As Nicola Sturgeon stood on a podium in Bute House and announced she would be stepping down as Scotland’s first minister after eight (long) years, the race to succeed her had already begun.
One of the most interesting frontrunners is the SNP’s finance secretary, Kate Forbes.
The former accountant, elected to the Scottish Parliament in 2016 when she was just 25, was thought of as a rising SNP star from the word go. Yet in a world full of sharp-elbowed, ruthlessly ambitious climbers, Forbes has stood out as someone apparently uninterested in becoming party leader.
Sturgeon is thought to hold Forbes in high esteem, valuing her finance minister’s clarity of thought. Forbes is cool under pressure, having delivered the Scottish government’s budget in 2020 just hours after predecessor as finance secretary, Derek Mackay, quit. It was a huge opportunity, and the then-deputy finance secretary seized it with alacrity.
Surprisingly, given her strong desire to leave the Union, Forbes is also popular with Scottish business leaders, not least because her current stand-in, deputy first minister John Swinney, has hiked higher rate income tax in Forbes’ absence.
Forbes’ backstory also marks her out. She was born to missionary parents and spent the first three years of her life living in India where her father had moved for work. She spent another stint back in the Himalayan foothills between the ages of 10 and 15, before returning to her hometown of Dingwall to attend a Gaelic school, and going on to read history at Selwyn College, Cambridge.
Her husband, Alasdair, is a chimney sweep ten years Forbes’ senior whose previous wife died young, leaving him with three young children. Forbes is currently on maternity leave with the couple’s first child, a daughter, born in August.
The SNP high-flyer is a member of the Free Church of Scotland, which conforms to a strict interpretation of the Bible. Speaking openly about her religious beliefs, Forbes has said: “To be straight, I believe in the person of Jesus Christ. I believe that he died for me, he saved me and that my calling is to serve and to love him and to serve and love my neighbours with all my heart and soul and mind and strength. So that, for me, is essential to my being. Politics will pass — I am a person before I was a politician and that person will continue to believe that I am made in the image of God.”
Her beliefs have put her at odds with the SNP’s flagship trans policy that led to Sturgeon’s political demise. Referring to the SNP’s draft legislation, Forbes said last year: “This is an issue that’s bigger than a political bubble. It’s an issue that mums and dads ask me about in relation to their children or their schools. I think a lot of people feel disenfranchised from the discussion and that does not lend itself to making good law.”
She seems to have been proven right. Popular within the party, Forbes is a serious contender to succeed Sturgeon – and take on the thankless task of delivering Scottish independence, which is becoming less popular among Scots by the day.
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