Rapid career advancement for John Swinney: He was recently appointed leader of the Scottish National Party – now head of government of Scotland.
Following the resignation of Humza Yousaf, John Swinney will become the new head of government of Scotland. The regional parliament in Edinburgh elected the leader of the independence party SNP as the successor to Yousaf, who resigned from office after the government’s cooperation with the Greens was broken. Swinney brings a lot of experience with him: The 60-year-old was deputy to Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon for years. He still has to be approved by King Charles III. be officially appointed, but that is a formality.
The next general election in the British part of the country is scheduled for May 2026. Several opposition parties are calling for an early election.
Only recently became party leader, future head of government
Swinney was elected unopposed as head of the Scottish National Party (SNP) on Monday and is already the third head of government within 14 months. His predecessor Yousaf only took over at the end of March 2023 after the surprising resignation of Nicola Sturgeon.
As the strongest faction, the SNP is allowed to nominate a candidate for the office of First Minister, but it does not have a majority in the regional parliament. However, the Greens, who, like the SNP, are seeking independence from Great Britain and re-entry into the EU, abstained. They had announced that they would not stand in the way of the election. The party had made it clear that it had lost confidence in Yousaf, but not in the SNP itself.
Difficult tasks for the new head of government
Previously, Yousaf officially submitted his resignation to King Charles III. a. He announced the step last week after he canceled cooperation with the Greens in the dispute over climate goals and gender policy. He was then threatened with a vote of no confidence – by resigning he forestalled the motion.
Swinney had already led the SNP as leader from 2000 to 2004, when he was in opposition. He faces a difficult task given several setbacks for the party. A liberal gender law, which was also controversial within the SNP, was vetoed by the British central government. Social ills such as the extremely high number of drug-related deaths have not been solved. There is also an affair surrounding the SNP finances. Sturgeon’s husband Peter Murrell, who was responsible for party finances as SNP general secretary, was most recently charged in connection with embezzlement allegations.
