Whoever wins the SNP leadership race, the party loses

None of the candidates for the SNP leadership has declared yet, but it is shaping up to be a classic two horse race between the former leader, and Nicola Sturgeon bag man, John Swinney and the socially conservative former finance secretary, Kate Forbes. But in this race, they are both losers before they start. To turn to a chess metaphor, the SNP is caught in a zugzwang: they have to make a move but every move puts them in a worse position. 

First: the veteran ‘safe pair of hands’, John Swinney. He’s the not-so-fresh face of the ‘old guard’ who effectively blocked Humza Yousaf’s deal with Alex Salmond’s Alba. Swinney is the latest attempt by the SNP establishment to find a continuity candidate who’ll keep the faith of Saint Nicola of Trans and restore relations with the Scottish Green Party. 

Swinney’s rival in this race-that-hasn’t-begun, Kate Forbes is – shock – a practising Christian. Worse, she has said that, while as a democrat she accepts abortion and gay marriage, she did not personally believe in either. More importantly, on what is currently the most divisive issue in the SNP, she is pro-Cass report and doesn’t believe that transwomen are women. 

Despite being attacked as a transphobe and a bigot, Forbes ran Yousaf very close in last year’s race to replace Sturgeon, winning the backing of 48 per cent of SNP members against Yousaf’s 52 per cent. This was probably because the former finance secretary is articulate, politically astute and seems to be pretty popular with voters. 

In a head-to-head with Swinney she would probably wipe the floor with him. It’s not hard. All she needs to do is refer to what happened when her opponent was SNP leader back in the early noughties. He was by common agreement a disaster. Swinney finally stood down in 2004 after the SNP crashed to less than 20 per cent in the European elections that year. At the 2005 general election, the SNP won only six seats against Scottish Labour’s 41. That is the kind of ball park the SNP will be entering under Swinney. ‘Continuity won’t cut it,’ as Forbes famously said last year. 

However, it’s not clear that Forbes can cut it either. Swinney has one very important card to play in this game: the Green one. Since he is a ‘progressive’ who supports the stalled Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill and Self-ID, Swinney would likely have the support of Patrick Harvie and the seven Green MSPs in the parliamentary vote to install him as First Minister. Forbes would definitely not. When Harvie accused Yousaf last week of ‘capitulating to the most reactionary backward-looking forces in the SNP’ there are no prizes for guessing who he meant. 

To become First Minister, you must win a majority of all 129 MSPs in the Holyrood parliament. Even with the support of the Alba MSP, Ash Regan, Forbes would only manage 64 votes – not enough to defeat the 64 votes of the opposition parties if the Greens vote with them. I’m assured that, unlike in a confidence motion, the Presiding Officer does not get a casting vote in the ballot for First Minister. This means that, in this hypothetical scenario, she might require the Conservatives to support her or abstain.

Now, as it happens, this is pretty much what happened when Salmond scraped home in the vote for First Minister in 2007. The Tories under their then leader, Annabel Goldie, abstained and allowed him to become First Minister despite having a minority of MSPs. But times change. Politics is a far more fractious and embittered place right now and the thought of Forbes becoming leader on the strength of Tory votes might be too much for the SNP to take. 

So which way will they go? With continuity Swinney or conservative Kate? I think the choice may simply be too much for the SNP right which is currently shell-shocked by the resignation of Yousaf and rows over transgenderism. Indeed, we could be about to see the most serious factional split in the SNP in 45 years, since the 79 Group was ejected by the party leadership. One of the 79 Group leaders was a callow youth called Alex Salmond.

Watch Lucy Dunn, Katy Balls, and Iain Macwhirter discuss Humza Yousaf’s resignation on Spectator TV: