Swinney must ignore the Scottish Greens’ Trump-bashing

When Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney gave his New Year’s address in Edinburgh University’s Old College on Monday, the idea was to put pressure on Holyrood’s opposition parties ahead of the culmination of the budget process over the next month-or-so. ‘Vote for the Scottish budget or the health service suffers’ was the general gist. Yet the briefings that appeared in that morning’s newspapers included a line that ensured the media focus was largely elsewhere. Voting against the budget would ‘feed the forces of anti-politics and populism’. Who did he mean, the media in attendance asked? Can he be clear he’s talking about Elon Musk? And does he think Musk will try to interfere with the Scottish election next year?

Musk isn’t the only outspoken American the Scottish political lot have been concerning themselves with lately. In a funny coincidence, around the time Swinney was being asked how to deal with Musk, Patrick Harvie – the leader of the Scottish Greens, the SNP’s former coalition partners – was busy making demands about president-elect Donald Trump.