Andrew Whitaker: Picking a new cabinet line-up offers Alex Salmond the chance to experiment if he wishes

Published on Thursday 12 May 2011 20:04

ONE of First Minister Alex Salmond's pressing tasks in the weeks ahead is that of picking his cabinet team and deciding who will fill portfolios such as finance, health, justice and education.

A key question is whether Mr Salmond will opt to stick with the team he went into the election with – John Swinney in finance, Nicola Sturgeon in health, Kenny MacAskill in justice, Mike Russell in education and Richard Lochhead for environment and rural affairs.

The SNP leader may be tempted to make some changes and move some of these cabinet members around – or even drop some altogether.

But one major consideration is the noises Mr Salmond made during the Holyrood election, when a key SNP pitch to the electorate was that of "re-elect the Scottish Government" – with a strong appeal to voters to leave the same old gang in charge.

True, the main campaign emphasis was always on Mr Salmond himself, but his cabinet members were heavily promoted by the party as able and capable ministers who deserved another term in office.

It's extremely unlikely that Mr Salmond would want to move Ms Sturgeon from health or Mr Swinney from finance, but he may be tempted to end the ministerial career of Kenny MacAskill thanks to the controversy still attached to the justice secretary's decision to release Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds and return him to Libya.

Mr Salmond might also consider shifting one of his top performers, Michael Russell into the justice portfolio and promoting transport minister Keith Brown, who is judged to have performed well, to cabinet level as education secretary.

But making such changes, which would probably strengthen the government, would leave Mr Salmond open to the charge of breaking an implied promise to the electorate about the make-up of his cabinet team.

Mr Salmond may feel it's much safer to introduce new blood into his junior ministerial ranks and the large number of new SNP arrivals at Holyrood together with more experienced SNP MSPs from the last parliament offer the First Minister with a lot of options.

The lack of name recognition for junior ministers amongst the public probably gives Mr Salmond more scope to have a frontbench shake-up without any real political fall-out.

However, given the SNP's ruthlessness in seizing the Presiding Officer's role at Holyrood for Tricia Marwick, who was elected as a constituency MSP just a week ago, after serving as an SNP list MSP, Mr Salmond may probably feel that he can make whatever changes he likes to his government without any consequences whatsoever.

For the moment that is probably a fair assessment, but whether that will remain the case throughout the five-year parliament remains to be seen.