Kate Forbes: Leadership candidate seems to have a plan for Scotland

Scotland needs a first minister who wants to shakes things up and believes ‘continuity won’t cut it’ – exactly like Kate Forbes, writes Campbell Gunn.

For the first time in almost two decades, we’re in the midst of an SNP leadership contest. And, for the first time, it is also a contest to select the next first minister of Scotland.

At this point, I must declare an interest. For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been helping Kate Forbes (on a purely voluntary basis) with her campaign. I offered to help after the first days of the contest, when Kate was attacked for her faith – something I felt was completely unfair.

Happily, we’ve now moved on to issues which really matter to most SNP members and, indeed, most Scots: the economy, jobs, the NHS and education.

And these policies are the reason I’m backing Kate Forbes. She is the only candidate with a sensible plan for the future of Scotland. As she says, we can only invest more money in things like health and education if we have more revenue coming in. And that means expanding the economy.

Watching the hustings over the past days, I’ve been struck by the contrast in the candidates’ approach to answering questions. I have to say that Ash Regan appears to have little coherent strategy, and seems to be making up policy on the hoof, as she is asked questions.

Humza Yousaf is someone I’ve known since before he became an MSP. He was an aide to Holyrood’s first Asian MSP, Bashir Ahmad, then to several other elected politicians before gaining a list seat himself. In other words, he’s never really worked outside politics. As such, he is a polished political performer, though sometimes comes over as rather too slick, using the same well-rehearsed lines at every public appearance.

He is, however, the SNP establishment’s choice as a continuity candidate, as seen from the number of ministerial endorsements he’s received. A cynic might suggest some of them are worried about their own jobs.

Kate Forbes’s pitch could not be more different, stating unequivocally that “continuity won’t cut it”. As a child, she lived in India for several years, and it was there that Kate saw the extreme poverty and deprivation which has formed and driven her politics ever since. After leaving Dingwall Academy, she completed degrees at both Cambridge and Edinburgh universities, before also graduating as a chartered accountant and working for Barclays.

Her background in accounting and finance gave her the ability and knowledge to step in to deliver the Scottish Government’s 2020 budget at a few hours’ notice, after the then finance secretary Derek Mackay resigned. That made her the first woman to deliver a budget at either Holyrood or Westminster. Her performance that day marked her out as the real rising star of both the Scottish Government and the SNP.

Among her promises, as a Highland MSP she has been vocal in her support for the long-overdue upgrading of the A9. She has pledged that, in her first week as first minister, she would instruct Transport Scotland to draw up a plan, to be published no later than June, for the completion of dualling the road by the end of the decade.

She has also pledged to upgrade the A96, linking Aberdeen with Inverness. Why, she asks, has this vital piece of infrastructure not yet been improved? Aberdeen is the oil capital of the UK, and the Cromarty Firth is the centre for decommissioning North Sea structures. Yet, the standard of the road linking the two is totally unacceptable, and is a drag on economic investment.

As dependence on oil and gas reduces, Kate Forbes has pointed out that, while we have to transition to renewables, we cannot allow the oil industry to drop off a cliff edge. It must be a just transition.

An independent Scotland would see the revenues from oil and gas invested in renewable industries. A national energy company would take a stake in large energy projects, guaranteeing a return to be invested in health, education, care services and so on. Forbes points to the way Norway has used its huge oil funds to invest in renewables.

It seems to me that Kate Forbes has a proper plan for Scotland’s future. She is driven by her personal experience of seeing real poverty at first hand. While Scotland may not have the levels of deprivation Kate experienced in India, she knows it is a disgrace that, in a rich country with so many resources as Scotland has, so many children still live in poverty today.

I have to declare another more personal reason for my unqualified wish to see Kate Forbes as our next first minister. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a Gaelic speaker living in Bute House for the first time?

Campbell Gunn is a retired political editor who served as special adviser to two first ministers of Scotland, and a Munro compleatist

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