9 hours agoBy Philip Sim, Political CorrespondentPAThe leaders of Scotland’s five biggest political parties went up against one another on Tuesday night. Here are my main takeaways from what happened.1. Going off scriptElection campaigns can sometimes be quite a scripted affair, full of “lines to take” and pre-prepared remarks delivered at stage-managed events.A sure way to crack through that is to introduce the wildcard, which is an ordinary member of the public. So we went with a hundred of them.And that brought out some of the frustration with the political class that perhaps hasn’t been at the forefront in debates which didn’t have the general public in the driving seat. One particularly fiery exchange was punctuated by the questioner shouting “stop passing the buck!”.One audience member managed to pull up John Swinney for the SNP’s record of delivery on past manifesto promises, while simultaneously criticising Douglas Ross for not backing welfare measures. Another accused Anas Sarwar of “giving us lie after lie”.And yet another took the whole panel to task about the treatment of care-experienced people, saying “shame on the lot of you”.One woman raised the striking story of her 93-year-old mother waiting hours for an ambulance.This is the sort of thing John Swinney deals with at First Minister’s Questions every week – but there it comes from the other leaders, not while having to look the member of the public concerned in the eye.And it allowed those perhaps further from government, like Alex Cole-Hamilton of the Lib Dems, to join in with the pox-on-all-your-houses theme by saying both administrations have been in power for “far too long”, and that “the people are not buying it”.2. IndependenceThere hasn’t been a huge amount of discussion of independence during this campaign so far.The SNP seems to have landed on a strategy of emphasising it when speaking to its own base – its conference-style campaign launch was thick with talk of the constitution.But when facing the electorate at large, the topic has been buried. It was barely mentioned in either of the previous TV debates.Here, things were different – thanks to the audience, who posed a direct question. And the answers were revealing.Lorna Slater actually seemed more on the front foot – she was the one who raised independence first, and she was the one who was chasing the other party leaders on the topic.John Swinney did come in to offer his own support for independence – no surprises there – but for the most part he physically stood back to let Ms Slater make the running.This is fascinating when you consider the extent to which the Scottish Greens are targeting pro-independence parties who have been almost uniformly coralled by the SNP in the past.Douglas Ross’s response was reasonably predictable, given the way his party has carved out a recovery in Scotland by cloaking itself in the Union flag. The Lib Dems also stuck to a “can’t we talk about something else” position.Anas Sarwar, meanwhile, is pivoting Scottish Labour’s standpoint from one of hard opposition to independence to a more agnostic position. He says he doesn’t care how people feel about independence, as long as they will come with him “on this part of the journey” for this election.How that might work in the Holyrood campaign in 2026 is a much more difficult question, but he seems happy to cross that bridge later.3. LeadershipThis was a debate between party leaders but the past few months have seen a bit of a crisis of leadership in Scottish politics.Douglas Ross was the only one who is actually standing in this particular election. But his decision to stand has proved so controversial with his colleagues that he’s already announced h …
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[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nn9 hours agoBy Philip Sim, Political CorrespondentPAThe leaders of Scotland’s five biggest political parties went up against one another on Tuesday night. Here are my main takeaways from what happened.1. Going off scriptElection campaigns can sometimes be quite a scripted affair, full of “lines to take” and pre-prepared remarks delivered at stage-managed events.A sure way to crack through that is to introduce the wildcard, which is an ordinary member of the public. So we went with a hundred of them.And that brought out some of the frustration with the political class that perhaps hasn’t been at the forefront in debates which didn’t have the general public in the driving seat. One particularly fiery exchange was punctuated by the questioner shouting “stop passing the buck!”.One audience member managed to pull up John Swinney for the SNP’s record of delivery on past manifesto promises, while simultaneously criticising Douglas Ross for not backing welfare measures. Another accused Anas Sarwar of “giving us lie after lie”.And yet another took the whole panel to task about the treatment of care-experienced people, saying “shame on the lot of you”.One woman raised the striking story of her 93-year-old mother waiting hours for an ambulance.This is the sort of thing John Swinney deals with at First Minister’s Questions every week – but there it comes from the other leaders, not while having to look the member of the public concerned in the eye.And it allowed those perhaps further from government, like Alex Cole-Hamilton of the Lib Dems, to join in with the pox-on-all-your-houses theme by saying both administrations have been in power for “far too long”, and that “the people are not buying it”.2. IndependenceThere hasn’t been a huge amount of discussion of independence during this campaign so far.The SNP seems to have landed on a strategy of emphasising it when speaking to its own base – its conference-style campaign launch was thick with talk of the constitution.But when facing the electorate at large, the topic has been buried. It was barely mentioned in either of the previous TV debates.Here, things were different – thanks to the audience, who posed a direct question. And the answers were revealing.Lorna Slater actually seemed more on the front foot – she was the one who raised independence first, and she was the one who was chasing the other party leaders on the topic.John Swinney did come in to offer his own support for independence – no surprises there – but for the most part he physically stood back to let Ms Slater make the running.This is fascinating when you consider the extent to which the Scottish Greens are targeting pro-independence parties who have been almost uniformly coralled by the SNP in the past.Douglas Ross’s response was reasonably predictable, given the way his party has carved out a recovery in Scotland by cloaking itself in the Union flag. The Lib Dems also stuck to a “can’t we talk about something else” position.Anas Sarwar, meanwhile, is pivoting Scottish Labour’s standpoint from one of hard opposition to independence to a more agnostic position. He says he doesn’t care how people feel about independence, as long as they will come with him “on this part of the journey” for this election.How that might work in the Holyrood campaign in 2026 is a much more difficult question, but he seems happy to cross that bridge later.3. LeadershipThis was a debate between party leaders but the past few months have seen a bit of a crisis of leadership in Scottish politics.Douglas Ross was the only one who is actually standing in this particular election. But his decision to stand has proved so controversial with his colleagues that he’s already announced h …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]
