The Steamie - First Minister John Swinney chats to The Scotsman
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00:00Hello and welcome to the Steamie, the Scotsman's politics podcast. I'm Alistair Graham, the
00:04Scotsman's political editor, and I'm joined today by David Ball, the Scotsman's deputy
00:07political editor, Rachel Avery, the Scotsman's politics correspondent, and by a very special
00:14guest, John Swinney, the First Minister. We're sitting here in your office in the Scottish
00:18Parliament. How are you? I'm well, I'm great. It's probably the key moment of the week for
00:24me that I've done First Minister's Questions. It's always like feeling like the respite
00:28moment, and then it all starts again later on this afternoon. First Minister, you were
00:33eyeing up a gentler life, it's fair to say, before Humza Yousaf's resignation last year
00:37changed everything. You've spoken before about having to be satisfied that you could manage
00:43as a family if you became First Minister. You've got a young son, your wife Elizabeth
00:47has MS. Nine months in, how's that going? Has there been a moment where you regretted
00:53coming back into the political front line? No, there's not been a moment I've regretted
00:56coming back in, but it is a constant juggle. I've obviously got a very demanding, busy
01:04programme, my son has a very demanding, busy programme as well, and we basically survive
01:12with the assistance of a lot of friends who ferry Matthew about when I'm not there to
01:18do so. I'm the only driver in the house nowadays. So we're managing, but it's a lot of juggling.
01:23But then that's no different to anybody else. Everyone else is juggling their lives, and
01:27we just have to do likewise. But I have not a single moment of regret about becoming First
01:33Minister, not one. Looking ahead to the 2026 election, obviously it's a while away, but
01:39we're very much ramping up now. Shona Robison, she warned the other day about securing cross-party
01:46support for the Budget, it was important to prove the Scottish Parliament works as an
01:50institution, but she warned about populist politicians entering Parliament in 2026 who
01:56quite often attack the political institutions themselves. Is that a concern you share, populist
02:01sort of politicians entering here, and will you have to defend Holyrood against that sort
02:06of threat to devolution? I think that's a very real possibility, and I agree with what
02:11Shona has said about these issues. One of the things, when the King and the Queen came
02:18at the end of September, to the 25th anniversary commemoration event in Parliament, I had to
02:26respond to the King's speech. And I quoted Winnie Ewing and the first words that she
02:32put on the official record of the Scottish Parliament back in May 1999. And Winnie said
02:40that she hoped, her hope for the Parliament, was that members would come together, we would
02:46work to create cohesion and unity within the country, that it didn't matter where people
02:51came from, we would all be in a community together, we would work together, you would
02:58be a welcoming country. And I quoted that, and then I said, without exception, for 25 years,
03:06I would say that every single member of the Scottish Parliament lived up to that aspiration
03:11from Winnie Ewing, regardless of their politics, every one of them, without question, every
03:16one of them. And I suppose I'm left wondering now, will that be the case in the future?
03:22Because obviously we see political forces coming forward, I listened to quite a bit
03:27of what is now, the Conservatives, a few weeks ago, really took aim at a very modest policy
03:35proposal of the government, to extend concessions travel to asylum seekers, to give people
03:41some mobility in our society. I thought that was pretty straightforward, I could visualise
03:48an example from my own constituency life, I went out one day to a venture at the Old
03:58Elle airfield, it was a community event, and two asylum seekers from Perth were doing a
04:07charity collection there for Ukrainian support. It was all part of a Ukrainian support effort
04:15that Morris Leslie, a tremendous entrepreneur in my constituency, was taking forward.
04:21And it just made me think, these two lads have to be driven there by somebody else,
04:25someone giving them a lift, because it's on a bus route, but it's outside Perth.
