What kind of a First Minister would Kate Forbes make?

Kate Forbes has been impressive this week: warm, eloquent, passionate - and apparently undaunted by the bruising first days of her campaign. When on day one she answered questions about her religious convictions with bald - and hurtful - honesty, the resulting furore would have crushed many. 

There was an interesting article in the Financial Times this week on the philosophical debate about what a secular society really looks like. One kind of secularism is driven by the anxiety “that any religious or ideological system demanding a hearing in the public sphere is aiming to seize control of the political realm”. The other kind acknowledges people’s religious beliefs as the foundation of their moral position, allows them expression, but sees them essentially as another form of diversity.

I don’t think people really think that Forbes intends to roll back existing rights. Much of the concern emanating from prominent figures in the SNP this week seems to be around the idea that having a First Minister who has said what she has, will damage the party’s position with under-35s, the biggest bulwark of support for independence. 

But it is easy to oversimplify. Sure, very few under 35s think as Forbes does. But, on the other hand, having grown up with much less experience of organised religion, they may be less triggered by Forbes’ Presbyterianism. 

On the plus side, when Forbes greeted the audience at the Inverness hustings in Gaelic, she touched the hearts of a long-neglected community. Her name recognition is already such that Scottish tabloids can run headlines about “Kate” expecting their audience to know they don’t mean the Princess of Wales.

And, when someone tells the truth even when it is difficult and doesn’t serve them, that is surely a basis for trust. A bigger contrast to Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock et al would be difficult to imagine. 

Forbes’ husband was also criticised last week when it emerged he had attended the hustings between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak as a guest of a member of the Conservative Party - even though it was meant to be an all-member event.

It is not surprising that Ali MacLennan has friends who are Conservatives - he is a chimney sweep. Who has the most chimneys? I imagine many of his clients are wealthy landowners. For all we know he was doing someone a favour by helping to fill empty seats.

In rural communities, like the one where Forbes and her family live, people depend on their neighbours - if someone offers to help to dig your car out of a snowdrift or brings you fish when they have a good catch, you don’t ask how they vote before you accept. 

Forbes has told us what to expect from her leadership - firstly, she wants to work to eradicate child poverty. She is part of a Scottish government administration that has thrown resources at this. It is devastating to see much of those gains eaten away by the energy and cost of living crises. 

In order to get more resources to improve the lives of Scotland’s children, Forbes wants to boost the economy as much as possible using the powers of devolution. But she argues passionately that independence is a more reliable, faster route to building a fairer, greener more prosperous country. 

On independence, Forbes says she can reach out to the other half of Scotland - the half that remains to be convinced. Can she? There is only one way to find out!

From the Institute of Fiscal Studies analysis of Scottish tax reforms.

2 Does the media available in Scotland have a Unionist bias?

I did a wee Twitter poll on this question with four possible answers. Out of just over 1,500 votes, 96.9% said:  “Yes, very much so.” 

OK - it is Twitter and I would be interested to see what response a polling company got but I would say that this is a commonly-shared belief by a good part of Scottish society. Homegrown papers especially, do try to represent both sides of the constitutional divide at least in the comment sections  - but I think a compounding factor is the general tabloid-isation of news reporting in the UK media. 

The Herald stands accused of having photoshopped a Bible into Kate Forbes hand in a pic above the paper’s masthead this weekend, for example. Their image does look photoshopped - at the very least they have questions to answer.

KF in a blue dress, arm up, without a bible

Overwriting is also common. Sometimes these overblown headlines are hostages to fortune - and the sub-editors that used to catch errors are long gone. On February 17, the Times Scotland had a front page after Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation where a screaming headline “Dead in the Water” (about the SNP plan for a de facto referendum) appeared next to a photograph of (then) missing mum Nicola Bully.

BBC Scotland’s report of an almost tediously uneventful and collegiate SNP hustings said that the candidates “clashed over gender reform”. To those who watched it online, it seemed the issue was barely mentioned. 

Trying to compete in a world of clickbait, fighting for a space on the front page or the flagship TV news can lead to beefing up stories with over-the-top language that strikes many people as tasteless and inaccurate. The press conference where Nicola Sturgeon announced her resignation was a case in point. 

The journalists were also on show - representing their organisations on live TV to most of Scotland. After a spattering of hostile questions, BBC journalist Glenn Campbell after having been already allowed a question, left his seat to ambush Sturgeon as she left the podium. He shouted a question about her being investigated by the police. (It was about £660,000 the SNP raised specifically to fight an indyref2 campaign, but in the absence of another independence vote they spent some of it on other things - there is no allegation that Sturgeon has stolen money.)  The conference was over, she obviously wasn’t going to answer the question, and it sounded like a smear.  Viewers drew their own conclusions.

In the US, the New York Times and the Washington Post run two-line headings with sub-clauses. These are intended to accurately summarise the stories below. But UK journalists tend to mock rather than aspire to this sober, careful tone.

On the other side of the coin - this tabloidisation is also evident in political press releases. Maybe comms officers were trained in the same school? For example, Kate Forbes comment that Scotland’s bottle deposit scheme would cause “economic carnage” also seemed pretty over-written. It’s a bottle deposit scheme - I am sure we would soon get used to it.