Yes, the SNP is a big tent… it just happens to be a circus tent
To Glasgow University, where John Swinney delivered a victory speech somewhat dampened by the absence of a victory.
The former deputy first minister secured the party leadership role after a fringe activist was persuaded not to launch a rival bid.
Whether this persuasion involved the appearance of a horse’s head in the man’s bed, we may never know.
Swinney attempted to spin this as a positive. ‘The fact I’m the only candidate demonstrates that the SNP is coming back together again now,’ he informed a sceptical press pack.
Or it demonstrates that what the rank and file actually believe must be kept as far from voters’ ears as possible.
He assured his audience that Humza Yousaf would ‘continue to make a substantial contribution to the public life of Scotland’, though it sounded more like a threat than an assurance.
Evasions:John Swinney makes his speech in Glasgow, but it was not so much of a new dawn as a pair of old hands cracking their knuckles
Swinney waxed: ‘Our party must continue and will continue to be a light. We must continue to illuminate hope, fight for international justice and be willing to stand up for what we believe to be right.’
A little bit of perspective, please. It’s the SNP, not Doctors Without Borders.
Before a modest assemblage of the more presentable Nats, Swinney reflected on the events of recent weeks. Things, he allowed, had ‘turned out differently’ to what was expected a year ago when Humza Yousaf took over the reins.
Indeed. Mistakes were made. Coalitions were broken. Governments were tanked.
Swinney lamented ‘the polarisation of politics’, which he said ‘does not serve our country well’. One person it did serve rather well was John Swinney, who spent the better part of the past two decades bawling himself hoarse in the Holyrood debating chamber.
His latter-day conversion to civility is like Ozzy Osbourne renouncing heavy metal to become a florist.
He confirmed there would be no formal coalition with the Greens or any other party and stated his preparedness to work with Unionist parties in what he called ‘coalitions of the willing’.
It was an unfortunate choice of words given the phrase is best known as George W Bush’s term for those countries that joined the United States in the Iraq War in 2003.
As for dodgy dossiers, Swinney would not be drawn on his government’s likely policy priorities.
The speech was brief, but it highlighted two things about Swinney: 1) he’s not terrible, and 2) he’s not all that good, either.
Perhaps it is because he has spent so long cultivating his Honest John image, and trying to pass himself off as a provincial accountant, but there was not a single moment in his remarks that might cause the average voter to look up from their phone and listen to him.
He is a political prospect almost designed to elicit a shrug of the shoulders, a man to whom the average punter could have no stronger reaction than ‘meh’.
No doubt the SNP calculates that this is who they need right now, an inoffensive technocrat who can corral together the party’s various wayward factions.
The SNP is indeed a big tent but unfortunately it’s a circus tent.
After a year of the head clown running the show, a ringmaster is bound to be an improvement.
But how much of an improvement? Swinney struggled when reporters pressed him on why the SNP demanded an election to legitimise the revolving door of prime ministers in Number 10 but was relaxed about a similar turnstile of temporary first ministers in Bute House.
His evasions reeked of politics and that is his biggest problem. He is a fluent politician but he speaks human as a second language.
What we saw in Glasgow yesterday was not the breaking of a new dawn but a pair of old hands stretching and cracking their knuckles.
The best way to test whether those hands were capable of steadying the ship would have been to hold a competitive vote.
But John Swinney was too busy becoming leader to win an election to the role.
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