[Robin McAlpine Blog] Clearly out of his depth, Swinney is in serious trouble

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Clearly out of his depth, Swinney is in serious trouble

Sometimes it looks like you’ve just been really unlucky. And sometimes if you look closer, luck has nothing to do with it. On the one hand the cascade of seriously damaging SNP stories are coming so fast you might say ‘who could cope with that?’. Now go and look at the source of the cascade and you quickly realise this is all self-inflicted.

Because if crisis shows the true mettle of a leader, John Swinney has been found sorely lacking. If I was to reach for a word that describes how I feel he’s responded it would be ‘municipal’. This is an international-scale problem (we’re being laughed at globally) yet Swinney gives off the vibes of an old-hand hack in a provincial council.

One of Sturgeon’s great flaws was that she would sacrifice absolutely anyone in the blink of an eye if it would save her skin. One of Swinney’s great flaws is the opposite – he is loyal well beyond reason. There is no adversity he faces where his instincts are not to lock the doors, fire up the shredder, support the unsupportable…

I was quite seriously taken aback by his response to the Michael Matheson iPad scandal. Matheson was caught out fair and square and justice required that he took his punishment first if he was to return to government. That Swinney seemed to think that, like Trump pardoning a January 6 rioter, he could offer him immunity was beyond comprehension.

Now we’re seeing this pattern all over again. Let’s just go through what’s happening today alone. First, Swinney wakes up to another day of general revelations about the hot mess that was Sturgeon’s SNP. He starts out from a baseline of ‘this party wasn’t fit for purpose internally’.

And from there he turns it around by… leading the first government in the history of the Scottish nation to be found guilty of contempt of court. That may look like unlucky timing, but this is 100 per cent the direct result of John Swinney’s personal decision to ignore a court order. What on earth was he thinking? What could possibly have gone through his mind?

This is a government in a crisis of corruption, cover-up and dishonesty which Swinney decided to distance himself from by pursuing a course of corruption, cover-up and dishonesty. Being found in contempt of court is something more than clumsy; it should be absolutely unacceptable.

Everything that would come out in an inquiry (in a boring way two years from now) which will instead sputter out one at a time over the course of those two years

Then, still reeling from the contempt finding, Swinney decides to in effect admit that the SNP has been lying for years about the £650,000 being ‘available’ and that they spent it illegally. This is also all stupid. It wasn’t hard to track what happened to the money, when it was banked and when it was spent. It was all illegal.

In fact I told people on the day that they launched the fundraiser in the first place that it would be illegal. Sloppy wording on the donation page meant that it could only ever be used during a referendum they were never going to get. It was like raising money to repair the church tower in Brigadoon – it would be almost impossible to spend the money legally.

But in the Sturgeon era, lying with absolute confidence was routine, as was the media refusing to check the veracity of the lies (for reasons I don’t understand). You think the paper trail of promises and lies and false statements and conflicting stories is at an end? This has a long way to run still.

I’d imagine it is now almost certain the SNP will be sued over the donations and that is another year of scandal to go through. Just to give you a sense of what else is going on, I’m now told that the Salmond case will proceed before the end of this year and that the person pursuing it has told everyone that there is no circumstances in which he will agree to an out of court settlement.

The stated aim is to reveal in public all the details that Lady Dorian suppressed at the Salmond trial. A lot of that is very damning. It is going to be horrible for the SNP leadership. And that is even if they get that far without more legal troubles, and not just the £650,000.

For example, I’m really sick of people saying Sturgeon has been cleared. She has not. If there is any new evidence comes out, she could be charged tomorrow. If a new witness comes forward, she could be charged. If a new Lord Advocate decided to re-look at the case, she could be charged (though I think we can assume that the new Lord Advocate will be Mike Russell or something).

And in Scotland the victims of crime have a right to call publicly for the prosecution service to reconsider a failure to charge and prosecute. That means any SNP member from 2010 until the present day could make a formal complaint about Sturgeon not being charged. For what it’s worth, I was told again yesterday by a different (third) source that senior police definitely wanted to charge Sturgeon and are not happy about her walking free.

Then there is everything that would come out in an inquiry (in a boring way two years from now) which will instead sputter out one at a time over the course of those two years. Who knew what and when is a major problem for the SNP. Then there will be (already is) more digging into the party governance and culture. If you know anything about that era you’ll know it was hair-raising.

Listing the things that can and will go wrong would take up too much space – and this is just the stuff over and above the struggling government which is itself drowning. There is no good news here. Even Labour’s own collapse (which has been the gift that saved Swinney) might be reversed if they get rid of Starmer.

Sturgeon poisoned the SNP; Swinney refused to drive it to the doctor

This is a monumental clusterfuck, yet in the face of it John Swinney comes across like a wee boy with a broken kite in a storm. He almost seems pissed off he is doing so badly. He is coming across as tetchy and unhappy to be treated like a normal politician.

But above all his judgement stinks. This time last week I warned that if he didn’t put clear water between him and the Sturgeon era (best as he could) it would be a disaster. This is the start of what that disaster looks like. Swinney just doesn’t seem to have the internal resources to cope with this. He looks out of his league.

And so all he can do is turn to his advisers, which just means Colin McAllister, a man who is the definition of the concept ‘out of his league’. Without the feel or knowledge to put out this fire, he is turning in panic to another man with no idea how to put the fire out. So he has slipped into default mode – municipal fixer.

Incidentally, I did warn that Swinney’s reputation as a safe pair of hands was unmerited if you went and looked at his actual ministerial track record. To describe what happened in his time in education as ‘steady and controlled’ could only be done ironically. Then as now he looked like a man to whom things happen.

There is one thing I’ve got wrong in this though. After the election I thought Swinney was solid and secure. I suspected that his parliamentary numbers (unmerited as they were) would be enough to balance the deep difficulties ahead in government and the inevitable restlessness of the party membership on independence.

Now? I genuinely amn’t sure Swinney will make it. For reasons only he will truly know, he seems to have seen a giant chest full of dark and dangerous corruptions and lies and bullying and failure and he has decided to glue it onto his own back. He is genuinely complicit in all this, but with some smarts and a bit of chutzpah he could have had a chance to break free. He rejected that chance.

A while back I told you that everything that is going to happen has already happened. The things that lie ahead were all put in train years ago and there is no stopping what is coming. Swinney is right at the heart of all of this, generally not the original source of the corruption, generally the stooge brought in at the end to cover it up precisely because he wasn’t involved.

That he has tried this again now is insane. It can only point to a man adrift, lost, clueless, under the control of events and losing his grip continuously. The biggest problem the opposition has is working out which of these endless vulnerabilities to attack him on.

So be it. Most of this is Sturgeon’s fault, but it is 100 per cent Swinney’s fault for having got involved and then for linking himself inextricably to it. He is still lying. The SNP has absolutely not had a reckoning and fixed its problems and so now that new lie is a liability too.

I have no advice anymore. It is too late. What will come will come and it isn’t entirely certain the SNP will remain a credible fighting force at the end of it. Sturgeon poisoned the SNP. Swinney refused to drive it to the doctor. It may be their political epitaphs.

Source: Clearly out of his depth, Swinney is in serious trouble