Meeting of the Parliament 26 May 2026 [Draft]
I say first that although I welcome much of the content of the First Minister’s opening statement, the reality is that the contrast between that statement and the motion for debate is stark. The majority of the statement focused on issues that I think people would want the Scottish National Party Government to concentrate on, but the balance of the motion that we are being asked to vote on is overwhelmingly about one issue alone, which is the Scottish National Party First Minister’s only ambition and obsession: the issue of independence. That is a missed opportunity for the first debate of a new Parliament.
I will make a broader point. One of the big challenges for our politics in Scotland is that, far too often, the instinct of the SNP Government and of the SNP as a party is to talk about Scotland as if it is one homogeneous unit with one mind and one view and not to talk as if there is a mix of views across the country. In reality, Scotland does not have one voice or one view on a referendum or on independence and there are differing views right across the country. If Mr Swinney truly wants to be a First Minister for all of Scotland, he cannot deny those varying views.
I will say more about ambition in a moment, but to hear someone who has been in Government for 20 years pleading for some sort of fresh start is to hear something that people will not believe in. This Government and First Minister have spent more time in the past 20 years telling Scotland what they cannot do than what they can do. Ultimately, the First Minister’s party plays on the very same fears and blame that I spoke about last week. There are those who want to create fear in our communities in order to divide us and there are those who want to pass the buck by pointing the finger of blame somewhere else instead of taking responsibility for their own actions in Government.
Much of what John Swinney said in his opening statement is an attempt to correct a record that he has helped to build over the past 20 years. In those 20 years, the SNP has created layer after layer of bureaucracy and public sector bodies that he now says he wants to strip away. Yet, year after year, for the past 20 years, the SNP Government has taken power away from Scotland’s regions—it has centralised the power that he now says he wants to push back out to those regions.