04:30And I thought, if they had a bus pass, they could have done that under their own steam,
04:33what else could they do? Who else could they help? I thought it was quite straightforward,
04:39the Tories took aim at that, and I thought, oh my goodness, that's a portent of things to come,
04:45because the Conservatives are visually trying to ape reform, to avoid being consumed by reform,
04:53and I think they're about to be consumed by reform, despite all their efforts to try to
04:59mimic them. So I'm a little bit worried about that. I've always viewed this institution as a
05:07gathering place of people from all parts of the country, to be the real gathering,
05:12inclusive place, and that's the type of country I want to live in. And I worry about that in years
05:16to come. If we stick to reform just for a second, polls recently suggest they could win up to a
05:22dozen seats at the election next year, which will dramatically change how the Parliament looks.
05:28In terms of just how things would work in the Parliament if there was that many
05:32MSPs from reform, do you think it will have a big impact on the day-to-day workings of Parliament,
05:37and how debates go? It just depends on, I would say it depends on how others react to that.
05:43Because one of the things that I'm really pleased about just now, is that on the basis of what we
05:52know just now, the Government's budget is going to be supported by the Liberal Democrats and the
05:57Conservatives. Now when we sat down to plan the budget, one of my requirements, you can say these
06:08things when you're the First Minister, one of my stipulations in the budget process is I wanted
06:12this to be supported by as many people as possible. We wanted to set out a set of provisions that were
06:18broad and encompassing, that could reach lots of people. So we deliberately constructed a budget
06:25that, Sean Robinson led a lot of detailed discussions with Ivan McKee, with all the
06:30other parties, listened to what was on the minds of the other parties, what things mattered to them,
06:37so that we could essentially draw together a programme that was as inclusive as possible.
06:44So real-terms increase for core local government funding, better support for housing,
06:54strong settlement for health services, particularly strong settlement for mental health,
06:59climate action, support for active travel, these were all the things that came out in the
07:04conversations with others. So we constructed a programme designed to be as inclusive as possible.
07:10I would say that was our reaction to some of the situation, you know, we've just become a
07:15minority government again, our behaviour's got to change, it's had to change. Can't just go on
07:20thinking that you can just snap your fingers and 65 votes will come along, you've got to change
07:25your behaviour to get some of that support. And now we've got there, we've got, I'm really,
07:32really pleased that the Liberal Democrats and the Greens have indicated they'll support
07:38the budget. Now that to me is a really good indication that some parties are prepared to
07:45look at things differently, and I suppose that's my answer to your question, Rachel, that
07:51parties will have to think about their reaction to reform, because, you know, there'll be
07:58things that reform will argue for, that there's no way I would put them in a Scottish government
08:03budget, absolutely no way, so I want to be as inclusive as I can, but not that inclusive.
08:09So things have got to be confronted, and I think that's the choice that faces Parliament.
08:15We've got an awful lot to get through, I'm not trying to rush you.
08:18So you want me to, you want me to, concise answers, begin to sound like the Presiding Officer.
08:24I wondered, have you had any conversations with Nicola Sturgeon about whether she will stand again
08:29in 2026? That's something for Nicola to set out, not for me to make announcements on her behalf,
08:35she'll make her own plans clearly. It sounds like you have had conversations. It's up to Nicola to
08:40set out her plans and her thinking. Just to move on to your kind of record in government, and to
08:46touch on health to begin with. In recent days, you set out the Scottish Government's latest plans
08:51to reform the NHS, to strengthen and renew it, but we've had people like, or bodies like Unison,
08:57which represents tens of thousands of workers in the Scottish Health Service,
09:01saying that your speech promised nothing staff haven't heard before. I think it's fair to you
09:06that staff in the NHS, they're fed up, they're exhausted. What do you say to them?
09:11I recognise the burdens that staff in the NHS are carrying, and I'd be the first to acknowledge that
09:16and to respect that, and I've seen that in a whole variety of different interactions. I saw it most
09:21directly when I went to visit the emergency department of Edinburgh Orphanage just after
09:27New Year, and I saw, you know, right up close just how difficult the situation was to be managed in
09:34there. So I'm conscious of that. That's why I want to demonstrate the visual, active, engaged
09:42leadership to address that. Now, we're in a situation just, if we can look over the, you
09:48started off your question there Andrew, to say you want to talk about our record in government.
