Opposition's duty is to work to remove Swinney as soon as possible

Since this was the day of John Swinney’s audacious coronation, these were timely reminders of how Scotland has been run for years. Boasts, lies and empty promises have been the currency of government. From ferries via attainment gaps to NHS waiting lists, votes were garnered through headlines with scant regard for days of reckoning.

A permanent presence through all of this was one John Ramsay Swinney, a Member of the Scottish Parliament since its inception 25 years ago and for 16 years a loyal partisan on behalf of Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon; a dismally poor Education Secretary and, as a crowning glory, his party’s negotiator in creating a coalition with the Scottish Greens.

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Nobody would question Mr Swinney’s consistency. His lifelong cause is Scottish independence and everything in his political career was subordinate to that objective, which is a perfectly respectable personal history, even if one disagrees. It has required a lot of dirty work at various crossroads with protection of the SNP always his first priority, transcending any public interest or “right to know”. That too is understandable in such a committed political partisan even if it turned the soubriquet “Honest John” into a term of irony.

So far, so good. But please, Mr Swinney, as he enters his seventh decade, spare us the pretence that anything has changed or that a Pauline conversion to “reaching out” has occurred; far less penitence about his own contribution to Scotland’s “intensely polarised environment”. The purpose of Mr Swinney’s political calling has, for 40 years, been to drive division over Scotland’s constitutional position, above and beyond all else, in the hope of one day coming out on top. Again, perfectly respectable if, in the view of most Scots, misguided. But it sure ain’t going to change now.

Pretending his fundamentalism has been subordinated within the space of a week to higher-minded motivations is just another tactic which should be responded to with corresponding degrees of caution. Mr Swinney has got the top job because the SNP hierarachy needed him to get rid of Mr Yousaf, escape from the Greens and keep out Kate Forbes. Nobody else was available to fulfil these interim objectives though, naturally, the longer-term aim is to keep the Nationalists in power.

For anyone who wants divisions in Scotland to heal and for politics to become focused on outcomes, the first essential prerequisite is not to prop up Mr Swinney but to remove him and his colleagues at the earliest opportunity. That was true last week and it remains true this week. The childish talk of clean sheets and fresh starts is for the birds. You can’t have a fresh start which involves the same people who have been around for the past 17 years and created the conditions which now exist.

Take education. Not only has the SNP had 17 years to drive forward the quality of Scottish education and close attainment gaps, Mr Swinney personally had five years as Education Secretary. Not only did he fail in these objectives but he became standard bearer for the Named Person scheme which was delayed for three years, cost untold millions of pounds and ended up being blown away by the Supreme Court as a breach of Human Rights. As in many matters, Mr Swinney’s characteristic in this folly was a complete refusal to listen, even to people with expertise who were not politically hostile.

John Swinney was the standard bearer for the failed Named Persons scheme (Image: PA)

Few would disagree that Scottish education is at a low ebb. The international comparators published last December were described as “catastrophic” - even more so for the children from the poorest backgrounds. This is after 17 years. There is not a shred of evidence to support any contention that the best bet for Scottish education is to leave it in the hands of the same party, led by Mr Swinney, that dragged it down to this level in the first place.

What Mr Swinney is really begging for, driven solely by the arithmetic of Holyrood, is not so much forgiveness as collective amnesia. All the political parties (except the Greens who are now to be kept at a safe distance in a separate room) are invited to join hands, think of Scotland and make life easy for Mr Swinney. On the contrary, their duty on behalf of voters who want shot of the SNP is to tell him to get on his bike and do his begging to Patrick Harvie.

The prerequisites for an effective, progressive Scottish government are (a) to have a single-minded devotion to using the enormous resources available in order to produce real change and (b) to work constructively with the government of the United Kingdom, regardless of political complexion, to optimise outcomes for Scotland. Neither of these is rocket science but equally, neither is possible under a Nationalist administration at Holyrood - because it will always have at least one eye on its primary objective which involves demonstrating the “need” for independence.

That is exactly the lesson of the last 17, and particularly the last 10, years within which John Swinney has been a fixture. Throw in the Green-assisted absurdities of the past few years and again, you find him at the centre of the plot. None of this can be wished away with platitudes or faux sincerity. As Aneurin Bevan put it: “You don’t have to gaze into a crystal ball when you can read an open book”.

Brian Wilson is a former Labour Party politician. He was MP for Cunninghame North from 1987 until 2005 and served as a Minister of State from 1997 to 2003.