I said last night that I thought Kate Forbes’ personal popularity meant that she’d probably be able to come through the current controversy relatively unscathed, but that there was also an alternative school of thought. A day later, it looks increasingly like the alternative school of thought is being proved right, with several of Ms Forbes’ prominent backers hurriedly abandoning her. I must say the actions of those people is pretty extraordinary, because Ms Forbes’ views on social issues were already well-known before yesterday, and if it was being automatically assumed that she was bound to publicly walk those views back, that was astoundingly presumptuous. But nevertheless what has happened creates a kind of ‘reverse momentum’ that encourages other people to withdraw support or to start looking upon Ms Forbes as an unsuitable candidate. In a nutshell, the wheels seem to be coming off her campaign, which leaves us staring into the abyss of a victory for the candidate who polls show is by far the most disliked by the public. That would be a grotesque outcome, and it would not come about because anyone particularly wants Humza Yousaf as First Minister. It would instead happen by default because there aren’t sufficient people willing to make a positive choice for either of his opponents. Ms Forbes doesn’t have enough support due to the strength of her religious views, while Ash Regan is hampered by being less well known than the other candidates, and to some extent also because of her stance on the gender issue.
There’s still one obvious way that Kate Forbes could prevent this calamity, however. If she simply reverses what she said about watering down the independence strategy, and announces that she will instead be sticking with Nicola Sturgeon’s plans for a de facto referendum, she would rally committed independence supporters to her banner. Those people would be prepared to forgive her all manner of things if she would only give them a strong enough reason to, and the prospect of winning independence in the near future would be enough to do the trick – especially as her leading opponent now looks like essentially a devolutionist candidate. And the beauty of it is that nobody would be able to paint her as a mad radical, because she’d simply be keeping faith with Nicola Sturgeon’s own policy – it would be up to Mr Yousaf to explain why he wanted the SNP to perform a U-turn.
Kate Forbes with charisma, experience at the highest level of government, and prepared to offer a credible path to independence in the here and now, would be a package capable of overcoming the disadvantages that have become so apparent over the last 24 hours. But remove the red meat for independence supporters from that package, and I’m no longer convinced she can win.
We are currently on a trajectory leading to a Humza Yousaf leadership, and thus potentially a unionist government after the 2026 Scottish Parliament election. Someone in the SNP has to take decisive action to change that trajectory before it’s too late, and I’d suggest the greatest onus at the moment is on Kate Forbes.
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