Mark Smith: Is this normal? I’m starting to like John Swinney

You may also have noticed, if the 1990s parallel has occurred to you too, that John Swinney appears to be trying to handle the situation much as John Major did 30 years ago. Look at the First Minister’s speech to the SNP conference the other day. There was a lot of the usual stuff – complaints about Westminster, a commitment to wipe out poverty, the promise of a better future under independence – but it always helps I think to count the number of times certain words crop up and this year’s tally is interesting. The word “independence”: 14 times. The words “Nicola Sturgeon”: 0.

This is remarkable stuff really, given the recent history of the party. Until not so long ago, everyone in the SNP was eager to mention Sturgeon as much as they could and praise her and tell us how brilliant she was. However, in another surprising parallel with Thatcher, Sturgeon has been transformed from a leader who was once revered to someone who’s politically D for Dead. And Swinney has reacted to the situation by doing with Sturgeon what Major did with Thatcher: trying to move on, not mentioning her much or at all, and pretending like she doesn’t really exist. Once a giant, now a ghost.

There’s also been some revealing stuff about the relationship between Swinney and Sturgeon in the new BBC documentary on the SNP. According to Swinney himself, he spoke to Sturgeon in 2016 about her strategy of calling for a second independence referendum immediately after the Brexit vote. You may remember, because you’ve probably still got the scars, that as soon as the Brexit vote was announced, up popped Sturgeon at her podium to tell us another Scottish referendum was now “on the table”. It turned out actually no, it wasn’t.

What Swinney told the documentary is he pretty much made it clear to Sturgeon at the time this was a bad idea. “I can remember saying to Nicola as she was formulating the message she was going to convey in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum – was she sure she wanted to say so firmly that she was opening up dialogue about a further referendum. I have to say I was nervous, because I was still concerned by how we were able to motivate people in Scotland when we had just had one (a referendum) in 2014.”

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Now, you may say that a certain person who crops up in politics, Mr Retrospective, is up to his old tricks here, but if we accept the conversation happened, it reflects well on Mr Swinney. As he told the conference, he joined the SNP when he was 15 and is presumably as committed to independence as the most passionate members of the party. But in 2016 he could see that trying to get support for another Scottish referendum was a big ask and pragmatism won over passion, at least it did with him.

I must say: I like John Swinney for this because, on the whole, I like pragmatic politicians, even though there’s quite a few in the SNP having a go at him for it. What the critics are suggesting is that he’s wrong and that, somehow, somewhere, somewhen, Sturgeon really could have exploited the Brexit vote to get another Scottish referendum and win it, if only she’d done things a bit differently. But it’s Swinney who’s right: can you imagine trying to get motivated for another Scottish referendum in 2016 and can you imagine changing your mind? Pity Sturgeon didn’t listen eh?

Mr Swinney is demonstrating his pragmatism in other ways too. When I spoke to Alastair Campbell the other week, he told me he’d bumped into Swinney at a football match and the First Minister told him how much better it would feel to have someone in No10 you could engage with. Mr Swinney has also said Labour is much happier to work with the Scottish government than the Tories were and because Swinney’s a pragmatist and a nice guy, he’ll respond to it I think. The only problem with that is that if the UK Government is being all nice and helpful, it does make it harder to slag them off, which has been the defining SNP strategy for years.

Not that Mr Swinney isn’t willing to give it a go still. In his conference speech, he said Keir Starmer was ushering in “a new era of austerity” and blamed Labour for the Scottish Government's cuts. Only thing is it was the Scottish Government that froze council tax, and agreed big public sector pay deals, and reiterated their commitment to universal benefits. As the Scottish Fiscal Commission put it: “while UK government policies contribute to the pressures on the Scottish budget, much of the pressure comes from the Scottish government’s own decisions”. So: nice try I guess.

(Image: John Major)

But having said that, John Swinney – pragmatic, able – is a big improvement on the ones-that-came-before. I say pragmatic because, although the word independence cropped up in his speech 14 times, the subject was more like a backdrop than front-of-stage. He told Nicola Sturgeon in 2016 he was concerned about trying to motivate people over a referendum, and eight years later he’s clearly still thinking along the same lines.

The fact he’s rolled things back in this way is also a sign, I think, of someone reading the runes pretty well and realising that going large on independence now is not going to change things in 2026. Don’t misunderstand me: John Swinney is still heading for defeat at the next election, just like John Major was heading for defeat in 1996, but at least Swinney can try to be different in one respect. At least he can try to sense where the voters are, and talk with them rather than at them. At least he can try to appear pragmatic and reasonable. At least he can try to limit the damage.