09:52I could go back over moments in our record where the health service was performing, you know,
09:59superbly, and where waiting times were, you know, much lower, and where the throughput of cases
10:08and the performance of the system was really much stronger. But I think some things have changed.
10:13We've had 14 years of austerity, we've had a Covid pandemic, and we've got a population that
10:19over the course of 18 years has become more predominantly an older population. The older
10:26population has grown over that 18 years, and with that comes a much greater demand for healthcare.
10:33So circumstances change, and we've got to adapt and reform and renew to address that,
10:38which is what my speech last Monday was all about. The UK government has said that private hospitals
10:46provide NHS patients in England with as many as 1 million extra appointments. I know you attacked
10:51Labour for these plans during the general election of using private healthcare to
10:57help people in the NHS. You haven't really spoken of utilising that yourself, why would we look at that?
11:04What I want to make sure we can do is that we maximise the capacity of the National Health
11:11Service. Now a lot of what I've set out has been about making sure we use the capacity more
11:16effectively. So we don't do, for example, a lot of regional planning about healthcare for
11:25elective activity, for example. Although increasingly now, because of the success of
11:31ventures such as the National Treatment Centre in Inverness, constituents of mine are now going
11:39from Perthshire up to Inverness for treatment, because they've made such headway at the National
11:44Treatment Centre in Inverness. We need to do more of that. We need to be looking for where is the
11:49spare capacity around the country where we can, and also where's the spare capacity, how we can
11:56maximise the use of the capacity that we've got, rather than on a hospital by hospital basis, but
12:04over a regional area. And these are some of the improvements that will come in as part of the
12:08planning that we are undertaking. Now the Health Secretary and I are involved every week intently
12:15on driving this process. So he and I are working very closely together to make sure
12:22that we turn the aspirations that I set out in my speech on Monday into a practical reality.
12:29Speaking of the Health Secretary there, is Kate Forbes going to replace him?
12:32Is she going to replace Noreen as Health Secretary?
12:35No.
12:35Okay, fair enough.
12:36She's doing a good job as the Economy Secretary and Deputy First Minister, and Neil is doing a
12:41good job in the Health Secretary.
12:42And that's what's happening in the future, there's been reports that it's in the cards.
12:45Well, you're a newspaper journalist that's speculating about lots of things. You should
12:51know there's a thing called speculation, but I've got a cabinet team that's performing really well.
12:56And if you think about it, people would have said a little while ago,
13:04that it was said, possibly in your newspaper, that the government had a difficult relationship
13:11with business. I don't think you'd get that attitude now. Things have changed, we've got a
13:15much stronger presence in the economy. Why is that? Because I've got a Deputy First Minister
13:20who's leading that at my request as the investment champion within the government.
13:24So that's a huge strength, because the economic foundations of my programme are fundamental.
13:30I need the economy to be successful, to support the investments I want to make to eradicate child
13:37poverty and to improve our public services. So all of these things have got to work in harmony,
13:42and I've got the people who are doing it.
13:44Well, if we move just onto education quickly, there's a couple of questions about higher
13:48education. Do you think in the current climate it's appropriate for a Scottish University
13:52principal to get £119,000 pay rise? That's what's happened in Stirling University.
13:58And if you look at Dundee University, it's going through a serious financial crisis at the moment.
14:04How do you feel a university like Dundee was to close down on your watch?
14:11I think the first thing I have to say to those two points is that universities operate as
14:18independent institutions. They are not government controlled institutions, so they've got their own
14:23governance. Indeed, Parliament has made it very clear it wants the universities to have
14:28their own independent governance. So the question of remuneration for a principal
14:35is for the governance of the university to explain that and to justify that.
