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Scotsman Daily Bulletin Tuesday 17 October
Transcript
00:00 Hello and welcome to the Scotsman's Daily Video Bulletin for Tuesday, October the 17th.
00:11 My name's Dale Miller. I'm Head of News at the Scotsman and I'm joined by our political
00:16 editor Alistair Grant. Alistair, coming from a very cavernous P&J in Aberdeen.
00:21 Yep, yep. Coming from the P&J arena in Aberdeen. Like you say, it's massive. It seems like
00:27 it's own kind of dystopian world at the moment. I think probably a bit too big for the SNP
00:32 now. I think in a sense because this is one of the smallest party conferences they've
00:37 had in quite a few years actually. So I think they feel like they're kind of knocking around
00:41 in it a little bit. It's probably a little bit too big for them.
00:45 Very interesting. I've seen some photos on social of a few empty seats in venues, etc.
00:49 I've never had a good look at a party conference. We saw it at the Tory conference just about
00:54 a week and a half ago as well. Look, before we get into the conference itself, let's talk
00:59 about the front page of the Scotsman today. It was hard not to lean on issues linked back
01:05 into the SNP and Humza Yousaf. The First Minister being urged to pull out all the stops and
01:10 personally intervene to avert more school strikes. It was confirmed on Monday that Unison
01:16 had voted, Unison members, nine out of 10 had voted for a rolling program of strikes
01:22 effectively. We're going to see these strikes if they go ahead, move incrementally around
01:27 different school council areas. We'll get those details in the next couple of days if
01:32 a better pay offer isn't put to Unison, GMB and Unite also to make up their minds on whether
01:39 they want to proceed with strike action today as well. So plenty happening and that'll be
01:44 concerning for parents. But also we had a mini exclusive that Alistair
01:49 delivered and it's on the fact that Humza Yousaf will make an arts and culture funding
01:54 announcement in his keynote speech today. He's also committed $300 million to the NHS
02:00 over the next three years to try and get waiting lists down. Plenty in your Scotsman today
02:05 if you haven't picked up a copy. Alistair, it's the third day of SNP conference. You
02:11 talked about the SNP kicking around a bit in the venue, but how has it been? What's
02:16 been the mood like there over the past couple of days?
02:19 So I think it's slightly flat, the mood, but I wouldn't have said it was entirely downbeat.
02:25 You know, it's kind of, I think it's been obviously a difficult time for the SNP. They've
02:29 had this ongoing police investigation. We're not that far out from that by-election in
02:33 Rutherglen and Hamilton West in which we saw a 20% swing from the SNP to Labour. So they've
02:40 had a number of troubles. They've also got some problems with party unity, figures like
02:44 Fergus Ewing, the former SNP minister, has been quite outspoken about the direction of
02:50 the party over certain issues, its relationship with the Greens and Holyrood. And we also
02:54 had that high profile defection by Lisa Cameron, the MP who crossed the chamber basically from
03:01 the SNP to the Tories. Really unprecedented. I think it's the first time an SNP politician
03:05 has switched to a unionist party. So quite a kind of dramatic move. So you've got all
03:10 that swirling in the background. And this is obviously Humza Yousaf's first party conference,
03:16 first SNP conference as leader. So he really wants to kind of put his stamp on it. He's
03:21 obviously had a very difficult time since he came into the job. He's been constantly
03:24 on the back foot, constantly dealing with negative headlines. He's not had all that
03:28 much opportunity to put forward his own vision and to lay out exactly what he stands for.
03:33 So he's very much, I imagine he'll be wanting to do that in today's speech. And on the first
03:38 day of conference on the Sunday, you had that debate about the party's independence strategy,
03:42 which I think in the end was quite fudged. It was very vague wording and essentially
03:47 amounts to pushing for another referendum if the SNP wins a majority of Scottish seats
03:52 in the next general election. Which once you remove all the rhetoric and the impressive
03:57 sounding language is exactly the same as the SNP's strategy at other elections. So in a
04:01 way, not much has changed. But the fact they had that debate on Sunday and they've now,
04:06 you know, SNP members have now had a chance to vote on that, I think allows Humza Yousaf
04:11 to draw a line under it, which is what he wants. He wants to move away from these endless
04:15 debates about process, about the process of securing Scotland's independence. And he wants
04:20 to move on to more substantive issues. And whether that's around independence, the argument
04:25 for independence, the why, as opposed to the how, which I think is how Neil Gray, the Scottish
04:30 government minister, put it the other day. It just allows him to talk about something
04:33 else other than process, which is what the SNP has been bogged down in for years now.
