SNP Leadership contest 2004

'We said last week that to ditch Swinney as leader would be unfair on him and would miss the point. But he went anyway, and understandably so.' Sunday Herald Editorial, 27 th June 2004.

The candidates might be friendly ... but nobody else is

Holyrood commentary: By Iain Macwhirter in the Sunday Herald 27 th June 2004

A measure of the SNP's difficulties in getting back into the political game is that their leadership contest was eclipsed last week by a meat pie. On the very day candidates were throwing their hats into the ring, the political press corps were in hot pursuit of the culture minister, Frank McAveety.

When he failed to show for question time in parliament, McAveety said he'd been delayed at the Arts Council book awards. In reality, he'd been in the canteen stuffing himself with the philistine's repast: pie, beans and chips.

Now, admittedly, McAveety eating humble pie over a pork pie and nearly getting his ministerial chips was a great story. But under normal circumstances, a leadership contest in the party of opposition might have been expected to set more pulses racing in the Lawnmarket. But this is not a normal political contest.

For a start, the principal SNP candidates are not only of the same sex, they seem to share identical views. Nicola Sturgeon, the justice spokeswoman and Roseanna Cunningham, the deputy leader, both want to move the party back towards social democracy and concern for the poor, while not abandoning the enterprise agenda or the commitment to independence. Or something like that.

But apart from that, their main election platform seems to be their ability to get on with each other. Nicola and Roseanna are, they tell us, 'best mates'. To prove it they donned forced smiles and hugged each other whenever a TV camera appeared. Such a happy and carefree pair. They should stand for election more often.

Cunningham has lost that beetle-browed frown she habitually wears when raising points in parliament. Sturgeon's bride-of-Frankenstein stare, which has been known to freeze friend and foe alike at 100 paces, had melted into a sweet smile of humility. Just don't ask about policy; that's dirty.

Now I realise I'm in danger of being accused of sexism here. Would anyone talk of male candidates in terms of their smiles? Well, actually we do talk of male politicians in terms of their physical characteristics all the time – just think of John Swinney and those jibes about being a bank manager. That's politics. In the absence of any real issues in the Nicola and Roseanna show, there is very little left to comment on other than their disposition and appearance.

And the pair have positively invited the press to evaluate them so. Nicola Sturgeon said on BBC's Politics Scotland that the main thing that divided them was age. Only she could connect with the new and happening generation of teen and 20-something Scots. What outrageous ageism! As a fellow 50-something, I protest. No man would have been able to play the age card with impunity.

It was anyway rich for Hip Hop Sturgeon, who is the oldest 33-year-old in politics, to start treating Cunningham, 52, as if she were an old boot ripe for a mercy killing. Roseanna Cunningham may be older, but she is wiser. Nicola didn't exactly have a vast fanbase in Glasgow Govan, where she failed successively to win the seat once held by Margo MacDonald and Jim Sillars. Roseanna was the only SNP MP ever to hold a by-election seat at the subsequent election.

There are two reasons why the SNP leadership contenders are avoiding expressing any differing political positions. One: they don't want to appear to perpetuate divisions in the party; and two: they don't have any. Neither candidate has expressed any distinct political views for years.

Nicola Sturgeon has always supported her leaders so loyally it's impossible to know what she really thinks. Roseanna Cunningham used to be called Republican Rose because she wanted to abolish the Royal Family. But I can't remember when she last spoke about republicanism.

The most common adjective applied to the deputy leader is 'lazy'. Though I have to say I have yet to meet a politician at this level who is actually lazy – they all tend to be workaholics. Cunningham certainly wasn't lazy in Perth and Kinross, where she built up and kept a solid majority in a historic Tory seat. I think what people mean is that Cunningham is difficult to manage; unwilling to do things she doesn't want to do; a bit 'difficult'.

Sturgeon, by contrast, is adaptable, hard-working and positive. She talks like she walks – at double speed. This may indeed be her problem. Her intensity can be off-putting. She speaks like a female version of Jack McConnell, in one long sentence. She doesn't connect. Her other handicap might be suspicion. There is a feeling in some quarters that she didn't exactly leap to John Swinney's aid last week when the SNP leader was sinking beneath the waves. Indeed, some felt she was helping to push him under.

The SNP is an unhappy party at the moment. Indeed, it is not so much a party as a quarrel. The 'Third Man,' Mike Russell, who is expected to put his hat in the ring this week, has been the focus of much anger for writing in Holyrood -agazine that the ‘‘men in grey kilts'' were coming to get John Swinney. In the end it turned out to be the women in grey trousers.

There has been a lot of back-biting and some of it has been unpleasant, vile even. If some of the things that are being said behind the backs of the three main candidates and their deputies – and I'm certainly not going to air them here – get out, then this could be the dirtiest leadership contest in SNP history.

Hopefully, once Mike Russell enters the fray – if he does – then there might be a bit of discussion about policy, even though he has little chance of winning. If Alex Neil joins Kenny McAskill and Fergus Ewing in the race for deputy, then there will certainly be some dialectic. I sincerely hope so, because the party really needs to debate where it is going.

Some senior nationalists are despairing about whether the party has any future. Of course, elder statesmen have always despaired – it's what they do.

But there is a feeling in the party that this really is a crossroads for nationalism and that no-one seems to have a clear idea where to go. But one thing we do know: for the SNP, the future looks female.