14:41As regards Dundee University, I'm obviously really concerned about the situation at Dundee.
14:45I don't like what I'm hearing is coming out, and I'm very worried for the situation there,
14:54and I'm worried for staff. They're having a very anxious time here. We have in place
15:04Scots Funding Council that acts essentially on the government's behalf in engaging with
15:10universities on an ongoing basis, and I know the Funding Council is actively engaged with
15:17the University of Dundee on these issues, and obviously they'll advise me about the
15:24impact of the situation. I think what I'd say specifically about the University of Dundee,
15:30the University of Dundee has got an absolutely phenomenal international reputation on so many
15:36aspects of science, particularly in the life sciences. They're a huge generator of research
15:42and activity, and I'm absolutely and wholly committed to making sure the University of
15:48Dundee is able to continue to do that. Would you step in as a government?
15:52I've got, the reason why I've, sorry for the long answer, but I've gone through
15:56all those points with Rachel, is that the Funding Council essentially has to determine those issues
16:02because of the way the law works. The law prohibits me actually from doing that,
16:07but the Funding Council can obviously, they're the interlocutor with the University of Dundee,
16:14and obviously we talk to the Funding Council on a regular basis, but I think the point I made to
16:19Rachel, which I wouldn't want to be missed, is that I absolutely value and cherish the
16:27University of Dundee and its significance within Scotland and the Scottish economy and our
16:33international reputation, so I want to make sure that continues in the years to come.
16:38Just on higher education, would you ever be willing to discuss the possibility of a higher
16:43education funding model that did not include free tuition for Scottish undergrads, or would you echo
16:49Alex Salmond's words that rocks will melt when the sun will please you, that happened?
16:52I'm wholly committed to maintaining a tuition fee free environment in Scotland, I think it's
17:00the right model of access to higher education for Scotland, it's part of the firmament of Scottish
17:07society and it matters to me. Even though it's part of the, well some would argue that it's part
17:11of the problem, part of the financial crisis that universities have seen. I don't think that's the
17:16case, I think what universities demonstrate, universities to a varying extent have a varying
17:29level of contribution to their overall financial situation from government, so for some universities
17:34the level of government contribution is very, very much the minority of their finances. There'll be
17:41others who are at a different end of the spectrum, but I think the way in which we fund our universities
17:50is robust and I want to make sure that we maintain the free access to higher education.
17:57Let's move on to councils for a wee bit. Now there's some surveys suggesting that councils
18:01could be having an increase in tax of about 20%, I mean Perth and Ross in your own constituency
18:07looking at sort of quite high tax rises. Now Kate Borges has said that the funding
18:13deals mean that there shouldn't be these massive council tax rises anticipated.
18:17What's your thoughts there, do you think that will happen? I agree with what Kate has said. I think
18:24local government, if you look at the situation that we face today, I've seen some pretty
18:36hostile reactions from local government to government budgets over my time and
18:43the local government reaction to the budget this time around has been pretty welcoming.
18:48On two levels, first of all, local government, and I appreciate this, have acknowledged that
18:56the commitments I gave COSLA that there would be a substantive engagement about the budget
19:02process long before the budget was determined had been fulfilled. So from my personal point of view,
19:09I gave them a commitment, you'll get good engagement with the government, and they said
19:12well we've got it. So that matters to me that they feel that because I want to have a good
19:17relationship with local government. And secondly, substantively, we got asked to deliver a real
19:21terms increase in local government core funding and we delivered that. So no big case of that?
