Few people understand the internal dynamics and historical loyalties of the Scottish National party better than John Swinney, who joined the party at 15 and quickly rose to become national secretary by his early 20s.
His unfussy election as leader says much about the esteem in which he is held by colleagues across factions and ages – while at 60 Swinney is a generation older than his predecessor, Humza Yousaf, his confirmation was instantly welcomed by Amy Callaghan, one of the party’s youngest MPs, as well as by established Holyrood cabinet secretaries.
The man who promises to unite the SNP after a year of extraordinary upheaval – including the arrest of senior figures in Police Scotland’s investigation into SNP finances, successive policy rows and the end of the governing partnership with the Greens – was born in Edinburgh in 1964, where his father owned a car repair garage.
After studying politics at the University of Edinburgh, he pursued a career in finance before entering first the Westminster parliament and then Holyrood, as one of the first intake of MSPs in 1999. His presentation is often described as bank managerial, but in person his wry humour and comradely decency is much more in evidence. He is an active member of the Church of Scotland, and Labour’s Jim Murphy – who was Scottish secretary at the time – once joked: “There’s nobody in Scotland who doesn’t like John Swinney.”
Though firmly on the gradualist wing of the party when it comes to Scottish independence, he remained close to the more radical Alex Salmond, taking over after Salmond unexpectedly quit as leader in 2000, until Swinney resigned in 2004 after party critics moved against him following a poor European elections result.
He went on to serve as an unstintingly loyal deputy to Salmond’s successor, Nicola Sturgeon, surviving a vote of no confidence in 2021 after a row over the government providing its legal advice to the special Holyrood committee set up to examine the handling of harassment complaints against Salmond.
Last year, after Sturgeon’s home was searched and she and her husband, Peter Murrell, were arrested as part of the police investigation into SNP finances, Swinney chaperoned her around the Holyrood parliament, standing by her side as she spoke to reporters.
The SNP’s return to minority government will demand the negotiating skills he is renowned for – he garnered plaudits for his protracted discussions with Westminster after the Smith commission, which gave further powers to Holyrood after the 2014 independence referendum. Swinney is admired for his steeliness as much as his quiet charm.
When Sturgeon quit last spring, Swinney also announced his own return to the backbenches after 16 years as a cabinet secretary, expressing his desire to spend more time with his wife, Elizabeth, who has lived with multiple sclerosis for many years and with whom he has a son.
In his leadership acceptance speech on Monday, Swinney admitted he had been “physically and mentally exhausted” at that point but said that 12 months later he was “rested and ready”.
Although viewed as the ultimate safe pair of hands, last week Swinney nevertheless dismissed the notion that he would merely be a “caretaker”, saying he intended to lead the party into the 2026 Holyrood elections and beyond.
