had already stopped and it would be very expensive to restart them. To create the mooted 800 jobs forecast would require £3.5 billion of investment. The £200m the UK Government has offered to support it will only be released if and when a suitable investor comes forward. None of this is of any use to those who are losing their Grangemouth oil refinery represented the past, Alexander Dennis – with its electric buses – is a symbol of the future, a vital spark in our supposed green revolution, ripe for nationalisation. It could be that, having burned its fingers (and squandered £200m) on the disastrous nationalisation of Ferguson's shipyard, and the ferries scandal that followed, the government is wary about acquiring another struggling company. But you have to ask: if it's not prepared to step in and rescue a proven enterprise like this bus manufacturer, will it ever be prepared to intervene again? It must do something, though, because there's so much at stake and the losses feed into a larger picture. According to the census, there are 100,000 fewer people working in manufacturing in Scotland now than there were at the start of the 21st century. Deindustrialisation isn't something that happened in the late 1980s/early 1990s and then stopped, but part of a depressing pan-Scotland continuum. As for Falkirk itself, we know what happens to places which experience job losses on a mass scale. Their shops close, they lose their sense of identity, crime rises, drug use rises, life expectancy drops. It's a decline that has its own momentum, difficult to stop once it has started. READ MORE: Dani Garavelli: A good death is an extension of a good life Dani Garavelli: Even for great writers, the pursuit of truth is perilous Dani Garavelli: Voters are done with politicians who talk big and act small 'SCUNNERED-NESS' SOMETHING else we know: that decline breeds a certain kind of scunnered-ness. Voters in places which have lost their main sources of income look at how little the established parties have done to help them and want to crush them. It is those communities, where poverty is rife and employment a distant memory, that are most vulnerable to populism, to parties promising to better the lives of ordinary working-class people. Once – and with much better intentions – that was the SNP. Now it is Reform. We are already seeing it capitalise on misery across the country. It is in the SNP's interests, then, to make sure solutions to Grangemouth and Alexander Dennis are found: for the communities involved, for the planet, and for its own political survival. It would be a grim irony, if, almost 40 years after The Proclaimers' album came out – and on the SNP's watch – Falkirk had to be added to the litany of loss.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
A useful enemy? Why Tories and Reform are calling net zero policy into question
Just as Labour forges ahead with net zero policies, the chief energy spokespeople of the UK's two main rightwing opposition parties are openly questioning long-settled climate science, in what seems like a mission to discredit and confuse the whole issue. It is a development that would have been unthinkable just three years ago, when the four-decade-long cross-party consensus on the climate still held firm. Even up to last year's general election, every mainland party other than Reform UK campaigned on a commitment to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. But now the Conservative leadership has abandoned that target, and Reform – riding high in the opinion polls and celebrating a 30% vote share in the local elections – wants to make it the key battleground, after immigration, for the next general election. How on earth did we get here? In truth, Reform, which was founded in 2018, has long had climate-sceptic tendencies – despite Nigel Farage's short dalliance with pro-green politics in 2021, when he was paid to promote tree-growing by a carbon credit trading company. The party's doubt about climate science, however, appears to be worsening. Richard Tice, its energy spokesperson, told the Guardian: 'Scientists do not all have a consensus on this. Some view things slightly differently … Do I think that [the carbon dioxide that humans are putting into the atmosphere] will definitely change the climate? No. There is no evidence that it is.' This is not in accordance with the views of the vast majority of scientists. Tice suggested that rather than net zero, the answer to climate breakdown would be 'planting trees' and adapting. 'Temperatures were higher 3,000 years ago and humans adapted,' he said. More surprising is that the Conservatives' Andrew Bowie, the acting shadow energy secretary, who once declared he wanted Scotland to be 'one of the lead nations worldwide in achieving net zero', has taken a similar line. He told the Guardian that the world's leading authority on climate science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was 'biased' and that the net zero by 2050 target was 'arbitrary and not based on science'. This claim was rejected by climate scientists, who confirmed that the UK's legally binding target of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 – put in place by Theresa May – sprang from the best global scientific advice. Emily Shuckburgh, the director of Cambridge Zero, the University of Cambridge's climate initiative, said: 'The 2050 target is not arbitrary but based on what science says is required globally and an assessment by