19:30So actually, I think if you had a quiet conversation with council leaders where they were not being
19:39bound by certain things, they would say to you, we got a better settlement than we thought we were
19:43going to get. So that means, I think that's the case, that's what they say to me as well in my
19:50private moments. Possibly they might think these were reckless conversations to have with me,
19:56but they've had them. And I think as a consequence that means council tax increases don't need to be
20:02as high as they should. But I think, I understand the need for there to be increases in council tax,
20:07but I think the lower the better. Is 10% too high? I think it is, yes. So you don't want to see any
20:14council in Scotland... I don't think that's necessary, to be honest. So I think it would
20:22be, obviously I prefer to be lower than that, and I don't think that's necessary. What's the
20:27upper limit, do you think? You've got one nearly specific answer here, so I think that's perhaps
20:34pushing it a bit too far. You've obviously said that eradication of child poverty is your
20:38government's number one priority, you've been pretty unashamed about that. For the best women
20:43in the world, have we not been here before with the promise to substantially eliminate that
20:47poverty-related attainment gap by 2026? I mean it sounds great, it makes for good headlines, but
20:53is it actually realistic? It is. But if you go back, David, to when we came into government in
21:002007, the issue of child poverty was not a critical issue on the political agenda,
21:10because child poverty levels were much lower. Why was that the case? This is where I'm going to
21:15perhaps depart from the kind of scriptural extent for a politician, but what Gordon Brown
21:21had taken forward as Chancellor and as Prime Minister, taken forward again by Alistair
21:26Darling at the time, was basically eroding child poverty and it was reducing it. And the combination
21:31of what we were doing in the Scottish government and what the Labour government was doing in London
21:36was helping to reduce child poverty. We've then had 14 years of austerity, and it's just gone
21:41in the opposite direction. And I recognise the criticality of resolving the issue of child
21:51poverty, because if you don't, and I saw this vividly in my period as Education Secretary,
21:58that I could put resources directly into schools in areas of deprivation to try and help the
22:04situation. And I'm doubting people out there funding an attainment challenge will undoubtedly
22:08help the situation. But children were still turning up at school hungry, and they weren't
22:20able to get access to a whole range of other opportunities because of poverty to enable them
22:26to move on and get the best of their education. So it left me with the indelible sense that you
22:34have to solve the root problem of poverty to try to equip young people with the benefits of
22:41education. So that's dominated my thinking, that's why it's so central to what I'm trying to do now.
22:47And one of the key measures is the Scottish child payment. You'll see a minimally kind of
22:52increase at this financial year, or there are plans to. Shona Robinson suggested that if you
22:58take that up too much, it could act as a barrier to stop people seeking work. And we're getting
23:03to the point where that lever might be kind of maxed out. Can we expect maybe not to see big
23:08rises? I take that view. And I think, if you recall, if you go back to the start of the
23:16discussions about the child payment, the Scottish child payment started off as a campaign called
23:21Give Me Five, and it was about a £5 weekly payment. It's now, well it's £26.70 in this
23:28financial year. I've not quite got the number in my head, but what the modest uplift for inflation
23:34puts onto it. But there has been, if you put that too high, you create a disincentive tent
23:42in the labour market. And I believe, fundamentally, that families will be in a better position if
23:48parents can get into well-paid, sustainable, good quality employment. So you've got to maintain a
23:58very careful balance about the level that you allow the Scottish child payment to reach,
24:03or you walk into that disincentive, and I don't think that's desirable. So just to be clear,
24:07do you see a situation where maybe it doesn't get risen again? Well, I think to maintain the
24:13effectiveness of the payment, you have to increase it with inflation. If you don't do that, then
24:19essentially the real value of it gets eroded, and we've seen the effect of that. But no big
24:23increase again. But people have been saying to me, you should put it up to £40 a week. I don't
24:29think that would be the right thing to do, because if you take the argument, so the difference
24:36between where it's just now and £40 a week, you could spend that money on, for example,
24:41employability schemes which could help to get parents supported into employment, or you could
24:46spend it on more focused and tailored childcare. Childcare is a real obstacle to people entering
24:53the labour market. So if you were using the argument that there was money available to put
25:01it up to £40 a week, if I had that money available to me, I would rather put it into
25:07flexible childcare, or into travel support to get people to work, or into employability schemes,
25:14rather than, because I think the risk is if you put it to £40, you'd have a disincentive.
