The surprise decision this week by Kate Forbes, Scotland’s deputy first minister, to step down at next May’s Holyrood elections rewrites the script for the next Scottish National Party (SNP) leadership election, in which she would likely have been a top contender.
Forbes (35) chose her daughter’s third birthday on Monday to announce she would not run again for the Scottish parliament next year, citing the pressure of juggling motherhood with the demands of political life.
Her home is an eight-hour return drive from Edinburgh, while her vast highlands constituency takes five hours to cross from end-to-end. Forbes said she couldn’t face “missing more of the precious early years of family life”.
Her daughter won’t be the only one to gain from Forbes’s political exit. For Stephen Flynn and Màiri McAllan, who hold ambitions to replace John Swinney as SNP leader and Scotland’s first minister, their biggest competitor has just walked off the pitch.
RM Block
First elected in 2016, Forbes was elevated by Nicola Sturgeon to cabinet secretary for finance in 2020, famously delivering a budget with just a few hours notice after her predecessor quit in a scandal over inappropriate messages sent to a teenager.
Humza Yousaf beat Forbes, who had just returned early from maternity leave, in a bitter SNP leadership contest in 2023 after Sturgeon quit.
A year later, Yousaf’s reign as leader and first minister ended in disaster and Forbes considered running again, only to stand aside for Swinney, a steady hand installed to move the SNP on from the internal divisions that marred the post-Sturgeon era.
Forbes is a social and fiscal conservative who was widely viewed as the most pro-business member of the Scottish government. Her departure has stirred fears among Scotland’s business community that the SNP could lurch further to the left.
The party’s more immediate priority, however, is securing a return to lead the Scottish government in next May’s elections.
The prospect seemed unthinkable just a year ago after the SNP was walloped in Westminster elections. Yet the swift and precipitous collapse of Labour’s short-lived popularity has again opened the way for the SNP to emerge once more as the biggest party at Holyrood.
The veteran Swinney, however, is expected to face a leadership challenge either before or soon after the election, no matter the result.
With Forbes out of the way, the favourite to replace him when the time comes may be Flynn (36), the charismatic leader of the party in Westminster. He intends to leave London to run for the Scottish parliament in Aberdeen South and North Kincardine. His most obvious opponent is McAllan (32), the left-leaning cabinet secretary for housing.
In an echo of Forbes’s previous battle with Yousaf, McAllan has also recently returned from maternity leave to rejoin the Scottish government. If she wants to lead it, she will have to get past Flynn.
