We've just finished watching Shogun and one of the lines (from Mariko) has stuck with us:
We now know that, barring something extraordinary, John Swinney will be the next First Minister.
The SNP has managed to avoid the unseemly shenanigans that tainted the 'election' of Humza Yousaf by not having any competition for the top spot. We won't know for sure until tomorrow whether or not anyone has managed to gather the support and completed the paperwork needed to mount an official challenge but it's plain that Swinney and his team expect no such inconvenience.
When Nicola Sturgeon was handed the reins by Alex Salmond (feels like a lifetime ago now, eh?) there was no clear reason to doubt her commitment to the independence cause and she had a range of powerful assets to draw upon, the most important of which was mass support. That dwindled as her loyalty came under scrutiny. Humza inherited a mess which he managed to make worse but there was no questioning where his loyalty lay - it was with Nicola. That's why support has dwindled further and the party now faces electoral catastrophe.
Where does Swinney's loyalty lie?
Is he, aye?
In that case he'll have no hesitation in answering the perfectly reasonable question being raised by many - one which he has thus far managed to evade: 'What is a woman?'
If he can't or won't answer the same simple question that did for his predecessors then the rest of his grand vision can safely be ignored.
It took years for many of us to accept the horrible truth about Nicola Sturgeon, even when it became embarrassingly obvious that she wasn't who she purported to be, or perhaps more importantly, who we wanted her to be. It didn't take quite so long to suss Humza because his stall had been laid out for all to see and he hadn't much say in the selection of goods he was required to punt.
But Swinney has nothing to flog. There is no clear loyalty to anyone or anything bar self-preservation. He's been playing the long game these past forty years but now, having failed to find a seat when the music stopped, he's exposed.
There will be no honeymoon period for Honest John.
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