Good morning. The race to be Scotland’s next first minister has begun. Candidates must submit their nominations to the SNP’s national secretary by 6 May. Who will win? Thoughts below.
Also, Jonn Elledge writes on Labour and trains, and Ben Walker explains how some Conservative mayoral candidates are bucking their party’s position in the national polls ahead of Thursday’s local elections.
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The race has quickly been whittled down to two candidates. John Swinney, flag-bearer for the party’s old guard and Nicola Sturgeon acolyte, is the front-runner. Kate Forbes, who is from the party’s right and was narrowly defeated by Yousaf last time, is “actively considering” whether to stand. (Read Jason’s excellent profile of Forbes from last year.) Her allies are already briefing the media that she should enter the race to prevent a Swinney coronation and to give members a proper contest.
The key question here is whether the SNP opts for a continuity candidate, someone to unite the party and soothe its flustered friends in the Scottish Green Party, or someone who represents a change from a party establishment that has overseen a large drop in support. For some, the priority will be that the next leader can strike deals in Holyrood in order to allow them to pass laws and budgets as a minority government.
But then there is the electorate. Labour’s Anas Sarwar has excelled amid the SNP’s solipsistic obsession with independence and gender politics, occupying the political space around the NHS and the cost of living. The New Statesman’s polling model predicts that the SNP would lose 27 MPs if a general election was held tomorrow. Labour would gain all but one.
In an emotionally-racked, meandering resignation speech yesterday, Yousaf notably blamed his exit on “underestimating” the Greens’ anger at his decision last week to ditch the Bute House Agreement – not on the party’s policies or the state of public services. He said that each Scot should get the chance to be first minister for a day, but did not explain why it should have been him.
Poor polling will weigh heavily on the minds of the SNP’s upper echelons in the coming days. The scandal-hit, internally divided party is reminiscent of the Conservatives; they have more in common than either would like to admit. As Labour’s shadow Scotland secretary Ian Murray told the Financial Times, “For Liz Truss, read Humza Yousaf; for Nicola Sturgeon read Boris Johnson; for whoever comes next, read Rishi Sunak.” As I wrote yesterday, the only reason Labour would not have welcomed Yousaf’s fall was that he was such a Labour asset.
The SNP’s suffocating hegemony over Scottish politics is cracking. One Scottish Labour MSP told me that the SNP “felt like the Death Star for years: nothing could hit them”. But the party’s grip on power is slacking. This new reality, and the prospect of opposition in Scotland and losing its position as the third-largest party in Westminster, will shape whatever introspection occurs in the coming weeks.
For now, the momentum is behind Swinney. He has picked up endorsements from the SNP’s current Westminster-based leader Stephen Flynn and its former Westminster-based leader, Ian Blackford, and Scotland’s Education Secretary, Jenny Gilruth. There are concerns that Forbes’ socially conservative views could turn off the party’s activist base. And as a Scottish Labour source said: “Young cardinals vote for old popes. No one in their thirties [Forbes is 34] wants their reputation tarnished with a defeat.”
Still, Swinney will have to convince those in the party – particularly MPs who are facing electoral annihilation later this year – that he will promote the policy and the personnel to head off a bullish Labour.
Freddie’s picks
Great piece from Chris Deerin that takes you inside the SNP as it decides on its next leader.
This piece from Jason is the most revealing profile of Kate Forbes written so far.
Megan Kenyon explains how Labour’s plan for local energy infrastructure will actually work.
“Politics is reasserting its primacy, while Labour marches resolutely into the past.” John Gray offers a prophetic warning to Labour.
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How radical is Labour’s new rail policy, really?
A variant of the word “nationalisation” appears precisely once in the document outlining Labour’s new rail policy – and it’s to say the party won’t do it. “With ten current rolling stock companies owning and leasing trains and carriages worth billions,” argues “Getting Britain Moving: Labour’s Plan to Fix the Railways”, “it would not be responsible for the next Labour Government to take on the cost of renationalising rolling stock as part of our urgent programme of reform.” The newly established Great British Railways will instead continue leasing rolling stock but, by allowing different routes to share, will do so in a more efficient and cuddly way.
This decision to otherwise avoid the term is clearly a deliberate presentational choice. The question is not whether the new rail policy counts as nationalisation: it very clearly does, which is why it’s been widely reported as such. The big question is how radical a policy this really is.
What Labour describes as “biggest reform of our railways for a generation” would see the operation of the British railways almost fully nationalised within the first five-year term of a Labour government. This will be done not through contract buy-outs or other such expensive things, but simply through letting the franchises expire and revert to public management. (The reason it’s only “almost” is because not quite every franchise will have expired.) This has, in fact, happened rather a lot these last few years, as the franchise system created in the 1990s has collapsed, post-pandemic, and the government’s Operator of Last Resort has been forced to fill the gap: Labour’s plan simply means embracing this as a good thing, rather than an annoying necessity.
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