25:21So other than inflationary rises, we've kind of reached...
25:23I think that would be a fair conclusion.
25:26Onto the final few questions, you'll be glad to know. I wanted to ask you about Rosebank,
25:31and I know after First Minister's questions, you were asked about this by journalists as well, but
25:37you previously said that those cases that were going through the courts would fundamentally
25:41affect your government's view on oil and gas, your position on oil and gas. Now we have those
25:47decisions. Can you be clear on whether that presumption against new oil and gas exploration
25:53will remain in place? Is that still...
25:55We've got, look, the key lesson, as I said to journalists as I went up the Parliament's
26:02chamber today, I've not had a chance to study the judgment from the court in detail today,
26:06which I will do. But the judgment essentially is on the territory, and it's turned on the question
26:15of what analysis you have to undertake to determine any compatibility of oil and gas
26:25activity and your objectives on climate. So that's the issue that we have wrestled with
26:34in the approach that we've taken to any questions of oil and gas development.
26:39So we need to go and look at the judgment, consider it in detail, and see what its
26:44implications are. And obviously that's a complex set of issues that I've got to go
26:48into some more later. So we will say more about this, but we need to have the opportunity to
26:53look at it properly.
26:55With the heat on the climate and things like that just now, there's been a highly critical
26:59report this week which says the government is unlikely to meet its climate change targets
27:03of reducing car use. Now you gave an assurance last year that the 2030 target of reducing
27:09carbon by 20% would still be met. Is it still possible?
27:13Well I think it's still possible, but it depends a lot on...
27:17It's going to be hard.
27:18It will be hard, yeah, but there's lots of tough challenges in the ways of life that
27:21have to be overcome. But we've got to lead the argument about getting people to change
27:29behaviour and practice, and to get more people to use public transport and to find other
27:34sustainable ways of travel. One of the points I made in the First Minister's questions when
27:38I was asked about this, was the fact that we've got a lot of new infrastructure that
27:45makes the prospect of cycling or wheeling or walking much more palatable. I'm in Edinburgh
27:54and I'm out running in the morning, I run past some really super infrastructures, down
27:58place, off-road cycle lanes, which can get, they've really crisscrossed the whole of the
28:05city. And these exist in other parts of the country as well, Glasgow, there's other parts
28:10of the country. So we've just got to lead them when this happens. What doesn't help,
28:15this is the point I was making in the First Minister's question, what doesn't help is
28:19that whenever practical measures are brought along to try to encourage that shift, they
28:26often get sabotaged by other political parties. One of the points I was making in First Minister's
28:33questions repeatedly today is that we're in a space where people have got to decide,
28:38are we serious about these things? So Parliament on the one hand will say we must have vigorous
28:43action on climate, and then when it comes to practical steps to try to do that, a lot of
28:48members of Parliament run a mile from it. I would kind of point out the hypocrisy and the posture
28:57involved in all of that. Do you need to have an honest conversation with the public about
29:01potential road charging and that behaviour change that you mentioned? There's always a discussion
29:06to be had there about these questions. Some of that activity happens already, if you look at
29:14parking charges in the City of Edinburgh, they're pretty steep. And I don't see that to be critical
29:20of the City of Edinburgh Council, I understand exactly why they're doing that. And it's of
29:25itself a form of charging people for their use of infrastructure. But the one thing I would say
29:33to you is that the whole question of climate action is absolutely unavoidable, we just cannot
29:39avoid it. Look at the events of last Friday in Storm Aeolian, it was a ferocious assault on the
29:48country, and that's a problem with climate change. Just going back to the oil and gas, the International
29:54Energy Agency, the United Nations, the vast majority of scientists have warned that new oil and gas
29:59projects are incompatible with the global climate aims. If you're seriously, your position seems to
30:05be now that if there are climate compatibility tests then they would maybe be acceptable.
