Euan McColm: Why the SNP’s new guard needs to taste defeat

John Swinney’s announcement that he is to step down as Deputy First Minister when Nicola Sturgeon’s replacement is selected later this month made perfect sense, didn’t it?

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Deputy First Minister John Swinney arrive for First Minster's Questions last Thursday

After all, we would expect the next FM to want to choose his or her number two rather than to inherit Sturgeon’s. A new leader will want to build a new team. That’s how it goes, isn’t it?

Yet I suspect the next head of the Scottish Government may regret Swinney’s decision to return to the back-benches. Simply, he remains - by some distance - the SNP’s best candidate for the role he has performed since Sturgeon succeeded Alex Salmond after defeat for the Yes campaign in the 2014 independence referendum.

The Deputy First Minister is a rare beast in contemporary Scottish politics. Not only does he command the respect and affection of fellow nationalists, he is viewed warmly by many of his opponents. Talk privately to Labour and Tory MSPs and you won’t struggle to find anyone who has grown to dislike, even despise, Sturgeon. But mention Swinney and the responses change. He is, they will say, decent, straightforward and kind.

These qualities - and I would agree that he displays them - don’t change the fact that he is also, when it comes to the brutal business of politics, utterly unsentimental. If a dirty job needs doing, he will do it. Swinney’s qualities also include ruthlessness.

When Kate Forbes, Humza Yousaf or (let’s indulge the possibility) Ash Regan takes over from Sturgeon, they will struggle to find someone as suited to the post of deputy as Swinney.

There is something beyond the obvious personal qualities which makes Swinney such a significant political figure. Like Sturgeon and Salmond, Swinney has been a loser. He has been humiliated by crushing defeat. And these tests have made him a better politician. They have sharpened his edges and focused his mind.

The contenders to replace Sturgeon know little of defeat. Their careers - so far - have been all about winning. When the tide rises. it lifts all the ships and so Forbes, Yousaf and Regan have benefited from a surge in support for nationalism. I don’t mean to denigrate their achievements in winning election to Holyrood but, well, James Dornan is also an SNP MSP. The barrier to success for nationalist candidates has been all but non-existent in recent years.

Defeat - in bearable doses - is good for us. It prevents us taking things for granted and, hopefully, helps build empathy.

There is a swagger about many SNP politicians, these days, a we-own-this-joint sense of entitlement that’s not terribly appealing when witnessed up close. It’s the same attitude that used to permeate the ranks of the Scottish Labour Party right up until the point at which its elected members discovered they were not, after all, invincible.

Though they won’t have the option of bringing Swinney into government - he’s made clear he’s done his shift - the next SNP leader should study his career closely.

Someone close to him once told me “the thing about John is he’s got this image of being mild mannered like an old fashioned bank manager but that’s not the whole picture. He’d live in a f***ing cave to be free”. Swinney’s nationalism is a central part of his make-up but he was savvy enough, a long time ago, to recognise his party would only progress so far on the backs of rallying cries and fluttering flags. His pragmatism won the fight with his fundamentalism.

More than most in the Holyrood SNP group, Swinney recognises the existence of small c conservative middle Scotland. He understands modest aspiration and knows that the priorities of voters do not always marry up with the beliefs of those elected members who style themselves radicals.

As the SNP of 20 years ago mounted ever more audacious attacks on New Labour, calling for the impeachment of then Prime Minister Tony Blair over the Iraq war and insisting the party had forgotten its roots, Swinney was not helping build an alternative. He, Salmond and Sturgeon were creating a replica. “They found a spot on the middle ground,” a friend of Swinney’s once told me, “And then they built a f***ing fortress on it.”

That same friend one said to me they wondered whether enough Labour politicians had read Tony Blair’s “The Third Way”, published by the Fabian Society “because I’ll tell you something, John has.”

Given that, for now, the majority of Scottish voters back parties which promote their favoured constitutional position (the Scottish Election Survey - an excellent ongoing project headed up by Edinburgh University’s Professor Ailsa Henderson - tells us more than 90 per cent of Scots chose their election votes based on their view of independence), the next leader of the SNP is already on course for victory at the ballot box before they’ve secured the position.

There is a danger, then, of complacency. If one can win elections without doing much then why would one take risks?

Well, Scottish Labour used to think like that and now they’re the third largest party at Holyrood.

After almost 16 years in power at Holyrood, the SNP is tired. The Scottish Government lacks focus and every time a leading nationalist politician brags that they must be doing something right if they’re still winning elections, they ignore the fact that - while the constitution trumps all else - incompetence is ignored.

I wonder if, perhaps, the next leader of the SNP might be doing the party a favour if they somehow managed to lead it to defeat. Years of losing shaped a generation of Scottish nationalists. It helped them become winners.

John Swinney stands head and shoulders above the new guard who’ve had the easiest of rides to the top.