Swinney looks set to split with Sturgeon’s identity politics

This is Jenny Hjul’s weekly column for Reaction. Subscribe to Reaction here.

The coronation of John Swinney as the new SNP leader, and his subsequent elevation to first minister, did not inspire confidence.

Swinney is not just yesterday’s man in that he last led his party (badly by all accounts) in 2004, he also, as Nicola Sturgeon’s faithful deputy, represented the same old politics.

His cabinet reshuffle saw only two new faces – his own and that of Kate Forbes, as his deputy and economy minister – in what looked to be more business as usual in the moribund nationalist regime.

But though it is early days, Swinney is sending out signals that he intends to do things differently. Perhaps the most telling indication of this, mostly missed amid the rancour of his initial First Minister’s Questions, was his declaration of his “very deep Christian faith”.

“Nothing can separate us from the love of God and we are equal in the eyes of God, every one of us,” he told MSPs, admitting that he had never been so frank in public about his religious convictions.

He did in fact talk about his faith a year ago, citing it in an attack on Forbes, who was then contesting the SNP leadership against Humza Yousaf, Sturgeon’s “continuity candidate” at the time.

As a member of the Free Church of Scotland, Forbes was some distance from the SNP’s cultural radicalism and Swinney, of the more tolerant Church of Scotland, questioned her appropriateness to be Scotland’s first minister.

Today, he has put his qualms to the side and embraced Forbes politically. True, he had little choice but to give her a big job to stop her running against him, but could it be that he is closer to her ideologically than he has let on in the past?

A clear split – which Sturgeon would not have countenanced – is emerging within the pro-independence movement over its ultra “progressive” agenda.

It came to the fore just over two weeks ago when Yousaf ditched the SNP’s coalition deal with the achingly woke Scottish Greens, a move that ended up costing him his job.

The trigger was said to have been Greens co-leader Patrick Harvie’s response to the Hilary Cass review into gender healthcare, in which he challenged the scientific validity of the esteemed paediatrician’s findings.

There was already disquiet among LGBT members of the Green party, furious at the Scottish NHS’s decision to follow England’s ban on prescribing puberty blockers in the wake of Cass. 

The spectacle of the Greens prioritising gender ideology over protecting children put them beyond the pale and exposed the fissures of the Bute House agreement.

Now, chucked out of government, Harvie and his fellow Greens have laid down a gauntlet to Swinney, first voting against a Conservative motion at Holyrood to endorse the Cass report, which the SNP supported.

Harvie also unleashed a bitter and personal broadside against Forbes during yesterday’s FMQs and accused Swinney, in appointing her, of giving in to his party’s right wing.

The more hysterical the hyper-ventilating Harvie becomes, the easier it will be for Swinney to ignore him as a toxic fringe presence in parliament.

But he is also facing a rebellion from the SNP’s LGBT wing, Out for Independence, which is unhappy about Forbes, and concerned about Swinney’s intention to steer the party towards the centre ground.

He will be put to the test over the Scottish government’s plans to ban conversion therapy, which will make it a criminal offence to attempt to “change or suppress” a person’s gender identity.

Cass, in Scotland this week to give evidence to Holyrood’s health committee, warned that such proposals, dropped at Westminster following concerns over the impact on freedom of expression and religious freedoms, would criminalise medical professionals and therapists if they tried to help children with gender identity issues.

But Out for Independence is seeking assurances that the conversion therapy ban “will not be stalled or removed from the programme of government”.

Where does Swinney really stand? Freed from Sturgeon’s yoke, he already appears to be breaking away from her obsession with identity politics.

As deputy first minister, he voted for the controversial Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which would have allowed children as young as 16 to apply to legally change their gender without a medical diagnosis. But on Sky News earlier today, he confirmed that the legislation will be abandoned after it was blocked, by Westminster, from becoming law.

This is indeed a departure from Sturgeon’s refusal to admit defeat and Yousaf’s suggestion that he would work with an incoming UK Labour government to amend the law.

It is perhaps too much to expect that Swinney’s government will be guided by common sense and national, not nationalist, interests – he is still hellbent on independence after all.

But the political marriage between him and Forbes looks like a happy one, where disagreement on fundamental principles – her views on same-sex marriage and abortion set her apart – is outweighed by consensus over resetting government priorities.

These include addressing child poverty and investing in public services, which should have been at the heart of any supposedly left-wing regime but were sacrificed by the SNP in pursuit of a programme of transgender militantism.

Swinney was, of course, part of the problem for many years but if he has belatedly found the courage he lacked as Sturgeon’s number two to follow his own instincts, he could still salvage something of his legacy before the SNP is booted out of power by Labour.

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