What really goes on behind the scenes of SNP hustings?

On its own, Scotland’s Finance Minister effectively opposing her own government’s alcohol strategy would make a decent tale. Her concerns, though, are shared by others at the top of the SNP and so she won’t be accused of disloyalty or of trashing her own team. And besides, after what Ms Forbes did to her cabinet colleague, Humza Yousaf, a few hours before, her tacit criticism of the SNP’s alcohol strategy seems insignificant

For once, the ladies and gentlemen of the press are not here to discuss the revivifying properties of whisky. Rather, they’re eager to find out how Ms Forbes is feeling the morning after the night before when she performed a live evisceration of Mr Yousaf during STV’s live SNP leadership debate.

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She trashed Mr Yousaf’s entire political career and effectively signalled that he’d be sacked from his role as Scotland’s Health Minister were she to become leader.

I know most of these political journalists and they’re all masters in the art of studied insouciance. If the American President were suddenly to appear in their midst offering tales from the West Wing they’d affect merely to be mildly interested, lest any of them be accused of forgetting themselves.

This morning though, they’re all discussing Scotland’s Night of the Long Kalashnikovs like schoolboys picking over the football highlights. “What did you make of it,” asks the chap from The Guardian. “Unbelievable,” says the man from the Daily Express, which for him is akin to a four-minute nuclear warning.

None of them saw this coming, and nor, it appears did Ms Forbes’ media advisor, himself a former stalwart of the press lobby. “I’m just here to organise the tea and biscuits and herd the cats,” he says. “I’m not really privy to Kate’s thinking on policy.” Aye right, Campbell.

The lady herself seemed to have been energised by the previous night’s ‘robust’ exchanges and wasn’t for backing down one little bit. “We’re in a contest to elect Scotland’s next First Minister,” she said, “and I think the public and SNP members want somebody who has the guts to recognise what needs to change and also recognises the fact that we need to have a plan to deliver.

“Last night was all about having the candour and honesty to say that more of the same won’t cut it. If any SNP leader or First Minister is going to take on the Tories in Westminster, for example, then they need to have the mettle and they need to have the courage to do that and I think that was what was on display last night.”

Ms Forbes’ show of force came barely two weeks after her campaign was considered to have been mortally damaged following her remarks about same-sex marriage. She had then displayed a similar measure of candour by stating that her Free Church of Scotland faith wouldn’t have allowed her to vote for the 2014 Equal Marriage Bill. She seems to have recovered, though.

A glut of individuals from the party’s professional wing, having condemned her for holding views of which they were all aware, are now gleefully deploring her for being belligerent about that nice Mr Yousaf. One of them is Shona Robison, a party time-server inexplicably propelled into senior cabinet posts by her close friend, Ms Sturgeon. She says she’d find it difficult to serve in a Kate Forbes’ cabinet, safe in the knowledge she’ll never be asked.

You might even argue that Ms Forbes’ attack on Mr Yousaf’s decidedly patchy record in government was an overdue riposte to his sneaky kick at Ms Forbes when she was on the floor. Mr Yousaf, all hand-wringing sanctimony, had said then that personal faith shouldn’t inform the business of government.

This was before it was revealed by at least two former cabinet colleagues that he himself had done just that by begging off the crucial third vote on the Equal Marriage Bill following pressure from Muslim leaders. The public knows fake virtue when they see it.

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As Ms Forbes was facing the inquisitors of the Fourth Estate, a tall, bearded man stood impassively at the back of the room. This was her husband, Ali MacLennan. “How do you find all this,” I ask him. “It is what it is,” he replies. “I’m just here to support Kate. I think she’s dealing with it well.”

A few minutes later my press colleagues wander over, having discovered the identity of the normal bloke at the back. They gather round him, engaging him in gentle conversation in the hope of chivvying something clumsy and inadvertent from him. But he sidesteps their lupine entreaties.

Mr MacLennan is a chimney sweep to trade, and a successful one at that, working amidst the crofts and cottages of the rural Highlands. Though several years his wife’s senior, he has the bearing of a man who dismantles chimneys, not cleans them.

Among the press melee is the man from the Daily Record who published a story last week about Mr MacLennan’s attendance at a Tory fundraiser. “Don’t worry; I won’t tell him it was you,” I kindly reassure my esteemed colleague.

LATER the same evening I’m in Johnstone for the sixth of the nine leadership hustings taking place across Scotland. It’s a remarkable feat of central office organisation that these events were all arranged within days of the First Minister’s resignation.

Chairing the proceedings is Jeane Freeman, the former Health Secretary who commands respect and more than a degree of affection across the party. She revives the memorable Scots word snell to describe the bitterly cold evening. Yet despite the sub-zero temperatures and a feast of domestic and European football competing for their attentions more than 300 party members patiently queue for seats in the new town hall.

It's a sedate and well-ordered debate with none of the fireworks that characterised the STV one. At several points during that televised event Mr Yousaf was being attacked in stereo by Ms Forbes and Ash Regan, now gaining in confidence after a nervous start. Yet, it was to his credit that he resisted the urge to fight fire with fire. It remains to be seen if Ms Forbes’ attacks on him will ultimately rebound on her.

Judging by the applause greeting each candidate’s responses, Mr Yousaf is the party favourite. Yet there’s something about these events that sparks your curiosity: a barely-discernible dissonance in an otherwise smooth production. Kate Forbes and Ash Regan discerned it immediately and wryly referred to some familiar and repeat attendees from previous hustings. The inference was unmistakeable and borne out by some of the questioners, most of whom lived well beyond this part of Renfrewshire.

A disproportionate number of questions seemed constructed specifically to embarrass Ms Forbes: working with the Scottish Greens; the politics of sexual identity; defending LGBTQ-plus rights, the need to be ‘progressive’. Rather scarcer were questions about the drugs death toll; multiple-deprivation; child poverty and workers’ rights.

Mr Yousaf feasted on these while striving to break the world record for how often a person can use ‘progressive’ at a single sitting. This is the favoured locution of politicians keen to divert scrutiny from a failure to deliver ‘improvement’.

He would be ‘progressive’; he was the ‘progressive’ candidate; the SNP broke Labour because it was ‘progressive’. Each of the three candidates were urged to be ‘progressive’.

Afterwards I learned that the atmosphere backstage prior to the debate had been “very tense” and that Mr Yousaf’s team were “raging” about his rival’s attacks the previous night. I’m not convinced this will cut any ice with her.

The angst and toga-ripping among the SNP’s professional class doesn’t appear to be replicated among the general public. The latest poll shows her and Mr Yousaf running nip and tuck, with Ms Forbes’ the clear choice to succeed Nicola Sturgeon among the wider electorate.