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And so we have it: a nationalist coronation, as yet another First Minister resigns. John Swinney, formerly Nicola Sturgeon's deputy FM and onetime leader of the SNP himself, has been elected - unopposed - as the new leader of the Scottish National party. Thought to have been parachuted in by the party establishment, Swinney's coronation was almost foiled by 'flatulence in a trance' SNP activist Graeme McCormick who, by some quirk in the SNP's constitution, had enough nominations to stand against the MSP for the leadership. But, at the eleventh hour, the renegade backed down after having 'lengthy and fruitful' talks with Swinney himself. Branded the 'unity' candidate, the new SNP leader is thought to have made a pact with Kate Forbes, who was expected to run against him for the top job. Forbes announced she would not be standing on Thursday, endorsing Swinney instead as offering a vision of 'competent, candid government earning the trust of the people'. Mr S will believe it when he sees it… The Scottish parliament is still to vote Swinney in as First Minister - but before it does, Mr S would be keen to take a look at some of the former leader's worst moments… Covid WhatsApps When Humza Yousaf became First Minister in 2023, he promised Scots that he would usher in a new era of 'openness and transparency'. Then followed three arrests in relation to SNP finances, an £11,000 iPad scandal and, of course, a rather unedifying Covid inquiry that revealed Nats had been routinely deleting their WhatsApp messages - after slamming senior figures in the UK government for doing similar. Awkward… One of the key SNP figures at the heart of the Covid WhatsApp scandal was, you guessed it, Swinney himself. Once it emerged that Sturgeon hadn't retained her pandemic messages, it wasn't long before her former deputy was outed for not holding onto his either. Swinney admitted he had been 'periodically' deleting his message exchanges, adding that to his mind, this approach had always been government policy. Since entering Holyrood in 2007, Swinney said that he'd 'deleted material after I had made sure any relevant information was placed on the official record of the government, and that was the approach I was advised to take'. Golly. However his former boss and then-first minister Alex Salmond was quick to rebuke the claims: Honest John, as John Swinney used to be called, said he was doing this manually and that he said he was doing it since 2007. As First Minister between 2007 and 2014 can I assure everyone that no such policy was in existence in these years and John was doing it off his own back. How curious… Education record An accolade that Mr S is rather sure Swinney won't be putting on his CV is his reputation as one of Scotland's worst education ministers. When he was education secretary between 2016 and 2021, Swinney's tenure was far from a smooth success. He faced two confidence votes, had to scrap plans for his own education bill and was responsible for the Scottish exam results scandal during the pandemic. Sturgeon was adamant she was going to close Scotland's poverty-related education gap - but the former FM's right-hand man was of no great help, with the attainment gap even widening in some areas. Not content with the damage he'd already caused Scotland's schooling, Swinney narrowly faced off a confidence vote in 2020 - after it emerged his Covid scoring system (that graded pupils who were unable to take exams due to restrictions) led to children from poorer areas being penalised. And Swinney presided over Scotland's new 'Curriculum for Excellence' education strategy that, er, saw a remarkable nosedive in schooling standards and international league tables. As the Times Educational Supplement put it, 'it highlighted a disconnect between the ambitions of CfE and the qualifications in upper secondary, where the focus is on traditional exams'. Displaying a disconnect between fantasy and reality? Not the SNP, surely… Named persons law The Scottish government faced immense backlash after it tried to introduce a radical 'Named Person' law in 2016. Its objective was to have a 'named person' act as a point of contact between every child under 18 years old and the authorities. But the planned bill was criticised by judges for making 'perfectly possible' the chance that a young person's confidential information could be disclosed to authorities without the child or their parents knowing. Crikey. Slammed as a 'snooper's charter', the proposals were found to breach human rights laws - namely the right to privacy and a family life - by the Supreme Court. The bill was ditched in 2019 with the clumsy U-turn dubbed a 'complete humiliation'. Its architect? John Swinney.
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