30:11What is it that John Swinney knows about the science that the rest of the world does? Well the
30:15thing about this is that whatever I say about it, there will still be a need for some time to
30:21come to use petrochemicals. We're going to have to use some. There won't just be a moment where we
30:26say, even in the short term, we don't need any more hydrocarbons. We can't get to that point.
30:35What we've got to do is take other measures that compensate for that. That's why I'm so
30:40determined to make sure we're successful in the development of offshore renewables, for example,
30:45because it really enhances our energy generation capacity and contributes to the wealth of the
30:50country, which is, as I said, a really important part of my programme is to build the wealth of
30:55the country and to make sure. I'm so disappointed with many of the announcements made yesterday by
31:01the UK government. These announcements, you know, supercomputer corridor in Oxford and
31:07runways all in the south of England, these are not going to have an economic benefit in Scotland.
31:12We've got a huge refinery in Grangemouth that we need to secure a new future for. There wasn't a
31:19penny for that. Were you hoping there would have been? Well, I'm running out of patience, David,
31:24about the stalling on carbon capture and storage. We were stalled on it by that project, the ACORN
31:32project in Scotland, should have been given the green light years ago. We were mocked about on it
31:37by the last Tory government. I was promised that we would, that there would be a green light given
31:42to that project as part of an intergovernmental deal with the UK government. Never happened.
31:47The previous Tory government. I've pressed the Prime Minister for progress on the ACORN carbon
31:53capture and storage project and it's not happened yet. And, you know, when I see all these projects
31:58being announced about, you know, supercomputer in Edinburgh cancelled by the Labour government
32:02and we've got a supercomputer corridor in Oxford, we've got all these runways,
32:08and all this investment in the south of England, and we've got Grangemouth, carbon capture and
32:12storage, and a super, a cancelled supercomputer in the magnificent University of Edinburgh,
32:19not going anywhere. And I think, well, wait a minute, where's the focus on growth? We've got
32:23these, these projects are ready to go, let that, and we're not seeing that. So I just question
32:30how solid this agenda of growth actually is. Well, John, I just want to thank you very much.
32:34If I could just squeeze in one last question, just on the basis of, I'm sure you've seen that
32:39Nicola Sturgeon and Michael Matheson and others have been getting interviews to the Institute
32:43for Government as part of a kind of devolved ministers project. Nicola Sturgeon, one of the
32:48things she said is that when she stood down, she hoped that that would reset the Scottish
32:52government, and that turned out not to be the case. Do you agree with that analysis?
32:57Well, I think the point that Nicola's making is that she felt that she had become, and she said
33:04this in her resignation statement, obviously I was very close to her thinking of that time,
33:09that she was a bit of a polarising figure, and that she thought that when she stood down,
33:14Scottish politics would settle down into a slightly more kind of tolerant, respectful,
33:23engaged climate. That's the point that she's making, and I think we're making a bit of headway
33:29on that. The fact that we've now got to a point today that four political parties are supporting
33:36the government's budget, and I've not entirely given up hope that the Labour Party won't be
33:44able to be nudged over the line to vote in favour of the government's budget. Who on earth would
33:49want to vote against winter fuel payments for pensioners, or against the abolition of the
33:55two-child limit, or a big boost to housing expenditure, or a big boost to the culture
34:01budget? Who on earth would want to vote against that? So I'm hopeful of nudging more supporters
34:07I believe. So maybe there's a bit of a thought in the political culture of Scotland, which is the
34:12point that Nicola was hoping for. I'd be remiss if I didn't make a forlorn attempt to ask about
34:17Operation Branch Form. It's been described to me as the biggest grenade in Scottish politics.
34:22Would you want to see that over and done with? Are you worried about the impact that it's going to
34:27have on the 2026 election? There's no resolution soon? I want to maintain my reputation for being
34:34the most predictable man in Scottish politics, and I'm going to say to you Alistair, after your
34:38valiant attempt, that I'll not be commenting on a live investigation.
34:43John Swinney, thank you very much.