The Scotsman Bulletin Wednesday 09 May 2024 #FMQs

The Scotsman

Transcript

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.

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