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Fiona Rintoul: To succeed as a country, Scotland must be a broad kirk

If the SNP is serious about achieving independence, it needs to reach out, not retrench.

Now first minister Humza Yousaf and SNP leadership opponent Kate Forbes, pictured during the race (Image: Craig Brough/PA)
Now first minister Humza Yousaf and SNP leadership opponent Kate Forbes, pictured during the race (Image: Craig Brough/PA)

Nothing rots the mind more effectively than surrounding yourself with people who agree with you. Robust debate is the sine qua non of a free and tolerant society, and the lifeblood of democracy.

There was something a tad eerie, then, about the way our new first minister, Humza Yousaf, circled the wagons in the wake of his narrow victory over Kate Forbes in the recent SNP leadership election. He was the winner. Progressive values had triumphed. Deal with it.

It reminded me of Scottish Labour’s ill-fated victory bus to Manchester after the 2014 independence referendum. How they crowed – but not for long.

The new FM’s salad days wilted even faster. Since his election, the SNP has not so much unravelled as composted. And it feels like the root of the problem lies in there having been too few people at the top, who were too busy saying yes to each other.

My question now is: how progressive is it to require candidates for the highest office in the land to unveil a tick-list of approved views? Is that tolerance? Is it diversity? Or have we simply swapped the social constraints of yesteryear for a new orthodoxy?

This is Scotland. The Free Church, of which Kate Forbes is a member, played an important and radical role in the history of the Highlands and islands. The Roman Catholic Church is the spiritual home for a significant minority of our population. Our new first minister is a Muslim.

All these confessions draw on scriptures that don’t chime too harmoniously with contemporary mores. You can sidestep that to receive a shiny, in-with-the-in-crowd badge, as Yousaf has done, or you can embrace it, as Forbes did.

Either approach is fine by me, but many Scots who describe themselves as progressive seem to prefer Yousaf’s fudge to Forbes’s astringent honesty. This is because fudge is less challenging than candour.

The SNP needs to reach out, not retrench

Diversity has many faces; we need them all to succeed. It’s brilliant that both the first minister and leader of Scottish Labour are Asian, slightly less brilliant that they went to the same private school. Viewed from my home in the Isle of Harris, some of the reaction to Forbes’s religious affiliation smacks of anti-Highland prejudice.

If the SNP is serious about achieving independence, it needs to reach out, not retrench. And, if we want good government, we must be a broad – dare I say it – kirk.

If you want to know what happens when we draw from too narrow a constituency, consider the Scottish Government’s proposals for Highly Protected Marine Areas. The ministerial foreword to the consultation deploys the word “remote” to describe some of our maritime communities.

Seriously? This is how you see us? What with the trashing of the ferries, it begins to sound like a policy decision.


Fiona Rintoul is an author and translator

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