It’s a cool, crisp Monday morning in Glasgow. No wind, no wet, no drama – the sort of morning that would seem to mirror the no-nonsense persona of Scotland’s first minister, John Swinney, who visits Dublin on Tuesday.
The Scottish government is mostly based in elegant Edinburgh, but much of its economic policy is overseen from a modern office building on Broomielaw, a historic Glasgow quay street on the banks of the Clyde.
Scotland’s international financial services centre is next door. A crucial UK budget is 48 hours away. Meanwhile, Swinney says he is off to Dublin to talk mainly about the economy. So it’s no wonder we find him in the building known as AQ5 (5 Atlantic Quay), a nerve centre of Scottish economics, the day before he departs.
We meet in his office on the seventh floor overlooking the river. In contrast with his palatial Bute House working residence in Edinburgh, Swinney’s Glasgow office is – again, much like the man himself – unadorned and businesslike.
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But as sits at his desk sipping tea, Swinney allows himself a wee smile and a moment of self-indulgence upon realising that he will be the first foreign head of government received at Áras an Uachtaráin by the State’s new president, Catherine Connolly.
[ Mark Paul: How the SNP is finally getting over its post-Sturgeon hangoverOpens in new window ]
In all likelihood, he will be Connolly’s first official visitor of any sort from overseas.
“That is an enormous honour and privilege for me,” says the first minister in his soft Lothian burr. “I watched her election campaign with interest – her emphasis on inclusion and cohesion in society. Those are very much my values too.”
Swinney leads the Scottish National Party (SNP), which seeks independence for Scotland, much to the chagrin of the establishment in Westminster, where the UK government argues that devolution is far enough.
The SNP, meanwhile, eyes a push for a new independence referendum after crucial Scottish elections next May.
SNP politicians relish meeting foreign governments on an equal basis, as it projects to the world a sense of how an independent Scotland might engage. Swinney has met US president Donald Trump twice this year already, including once in Washington. He also recently flew to Malawi and Zambia to meet the presidents there.
Now, this week, as well as the Republic’s new head of state, Swinney also meets Taoiseach Micheál Martin and the new Minister for Foreign Affairs, Helen McEntee.
Such a Dublin trip by the party’s leader is optical catnip for the nationalists of the SNP.
“Scotland is a distinct nation. We have our own parliament. We also have an outward-looking perspective. Making sure that we deal with other heads of government is critical in demonstrating how Scotland can act responsibly on the world stage,” says Swinney.
He is going to Dublin for the official launch of a new Ireland-Scotland bilateral framework for co-operation, covering areas such as energy, the economy, culture and, somewhat improbably, space exploration.
Scotland has built a new commercial space port in the Shetlands. The launch of rockets is only months away. Swinney says Scottish and Irish universities, including UCD, have been collaborating on the issue.
Whatever cosmic conversations he has in Dublin, Swinney’s political rivals in the UK’s Labour Party could meanwhile be seeing stars later in the week, if the budget being prepared by chancellor of the exchequer Rachel Reeves goes down as badly as some predict.
The UK is lumbered with heavy debt, paltry growth and a dearth of good fiscal options. Reeves, under political pressure, is still expected to lift a two-child benefits cap that limits payments to larger families. But it’s clear she has been dragged by Labour MPs reluctantly to that position, even as UK child poverty soars across Britain.
In Scotland, however, this type of poverty has fallen in recent years due to a child payment pioneered by the SNP. Swinney says the contrast between the recent approach on this issue in Westminster and the SNP proves that Scotland and England in particular “are two countries going in completely different directions”.
“Eradicating child poverty is fundamentally why we’re in government. But other welfare reforms the UK Labour government plans will make it go up. So in Scotland we’re still constrained on this issue by the powers in Westminster,” says Swinney.
He highlights migration as another area where Scotland is so out of tune with the rest of the UK that, he argues, independence is the only remedy.
Scotland says it needs more migrants workers to boost its workforce. Meanwhile, the UK’s Labour government, under political pressure from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, is cracking down heavily on migration.
Swinney said immigration policies recently announced by UK home secretary Shabana Mahmood were “catastrophic”. He wants the UK government to allow Scotland to issue its own worker visas. Even Scottish Labour appears to support something similar to this. Yet Mahmood recently dismissed the idea as “perverse”.
Swinney retorts: “I’d say to the people of England: You can decide your own issues; I don’t want to tell you what to do. But we [in Scotland] have a right to pursue the issues that matter to us.”
He says his relationship with UK prime minister Keir Starmer is perfectly courteous. “But for all the courtesy and respect, it doesn’t lead anywhere,” he says, citing what he sees as Home Office intransigence on migration.
The SNP, then on 30 per cent of the vote in Scotland, was battered by Labour, then on 35 per cent, in the 2024 Westminster elections.
But the nationalist party has come back from the political near-dead in the last 18 months since Swinney took over as leader, following a tumultuous period under Humza Yousaf, who succeeded Nicola Sturgeon.
The SNP is now in the mid-30s again in most polls, before next May’s Scottish elections. Starmer’s increasingly unpopular Labour, meanwhile, is back down in the low 20s.
With Reform UK now splintering support among Swinney’s unionist opponents in Scotland, he claims an SNP overall majority is possible. He probably owes Farage a pint.
The last time the SNP won a majority, in 2011, the UK government agreed to an independence referendum for Scotland, which was defeated in 2014. Swinney believes the precedent was set then. But what if Starmer, as he has indicated, simply says no to a new referendum next year, even if the SNP wins a majority?
“Starmer can’t sustain that argument because it is fundamentally undemocratic,” says Swinney. “How can it be a ‘union of equals’ – as we were told it was in 2014 – if there is no way for Scotland to leave it?”
In any event, Swinney says, Starmer will “never survive” as prime minister if the SNP wins a majority: “He’ll be away.”
What if Swinney ends up having to deal with a prime minister Farage?
“From my perspective, it doesn’t really matter who the occupant of Downing Street is.”
Swinney says he would never countenance a deal to with Reform “in any way, shape or form”, if Farage sought SNP backing in the House of Commons to become UK prime minister following a future Westminster election.
Even if Farage offered a Scottish independence referendum as the reward?
Swinney shakes his head emphatically.
“Absolutely not. We are not prepared to be in any way associated with Reform. I think Labour is currently making a terrible mistake by cosying up to their way of thinking on issues such as migration. We are going the other way. We will confront Reform head on.”
Swinney, who previously led his party between 2000-2004, was brought back as leader last year, he says, because he was the only one who could heal the divisions that had opened up in the party.
“The party was fractured [in the ructions following Sturgeon’s and the Yousaf’s departure]. We were in such a position of jeopardy and difficulty – it was existential. That’s why the party turned to me. They knew that if anyone could possibly bring all sections of the party back together, that I could do it.”
If the SNP wins again next May, it will have been in power in Scotland for almost a quarter of a century by the time the next parliament ends. Will Swinney, who will be in his late 60s by then, see it through?
“I’m in this for the long haul. I’m trying to win independence for Scotland. I can’t do it overnight.”