04:38 So I think, yeah, I think a flat conference in the sense that the atmosphere is not the
04:41 same as, you know, you saw those years post the 2014 referendum when Nicola Sturgeon was
04:47 getting an almost rock star reception on the SNP conference stage. And she was just looking
04:52 out over a sea of party members, you know, quite incredible images. And it's not at all
04:56 like that anymore. But I think if you wanted to put a more kind of positive or optimistic
05:01 slant in it, I suppose the SNP is just returning to being a more normal political party. This
05:06 feels like more of a normal conference. Those years post 2014 were extremely unusual and
05:12 probably not that sustainable.
05:14 Alistair, we'll get to, I'll ask you about what we may expect from Hamza Yousaf's keynote
05:20 speech today. But I just want to flag that Connor Matchett has written up a poll. We
05:26 did a word cloud poll, which was effectively in conjunction with Savanta. Over a thousand
05:33 voters choosing the best word that they thought described each of the three current party
05:40 leaders for the main parties here in Scotland. And useless was the term most commonly chosen
05:46 as a single word to describe Hamza Yousaf. He's still got a public image issue to turn
05:52 around. That poll would suggest you can read the results of that now on the scotsman.com
05:58 website. That story's live. On his keynote speech, fair to say there's a bit of pressure
06:03 on him to deliver something good.
06:05 Yeah, I think there is pressure. I mean, it is his first speech as party leader to an
06:10 SNP conference. So there'll be that kind of aspect of it. As I say, he'll be wanting to
06:14 move away from those arguments about process. There will be a focus on independence. Of
06:18 course there will be. This is an SNP conference. But I think we're also expecting to draw on
06:23 issues like the economy, the cost of living crisis. As you alluded to earlier, expecting
06:28 some kind of announcement around arts and culture funding. That's obviously been a very
06:32 big issue in the last couple of weeks in terms of the funding cut to Creative Scotland and
06:36 the impact that would have on arts organisations. So I think you should expect some detail.
06:42 But I think one of the problems the SNP and the Scottish government has is there just
06:46 isn't really that much money at the moment. So in terms of big, expensive policy announcements,
06:50 we don't have a huge amount of expectation around that.
06:53 I think this is really a chance for Hamza Yousaf to outline his vision, his vision for
06:58 the party, what he wants to achieve, exactly what he stands for. It's been a very difficult
07:02 time for him going into this conference personally with the situation with his parents-in-law
07:08 who were trapped in Gaza in the aftermath of the Hamas attack on sovereign Israel. You
07:13 can really see the personal toll that's taken. And I think there's been a lot of sympathy
07:16 for him in Holyrood and beyond in the way he's managed to cope with that. So I think
07:21 there'll be a lot on his mind, but he'll really want to present his own vision and put his
07:24 stamp on the SNP conference. And I think I'd also expect some kind of message around party
07:29 unity. You've had those divisions, people like, as I mentioned earlier on, Fergus Ewing,
07:34 but he's not the only one who has concerns about that relationship with the Green Party
07:38 in Holyrood. You've got Lisa Cameron, and you've just got this kind of wider sense that
07:43 perhaps there's been a certain amount of unhappiness within the SNP in recent months. I think he'll
07:48 probably want to address that issue of party unity and attempt to bring people back together.
07:53 And I think you saw yesterday at conference on the Monday when Nicola Sturgeon arrived,
07:58 she very much stole the limelight from Hamza Yousaf when she was here. I was actually up
08:03 in the balcony. I had a really great view of that media scrum around her. It was just
08:08 crazy, the amount of attention she still manages to capture. She's still got that kind of star
08:13 power status as a politician. So I think Hamza Yousaf will very much want to put his stamp
08:19 on things, I think, today.
08:20 Hamza, speaking from 4pm, you'll be able to get all the latest in the wake of that speech
08:26 at scotsman.com, news and analysis of what he's had to say. Please follow us on Facebook,
08:32 Instagram and Twitter. And go out and buy a copy of the paper tomorrow. It'll have all
08:36 the fallout and wrap up from SNP conference as it finishes today. Thanks very much.
08:43 Thanks.
08:44 Thanks.
08:45 Thanks.
08:45 Thanks.
08:50 [MUSIC]