This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter.

Stephen Flynn should brush up his Shakespeare, specifically Macbeth. Though he’d be well-advised attending to his reading around the true history of the ill-fated and loathed Scottish king as well.

For Flynn brings no character from literature or the past to mind more than Macbeth. Macbeth, after all, was a man of rank and grasping ambition so unrelievedly self-centred and filled with his own false sense of greatness that he would stab his dearest friends to death, assassinate the leader who lifted him from nowhere, and eventually bring himself low, fashioning his own demise, leaving a reputation stained in the pages of history.

First, Flynn manufactured the end of his rival Ian Blackford to assume power as the SNP’s Westminster leader. Blackford denied he was pushed, but only the gullible took that as anything other than a wisp of cloth to maintain party unity. Flynn has gained a reputation since for overestimating his talents. Though bluster and a big mouth can take folk far in politics.

Now, Flynn has fomented a tawdry exercise to remove a sitting SNP MSP – a ‘friend’ one would imagine – so he can run for Holyrood. Once Flynn is in Holyrood, John Swinney – or whoever is in charge – better watch for the knife in the dark.

Read more Unspun from Neil Mackay:

Flynn intends to keep both jobs and sit as an MP and MSP. The practice of double-jobbing isn’t just a matter denounced by the SNP – which leaves Flynn looking thoroughly, though unsurprisingly, hypocritical. It is a matter which spits in the electorate’s face. 

Are we to accept part-time representatives? Clearly, power is of greater importance to Flynn than either his constituents or democracy.

Let’s park the fact that the SNP has previously told members who want to run for Holyrood to surrender their Westminster seat. If the SNP wishes to change its rules like soiled underwear that’s a matter for those in the nationalist clique. Though, it’s hardly the mark of a party of integrity.

What really stinks is Flynn’s casual disregard for a co-worker – as that’s what Audrey Nicoll is, the woman he wants to oust so he can take her Aberdeen constituency. Her life and employment are seemingly unimportant.


What a shoddy party the SNP is to allow such a move. How greedy the heart of the man who would do this. Do we not want representatives with honour? With empathy? Or is ruthlessness the characteristic we value most?

Ambition is often a force for good – without ambition we’d achieve nothing. But ambition must be tempered by decency. Anyone who achieves ambitions by scrambling over the bodies of their victims is nearer contempt than admiration. 

Indeed, like Macbeth, ambition is pretty much all Flynn has going for him. “I have no spur,” Macbeth says in the play, “to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself and falls on th’other”.

It’s a complicated metaphor that Shakespeare employs, but what the playwright means is that Macbeth is like a horse-rider with no other skill save ambition. That ambition, though, Macbeth knows at heart, will be his undoing.

It will over-leap itself – be too much, too stark, too cruel – and so he’ll eventually fall from his horse. As we know, Macbeth came a cropper in rather spectacular ways, ending his days alone and unloved.

There are many in the SNP frankly disgusted at Flynn’s antics. Is this big, bold boy so important that a workaday humble MSP must fall for him to advance? It seems Flynn thinks so. 

Others speak highly of him, like Kate Forbes. On which side one lands on a question of morality is often instructive of character.

It wasn’t enough for Macbeth to become Thane of Cawdor, however, as the witches promised him. He couldn’t rest until he became “King hereafter”.

It seems unlikely that Flynn wishes a comfortable berth at Holyrood for the mere good of his health. The ambitious eye is always attuned to the main chance. The SNP are likely heading for a bit of a thumping at the next election. John Swinney could well be dethroned.

Read Neil Mackay every Friday in the Unspun newsletter.


Who, one wonders, might lead the regicidal gang? And afterward, Flynn would be dragged ever so reluctantly to the vacant throne by his hangers-on. 

And there he would be: leader of, if not a minority government, then the opposition in Holyrood ready for a run at taking control next time around. Politics is a long, bloody and unseemly game.

To get to the top – whatever the ‘top’ may be in his eyes – Flynn would have trampled over the political bodies of Blackford, Nicholl and Swinney to get there. Thane of Glamis, and Cawdor, and King hereafter.

There’s something rather rotten about all this. Is a man of such amorality, such Machiavellianism, really fit to lead a party let alone a government and country? In this day and age, evidently, the answer is ‘yes’. In this day and age, the worst of us can and do rule.

As for the historic Macbeth, it’s rather pleasing to recall that he met his end in Aberdeenshire – the site of Flynn’s Holyrood gambit. 

The real Macbeth rode off expecting victory in the Battle of Lumphanan. Instead, he was cut down. After his death, there were few who mourned Macbeth, and his reputation lay in such tatters that an English writer could turn him into the ultimate villain, and a symbol and warning of low ambition.

Neil Mackay is The Herald’s Writer-at-Large. He’s a multi-award winning investigative journalist, author of both fiction and non-fiction, and a filmmaker and broadcaster. He specialises in intelligence, security, crime, social affairs, cultural commentary, and foreign and domestic politics.