John Swinney: The two tasks he must take on to make a difference

Which unfortunately brings me on to my second thought. The depressing lack of change. The Sturgeon and Yousaf-led governments were failures. The real-life experience of people in Scotland went backwards not forwards. Despite a generous settlement from the UK Treasury and higher taxes in Scotland than elsewhere in the UK, our NHS, our schools, our roads, our ferries and much else suffered from incompetent government.

John Swinney cannot pretend to be a new broom. Kate Forbes has been brought back and much expectation rests on her shoulders for the restoration of sanity. The rest though: have they really proved themselves to be so good that they get to keep their jobs? The depressing thought is probably not, but there was nobody any better.

If he is to make any positive difference John Swinney must direct himself to two key tasks.

The first is to bring the Scottish Government back down to earth; to focus not on being an imaginary leader of a new progressive world order but to do what it was supposed to do which is to improve the daily life experiences of people in Scotland.

The lessons of the Gender Recognition Act, the Recycling Scheme and many other fiascos should be learned. Stop. Doing. Stupid. Things.

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The Swinney Government’s mood music is of a return to the centre ground but at the same time they seem set to plough on with outrageous plans to remove juries from trials and a ban on what they call conversion therapy.

This last effort is a new disaster in the making. Conversion therapy conjures up a picture of a person with electrodes attached to their ears getting 240 volts which, surprise, surprise, is already illegal. But what the Scottish Government aims to stop isn’t that. What it plans is a broad brush swipe at anybody - parents, teachers, parish priests, the medical profession - who dare to question whether a young person’s apparent desire to change their gender identity might just not be the wisest thing to go full steam ahead on.

Teenage years are often complicated and sometimes troubled. The Cass Report, which the Scottish Government just cannot bring itself to endorse fully because it’s an English document, points out that a young person’s difficulties with their gender are often accompanied by other issues such as autism and depression.

Before embarking on life-changing medical interventions related to gender, the Cass Report is clear that a person’s overall needs should be looked at carefully and, yes, questions should be asked rather than parental views and medical challenge being swept under the carpet. Just drop this one John, it’s Gender Identity Mk II, a complete lemon.

The second key task John Swinney should devote himself to is to bring consensus back to Scottish politics.

The Scottish Parliament was not designed to emulate the adversarial aspects of Westminster. The Scottish Parliament was supposed to be a place where no one party was dominant and co-operation was required in order to build consensus.

The SNP have smashed the consensus stye of politics which would have been so much healthier for Scotland. In part this was because of their electoral success and tight alliance with the Greens but it was also where they and especially Nicola Sturgeon, a person to whom history will not be kind, took things of their own accord.

John Swinney says he wants to work with other parties to create broad support for new legislation. What a genuinely good idea - a return to what was supposed to be.

What stands in the way of that being possible is the SNP’s obsession with the constitution. How can parties co-operate with one which wants to smash the UK up, to blame everything on Westminster, to freeze non-believers out of public life?

If Mr Swinney really wants to work with other parties for the good of Scotland he needs to say not, as he unfortunately already has, that independence is still possible by the end of the decade. Instead he needs to say the reverse. Not that he doesn’t believe in Scotland leaving the UK but that he accepts there is, by some margin, no wish amongst Scots to do so. He should acknowledge that if there is a road to his dream it must be the long one, where the Scottish Government proves to us for at least a decade that it is using its power well.

The best thing Mr Swinney could do for Scotland is to say that the SNP manifesto for the next Scottish Parliamentary election will specifically rule out seeking a referendum for the next parliamentary term.

If he had the courage to do that then all parties at Holyrood could work together for the common good and make devolution a success.