John Swinney came to a Glasgow city centre hotel on a slightly chilly 2 June Sunday afternoon to begin the enormous task of pulling the SNP back from the trials and tribulations of the past 18 months. The occasion was the launch of his party’s 2024 general election campaign. He began by admitting that succeeding Humza Yousaf as SNP leader and First Minister had come as a surprise. So too was being faced with fighting a Westminster general election, just two weeks after being acclaimed his party’s new leader. But there he was in front of almost all his Westminster MPs, many MEPs, and the party faithful.
Offering hope from the SNP
As John Swinney took to the podium, the activists rose as one to whoop, cheer, stamp and applaud. For many of the older members, he is perhaps their last chance of seeing the dream of independence realised. If he can hold back the Labour tide that is sweeping the UK and see the SNP hold on to 20+ seats he will have given the dreamers hope. Hope that a good Westminster election can see the SNP cast off the turmoil of recent years. Hope that an invigorated party can attract new talent, more fighting fund money and be the party for Scotland’s young people, who by a big majority currently support the idea of independence. Hope that the SNP can remain the biggest party at Holyrood after the next Scottish Parliament elections, in May 2026
No one in the room was in any doubt that this would be the most important speech of John Swinney’s political life. Nobody expected a barnstorming oration. That’s not his style. He is the archetypal late-middle-aged, middle-class Scotsman. Bald. Soberly dressed in an everyday lounge suit, he could be any Scotsman bound for the golf club bar after work on a Friday evening for a quick one with pals before heading home to a warmly welcoming family, in an orderly home in a nice street. Plain John Swinney is exactly what the party wants right now.
Stand Up for Scotland
The SNP had plastered the slogan – Stand Up for Scotland – around the room. It is a call to arms to the voting public as much as an encouragement to activists to give the next five weeks of campaigning every atom of their time and energy. As the parade of MPs that spoke in the hour before the leader’s speech reiterated, being a party of government concerned solely about Scotland and its future differentiates it most starkly from Labour, Conservative, Lib Dems, Greens, Reform and Alba.
Swinney opened his speech by promising “A future made in Scotland for Scotland.”
Then he tore into the Conservative party, telling the gathering that Scottish voters wanted it gone. He dismissed the introduction of the idea of national service as a desperate move by a desperate party.
Then he promised;
“The national service the SNP will do Scotland will be by getting rid of the Conservative party.” It was a good line, well-crafted and well-delivered.
“Labour,” he said, “is not the same as the Tories. They’re not, but they are giving an awfully good impression of them.”
SNP strategy for the election
The SNP strategy is simple; lead on the benefits it has brought to Scotland, such as free prescriptions and free higher education, and its fight against child poverty, which they say has kept 100k children fed. The party is seeking to take advantage of the huge unpopularity of the Tories in Scotland. So it is throwing resources at all six seats Sunak’s party holds north of the border. Capturing those targets would help compensate for SNP seats lost to Labour and mark out the SNP as the giant killers that drove the Tories from Scotland.
The plan for Labour is to position Starmer’s party as simply a change of management delivering an even harder dose of austerity than the Tories. The hard focus is on the NHS and Labour’s health spokesman, Wes Streeting. He has made no secret of his desire to see more and more private capital and private operators involved with the Health Service. Indeed, he has made the policy a key pillar of Labour’s campaign for government. Swinney knows that the privatisation word touches a raw nerve in Scotland and there is a degree of pride in the country – among voters of all parties – that Scotland’s water was never privatised, and its railway has been brought into public ownership.
“The SNP rejects privatisation of the NHS. Whether that is Tory privatisation or Labour privatisation,” announced John Swinney.
Brexit and Labour’s support for the “hardest of hard Brexits” opened up more space for the Scottish electorate to consider putting an X against the SNP. Highlighting Brexit is good politics for the SNP. Not only is it the only big party unequivocally pro-EU, but the B word stirs up feelings of democracy robbed among Scots and reminds them what they have so recently lost. On Brexit, Labour canvassers on the doorstep have no answer to the SNP’s rock-solid Europeanism.
A lack of steadiness in Labour
To emphasise his steadiness and the Labour leader’s lack of it, Mr Swinney took a swipe at Keir Starmer’s recent record of backtracking on previous commitments.
“People are crying out for political leadership that sticks to its principles,” cried Swinney, in full Honest John mode.
John Swinney’s speech was workmanlike, free of hyperbole and, at the end, big on independence. He called for party unity. He drew clear battle lines. He didn’t say much that was new, but that was not the purpose of the day. The purpose was to say, “I’m John. You can trust me.”
Swinney and Flynn double act can move the dial towards the SNP
Swinney though is not going into this election the lone leader. He has at his side the formidable Stephen Flynn, the incumbent MP for Aberdeen South and leader of the SNP group at Westminster. Flynn’s star has risen since becoming Westminster leader. Flynn has been quick on his feet at prime minister’s questions, frequently spearing Sunak and Starmer with witty and well-crafted questions. He’s a skilled TV and radio performer. Many see him as a future leader. He and Swinney are not seen as rivals. That may happen in time. Right now, they are bonded in common cause, fighting to keep their party the single most powerful political force in Scotland.
When Flynn came up to speak, just a few minutes before Swinney, the entire room rose to cheer him. They did it again when he’d finished his speech. The runes are that a Swinney and Flynn double act has all the potential to turn the dial the away from hopeless defeat towards not only survival but SNP revival.
Labour has a fight on its hands
In Glasgow on Sunday, John Swinney probably did enough to ensure that the SNP makes a decent fist of fighting the election. He was less sure-footed when answering media questions, though he did direct the membership to treat the media with respect and to hear their questions in silence. They did as they were telt, which is a sign of how much they respect Plain John. It was also a sign to Scotland that John Swinney is what it says on the can, a decent, well-mannered, ordinary sort of a bloke who has standards and expects others to have similar standards. He set the tone and the style of the SNP campaign.
This was a sober SNP affair. Gone was the razzamatazz of the Sturgeon era. The chippy intelligence of Alex Salmond long forgotten. The diffidence of Humza Yousaf consigned to history.
Only a fool would try to predict what Scotland’s politics will look like on the morning of 5 July 2024. One thing is for sure. There will now be an epic battle. Labour has a fight on its hands. Swinney and Flynn have thrown down the gauntlet.
Let the games begin.
More on politics
Remember photographic voting ID is now law!
You must show an approved form of photo ID to vote at general elections and some others.
To find out more, visit:
