The final debate of the SNP leadership contest, which took place last night, came after a weekend of upheaval for the party. The SNP chief executive Peter Murrell resigned on Saturday. His resignation followed that of Murray Foote, the SNP’s head of communications, who accused the party of telling him to make false statements to the press. And Ash Regan’s campaign team called for the contest to be restarted after revelations about falling membership numbers (and their cover-up) surfaced nearly a week into voting opening.
Viewers (or listeners) were understandably unsure how last night’s debate on Times Radio would proceed, given that the very integrity of the Scottish National party, and some of the candidates’ campaigns, has been under intense scrutiny.
The leadership contenders seemed far less like bitter political opponents and it felt, during the last five minutes anyway, like the future of the SNP may not be in too much danger after all
But despite the upheavals, the candidates appeared more unified than they have since the broadcast debates started. Humza Yousaf and Kate Forbes performed well, while Ash Regan seemed visibly less relaxed than her competitors. This was, in many ways, a debate that more comprehensively explored solutions to everyday problems faced by the Scottish population, with less of an initial focus on ‘culture war’ issues. As a result, the candidates appeared to be taken more seriously than in other debates – and thankfully there were no questions about giant thermometers in George Square.
It was on Section 35 that things got interesting. Yousaf has, for the entirety of the contest, been clear that he would take the UK government to court over the Section 35 order that was issued to block Scotland’s gender bill. But last night, something changed. Host Aasmah Mir asked Yousaf ‘if the Scottish government’s legal advice says “you cannot win”, will you continue to pursue [the court case]?’ Yousaf responded by saying that if his government received ‘unequivocal’ advice that they would not win the case against the UK government, ‘we’d do the responsible thing and wouldn’t take that to court’.
This is the first time in the leadership race that Yousaf has backed down in any way from his position on the Section 35 order. It hints that he may not be so cast-iron in his approach to challenging the UK government over the order, despite castigating his rivals for their differing stances and frequently saying that he is the only candidate willing to stand up to Westminster. He did add, however, that ‘if we were independent we would not have a foreign government coming in, for example, and vetoing our legislation’.
Other discussions focused on the favourite tagline of Forbes and more recently Yousaf of ‘eradicating poverty’. Talk of Scottish life expectancy, deprivation levels and health inequalities soon moved onto conversations about taxation. On the economy, Forbes has had to battle allegations throughout the contest that she is pushing for a ‘trickle down’ approach, similar to Liz Truss, or that she is secretly a ‘Tartan Tory’. She continued to talk about the need to expand the tax base while issuing her support for wealth redistribution – saying that ‘you can’t redistribute wealth unless you create it in the first place’ – while Yousaf pushed for more progressive taxation that he said could raise £200 million. Regan, consistently in pursuit of an alternative approach, said she would focus instead on the creation of additional revenue, like taking ‘a stake in the renewable industry’.
Audience questions were less concerned with the fine print on finance and quickly steered the conversation to ‘divisions in Scottish society’. Regan appeared bemused initially, so Forbes took the reins. ‘We have lost the ability to disagree respectfully,’ she told the audience, echoing the sentiment of Nicola Sturgeon’s keynote speech at the Royal Society of Arts on Monday. ‘But there is far more that unites us than divides us.’
Quizzed on her ‘personal attack’ on Humza Yousaf’s track record in government which had sparked criticism from both SNP politicians and members alike, Forbes disputed her comments had been personal – to much laughter from the audience – and instead said the contest is about focusing on policy. Yousaf said the population are more concerned about solutions to the cost of living crisis and Covid recovery plans than ‘wedge issues’. Regan discussed ‘cancel culture’, the right to offend, Brexit and Nigel Farage.
Yousaf is casting himself as the compassionate voice in the gender debate, and he made an interesting point about how choosing to go with majority opinion risks never listening to and protecting minority groups, drawing upon his own background to make his case. However, he received a sharp reaction from the audience – and his competitors – when he said he did not regret voting against amendments on the gender bill. Instead, he pointed towards failings that have resultantly been updated in the Scottish Prison Service policy.
On schools, he said that he was comfortable with his daughters being taught about gender identity, though reiterated part of Forbes’s point about the need for parental involvement in education on gender. Once more, the ‘JK Rowling’ question divided the contenders: Yousaf takes exception to Rowling after her comment that Sturgeon is a ‘destroyer of women’s rights’, Regan wouldn’t phrase it in that way but has concerns about gender legislation, and Forbes labelled the author as ‘brave’ while describing Sturgeon as ‘pioneering’ with regards to women and girls.
The Times Radio debate closed on a light-hearted note, perhaps helped by the wine being served to the audience throughout the evening, and the candidates appeared, for what felt like the first time in a long time, sincerely friendly towards one another. The audience laughed with Regan about whether she was ‘Alex Salmond in disguise’ (though she didn’t do much to shake concerns that her campaign had input from the Alba party leader), while they mocked John Nicolson MP for his reported comments about a ‘sex-obsessed’ Forbes. The humour Yousaf had displayed throughout many of the latter hustings events made a return as he joked that the MP he most admired was ‘Jeremy… just kidding: Jess Phillips’.
The leadership contenders seemed far less like bitter political opponents and more like good-natured competitors and it felt, during the last five minutes anyway, like the future of the SNP may not be in too much danger after all. But as this leadership race has well and truly demonstrated, everything can change in a matter of days.
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