[Robin McAlpine Blog] Poor Factor John

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Poor Factor John

I enjoy thinking up political satire and jotting down entertaining political invective. Mostly I don’t actually show it to anyone because it is hard to maintain both a reputation for trying to be serious and for trying to be funny. But I often paint satirical pen portraits of politicians in my head, the caricatures they would take on if I was satirising them.

John Swinney is the Laird’s Factor. He is the slightly oleaginous enforcer who turns up with a bunnet more expensive than he’d otherwise have been able to afford and tells you in warm, avuncular tones that you’re being evicted. He is a kinder than average factor; John promises you he’ll talk to the laird on your behalf and see if anything can be done.

No, sorry, nothing can be done. I did my best for you but unfortunately you need to pack up your possessions and go or the laird’s thugs will be down. John is a pleb like the rest of us, but he gets to be top pleb by being the pleb that enforces the will of the powerful on the other plebs

And because he has a reputation for being kinder than the average factor, we tolerate Factor John. He doesn’t have our consent and if there were any option to get rid of him we’d be on it like a shot. But mostly, most of the time, he’s the sort of person you grumble vigorously about in the village inn, not someone you kick off a rebellion to get rid of. Until…

Well, until now. The thing about the Swinaissance (Holywood-style neologism for a late career renaissance, if ya don’t know) is that it is founded on a lie. At the weekend Swinney was telling everyone that he was secure as party leader because in its time of need, the party had turned to him. This is a fabrication.

What actually happened is that the continuity-Sturgeon faction in the party realised that Humza Yousaf was flaming out and they wanted to prevent control of the party shifting to a new generation. Kate Forbes would have been likely to replace a large number of the senior backroom staff who are ‘the party’ now.

It was a tiny cabal, two or three people, none elected, who hatched the scheme to get Swinney into power without the membership having any chance to register their opinions on it. They strong-armed Kate Forbes out of the picture and then guilted Graham McCormick out of running a matter-of-principle challenge from the activist base so Swinney could be crowned ceremonially without the mess of democracy.

The greatest learning you can do in a leadership role is to understand your own limitations

I have to say at this point that I do get weary trying to explain things in Scottish politics that no-one believes until everyone believes it. I spent about five or six years in the run-up to Sturgeon’s resignation asking basically anyone I met in the party who they wanted as next leader and who they thought would be next leader. I spoke to scores of people from Cabinet down.

Not a single one of them said ‘John Swinney’ – and, importantly, not a single one of them answered ‘John’ to either question. No-one personally wanted John and no-one believed anyone else personally wanted John. Everyone else has been writing about how popular he is in the party; I have been trying to emphasis that being liked isn’t nearly the same as anyone wanting you to be leader.

His record as leader and in government is all the explanation you need. It is now a decade since Swinney was a ‘cautious but fairly well regarded finance minister’. He has spent that time making an utter pig’s ear of the education brief and then rigging the party for Sturgeon and engaging in extensive internal cover-ups around dodgy dealings that have all been coming home to roost in the last few years.

There is literally not a positive word said by anyone about his first term as leader. Swinney had a specific role in the SNP. He was the man who slowed change. He was the drag factor to ambition. I don’t dismiss that role at all; if you personally don’t have a sullen-faced Eeyore in your team, who is warning you you’re making a mistake? It’s just, traditionally, you don’t make them leader. Twice.

The other fallacy that seems to have driven this second leadership bid is the idea that he has matured and learned since his last tenure. The greatest learning you can do in a leadership role is to understand your own limitations – and back fill them via advisers and the appointment of colleagues. Swinney clearly didn’t learn that.

This takes us to the person who has probably sealed Swinney’s fate – Stephen Noon. What John Swinney needed was a strategist who would say things like ‘John, claiming you’re saving democracy with a quango summit is a mental idea’ and not ‘John, I’ve got this idea I know you’ll like about a summit of quango types’.

Stephen Noon is like a physical manifestation of Swinney’s cautious, conservative view of the world. I imagine their strategy discussions being like someone talking with their imaginary friend. If Swinney was to have any chance of not failing in the way he is currently failing he needed a counterweight to his caution and conservatism.

What is a little sad about all of this is that, like Humza Yousaf, both Swinney and Noon are decent people, quite nice in person, undoubtedly well-meaning at heart. Swinney has a much higher conceit of himself than he should have and I’ve heard repeated claims that he is much spikier and more abrasive in person than he generally appears. But this is politics. Total softies don’t do well.

His every move is that of someone who hasn’t read the changes in society and politics of the last decasde and who is pursuing outdated strategies he doesn’t realise are outdated

So this isn’t malice and hubris coming to the end of the line like with Sturgeon. Swinney was just a mistake that no-one apart from Swinney and a tiny coterie wanted to make. But it makes no difference because the damage is the same.

Swinney was there to prevent the party changing. On that he has been successful. He has overseen a candidate selection process which has recycled the same old names back in as condenders and has protected every failed face that existed in the machinery before he took over. The consequences of that are enormous.

Because if the current chatter about overthrowing him comes to pass then he has, in effect, ‘Kamalaed’ Kate Forbes if she was to take over. Dropping her into leadership in October gives her no time to reshape the party but plenty of time to let the animosity at the current government transfer to her. I would be chaos. It would be an admission of desperation

And before anyone says ‘poor John, he inherited this’ – no, he created this. He has been a leadership enforcer for 20-plus years and his major contribution since becoming leader again is a dreadful, cynical attempt to rig party democracy further.

When he was crowned leader I wrote that this was an admission of defeat by the SNP. It was. It is. It has just taken people a while to accept it properly. Swinney cannot turn the SNP around and the SNP is in trouble. His every move is that of someone who hasn’t read the changes in society and politics of the last decasde and who is pursuing outdated strategies he doesn’t realise are outdated.

I have been personally angry at John Swinney because while Sturgeon and Yousaf let us down awfully, they let us down by keeping the spirit of the 2014 independence referendum alive but not actually delivering on it. Swinney has been gradually killing off the spirit of 2014 altogether. That was much too much for me.

But I am still saddened by this in some ways. I don’t have any desire for the history of the independence movement to view John Swinney negatively and I think that is now going to be the reality. He has hurt the SNP badly and he’s done it twice. Poor Factor John. I think he thought he was doing us a favour by letting us down gently. But in the end, that just means he let us down.

I don’t think he can be changed before the Holyrood Election, not now. But do it or not do it and either way I suspect he will just do more damage. That is like a little tragedy all in itself, but this is politics, not poetry. If you step forward and you’re not good enough, you’ve made yourself the problem.

Source: Poor Factor John