In praise of Kate Forbes’s Christian faith

Politics tends to attract people who consider themselves and their every mundane word and deed an example of great bravery. Like journalism and entertainment, it is an industry constructed around the pleasing myth that, whatever level you’re working at, you are engaged in the business of saving the world. Yet few politicians say much today that is courageous, or even all that original. When every dissenting view, colourful remark, or provocative thought brings with it the threat of cancellation, you have to console yourself with the fiction that saying the same thing as everyone around you is a courageous feat.

So when I say that Kate Forbes has done something courageous, I say it because she has done something no one around her is doing. The SNP politician serves as finance minister of the devolved government in Edinburgh but is out of step with many in her party — and the other parties — in that she is a Christian.