the Climate Change Committee of what is appropriate for the UK to deliver in that context.' The breakdown of the climate consensus, which began after Boris Johnson left Downing Street in 2022, appears complete. The main difference on the issue now between Reform and the Conservatives is that the former would scrap net zero altogether and the latter may keep it, but for a later date. Why have both parties turned so decisively away from climate policy? Opinion polls show most people in the UK are concerned about the climate crisis and support policies to tackle it. Reform voters are no different, according to recent polling by More in Common commissioned by the campaign group Global Witness. It found that two-thirds of UK adults are worried about increasing damage from the climate crisis, and 71% of Reform-leaning voters support higher taxes on oil and gas companies. Luke Tryl, the UK director of More in Common, said net zero was not an important issue to most people who backed Reform. 'It's not what drives them,' he said. 'Seven out of 10 say they vote Reform because of immigration. Where there are concerns on net zero, it's generally over fairness – that those with the broadest shoulders should bear the burden.' But he is clear that despite widespread media coverage attacking net zero, and despite Reform's good showing in polls, 'any idea that Britain has turned into a nation of net zero sceptics is for the birds'. So is this positioning for the sake of business? Reform and the Conservatives frequently claim to be supporting business and jobs through their stance, but actually business voices have been clear in their support for net zero. Tania Kumar, the head of net zero policy at the Confederation of British Industry, said: 'Net zero and the new green economy are an economic growth opportunity for the UK. Businesses understand that.' A different reason was suggested by Nick Mabey, a founder director of E3G, a green thinktank, who suggested that opposing net zero was in line with the small-government, anti-statist approach of some on the right. 'They see it as state-intrusive, it doesn't fit with their deregulation instincts,' he said. Sign up to Down to Earth The planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential after newsletter promotion But people tend to like regulation that keeps them and their environment safe – witness the sewage scandal, a clear demonstration of what companies do when lightly regulated. Mabey suggested pursuing deregulation was more in the interest of 'elite' backers of populists than their voters. Reform's environmental policy is extremely complex. Despite its strong stance against net zero, it does not see itself as anti-environment. It supports an amendment to the planning bill that would require swift bricks in all new houses, blocked by the government, and wants to take sewage out of British rivers, in part by banning foreign investors from owning water companies. Tice speaks enthusiastically of the need to plant more trees, recycle more and adapt to the impacts of the climate crisis, even though he casts doubt on the underlying science. Net zero seems to be some kind of 'useful enemy', argues Shaun Spiers, the executive director of Green Alliance, a thinktank. 'The cost of living crisis is biting and populist politicians are casting around for something to blame it on,' he said. 'Net zero, which sounds remote and technocratic, is a convenient target. It's replaced the EU as the thing on which all our ills can be blamed, often by the same people.' And there is good money in it too, he added. 'It's also worth noting that there is serious money behind the assault on net zero: it is not disinterested.' Reform and the Conservatives have prominent donors and supporters with a climate-denying outlook. For instance, Kemi Badenoch and her family recently spent a week as guests of the donor Neil Record, who chairs Net Zero Watch, an offshoot of the UK's main climate sceptic thinktank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation. Record also helped fund Badenoch's campaign for Tory leader, giving £10,000. He wrote in the Telegraph that it was 'debatable in detail' whether burning fossil fuels increased carbon dioxide and caused dangerous global heating. One of the biggest donors to Reform is the shipping magnate Terence Mordaunt, the head of First Corporate Shipping. His personal company, Corporate Consultants, has given hundreds of thousands of pounds to Reform. He was previously chair of the Global Warming Policy Foundation and is now a trustee. Despite the feelings of Reform voters, Tice is clear: the party will make net zero its second most important battleground, after immigration, and his party appears united on that. But among Tories in parliament there is still a strong green caucus – the Conservative Environment Network (CEN), which still has 50 MPs. Badenoch's review of policy, including net zero, is still ongoing, despite her public attacks on net zero. Sam Hall, the director of CEN, warned that Badenoch was putting her party on a collision course with not just Labour and the British public but the laws of physics. 'The net zero target is driven not by optimism but by scientific reality: without it, climate change impacts and costs will continue to worsen,' he said. 'Abandon the science and voters will start to doubt the Conservative party's seriousness on the clean energy transition, damaging both growth and the fight against climate change.'
