The Scotsman Bulletin Wednesday 09 May 2024 #FMQs
The Scotsman Bulletin Wednesday 09 May 2024 #FMQs
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00:00Hello and welcome to the Scotsman's Daily Bulletin. For Thursday I'm Alan Young, I'm
00:13Deputy Editor of the Scotsman. I'm joined today from Holyrood by our political correspondent
00:18Rachel Emery to take a look ahead to the day's events. Hi Rachel. Good morning. Let's have
00:24a look at the front page first. We lead like most other papers in Scotland today with the
00:32can we call it a cabinet reshuffle? Well perhaps not quite. John Swinney officially sworn in
00:37as First Minister yesterday and his first act was to bring Kate Forbes in as Deputy
00:45First Minister. Elsewhere cabinet roles are pretty much unchanged which has led to a fair
00:53degree of criticism. Today will be a big event because it will be John Swinney's first
01:02First Minister's Questions and that I think is where I want to start with you Rachel.
01:09Just give us a sense I guess of the mood ahead of First Minister's Questions. It has been
01:16a pretty stormy affair certainly in recent times with Humza Yousaf. John Swinney has
01:22made great play of his plea I guess for a less confrontational style of politics as
01:32he tries to build bridges to run this minority government. What are we expecting to see today?
01:40Yes I think given this promise from John Swinney to sort of reach out across the chamber and make
01:45politics less polarising I think we can expect to see today's FMQs being slightly calmer than
01:49it has been in previous weeks for example. He did say that he has been having a great
01:54time on the back benches heckling and shouting from a sedentary position and he won't do it
01:59anymore now that he's First Minister. I'm not sure how long it will last but I'm sure it won't
02:02happen on day one so I assume today will be quite calm and a bit more sort of procedural than it
02:08has been in previous weeks so I think that's what we're going to see today. But as you said yes he's
02:13now unveiled his cabinet. There was suspicions that the cabinet would be slimmed down. While
02:18a couple of ministers have lost their jobs it really isn't that much more slimmed down. It's
02:22very similar to how it looked under Humza Yousaf particularly at the senior cabinet level. The only
02:27difference really being is that Kate Forbes soon brought in and is now Economy Secretary and Deputy
02:31First Minister and Mai McAllen who was Economy, Net Zero and Energy is now just Net Zero and Energy
02:37so that's really the only major difference there's been at a senior level of the cabinet.
02:41If it looks at junior ministers I think the biggest sort of two things there is that
02:46Ivan McKee has been given Business Minister. Now he was a very big backer of Kate Forbes in her
02:52leadership campaign last year and has consistently championed her even in this leadership campaign
02:58so interesting that he has now been given a ministerial job in cabinet and the other interesting
03:04thing is there's now no longer a Minister of Independence. This was a position that was created
03:08by Humza Yousaf to sort of try and show how dedicated he was to the cause of independence
03:14and Jamie Hepburn has been doing that for the last year. Now the main job of the Independence
03:18Minister has been to produce independence papers which have drawn a lot of criticism from other
03:24parties for being I suppose a bit of a waste of money because no one seems to be reading these
03:28independence papers. It's quite interesting that one of the first things John Swinney has done
03:32is to ditch that role altogether. How do you think that's going to play within the party?
03:40Will it be seen as putting independence on the back burner or is he saying that
03:45this is an SNP government where we're all working for independence?
03:49Yes I think the mood of the SNP at the moment does seem to be quite good. I think everyone's
03:54quite happy with how so many people in the cabinet have kept their jobs. I think everyone who was
03:58perhaps a little unhappy before is now implicated by having Kate Forbes brought into cabinet too
04:04so that sort of pairing together seems to please a lot of people and in terms of the SNP at the
04:10moment that seems to be what they're focusing on rather than the fact that the Minister of
04:13Independence is now no longer existing. Of course Alaba Party, the party set up by former First
04:19Minister Alex Salmond, they obviously want to go a lot harder on the call for independence.
04:23They have already put out a statement saying that they're disappointed and saying that the
04:28independence strategy within the SNP is a total mess so they've taken no hesitation to have a
04:33go at the SNP because of this. Indeed, big day ahead, fascinating times. Thanks very much
04:40Rachel. Please keep an eye on scottsman.com throughout the day for all the very latest
04:43news and analysis and if you can please do subscribe then you'll be able to read and
04:49watch absolutely everything. If you're out and about today, it's a lovely day in Edinburgh at
04:53least, please do pick up a copy of the paper from me and from Rachel. It's bye for now. Goodbye.