STEPHEN Flynn’s ears must be burning with how much political pundits have been talking about a supposed bid for his boss’s job.
In his third interview at Edinburgh’s Festival Fringe, he took to the stage with Iain Dale, who asked if he was striving for First Minister, even endorsing him and praising his speeches and ability to “command attention” in the Commons.
Flynn was keen to bat off any speculation, instead insisting that John Swinney was the man for the job and he wasn’t currently considering leadership when his children are still young.
While that response might keep speculators quiet for a while, it won’t shake the fact that factions within the SNP still see him as an ambitious contender and one of the best placed to succeed Swinney.
Starting the 70-minute show, Flynn spoke personally of having more family time since being in Holyrood, following a tiring career in Westminster which led his wife to tell him: “You’re here, but you’re not here” when at home.
Now just a two-and-a-half-hour train ride from Aberdeen, he spoke of the differing politics of London and Edinburgh, saying that in the latter he’d realised there was “an exciting level of agreement across parties”.
But there isn’t agreement within his own party right now, and the issue of opening up the North Sea for drilling was barely put to him during the interview.
While Dale, the well-known Conservative, and Flynn more on the left of politics, the pair did strongly agree on one thing - Swinney’s trip to the World Cup.
The First Minister had come under media scrutiny for taking business-class flights to the United States, something Dale slammed as “outrageous to question”.
This was echoed by Flynn, who added that it was reasonable to expect Swinney not to travel in economy and arrive in Boston prepared.
One member of the audience must be closely keeping up with The National and asked Flynn if the BBC should disclose how much its staff’s flights to the US cost.
The BBC did not disclose this to us, and during Saturday’s interview, the conversation moved on before the Aberdeen Deeside and North Kincardine MSP had a chance to respond.
On the media more broadly, it was Dale who made his criticisms known, saying the Scottish media was a “special beast” and “overly friendly to the SNP”.
He asked the minister if he found the media “incredibly frustrating to deal with”, to which Flynn said: “I think the press has every right to query and question us and to do it as robustly as they want”.
Unlike Saturday’s earlier interview with Kemi Badenoch, which didn’t mention the constitutional question, Dale opened the topic by saying, much to Flynn’s surprise, he was “independence curious” and “if I lived in Scotland, I would think about voting for the SNP…but probably wouldn’t because of your left-wing economic policies”.
Flynn responded to Dale’s opinion that independence was “further away than it was a few years ago”, adding: “I would disagree with that…I think the road to independence is one we are very much still on.
“We have a job to do in terms of making that compelling case.”
