GRAHAM GRANT: Don't fall for Swinney's Honest John schtick - he and his SNP colleagues deserve to be consigned to oblivion on May 7

By GRAHAM GRANT, SCOTTISH HOME AFFAIRS EDITOR Published: 20:23, 4 May 2026 | Updated: 20:23, 4 May 2026 There is a less than 1 per cent chance of any politician other than John Swinney becoming First Minister after Thursday’s vote. Sorry to be the bearer of such depressing news, but it comes from premier polling guru Sir John Curtice - a psephologist of some repute. Of course, nearly one in five Scots has yet to make up their minds about which party to back, so it’s all to play for – and polls can be wrong. Yet the smart money says we’re staring down the barrel of another Swinney administration, with five more years of the SNP in store. It seems an apposite time to ask a pressing question – just who is John Swinney, and why should we believe anything he says? Well, it goes without saying that the First Minister is a dangerous constitutional zealot hell-bent on tearing Scotland out of the UK - even if it means working with Sinn Fein, formerly the political wing of the IRA. Much of his pitch for power has been based on his supposed personal integrity - but the nickname Honest John no longer applies, and hasn’t for many years. Consider the £1billion Glasgow superhospital hailed by Nicola Sturgeon as ‘world-class’ – now at the centre of a long-running scandal over the link between tainted tapwater and patient deaths, including that of 10-year-old Milly Main. Swinney is a dangerous constitutional zealot hell-bent on tearing Scotland out of the UK We now know that Mr Swinney was aware that two patients were being treated for fungal infections on a cancer ward contaminated by mould and water - but still told the public that the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH) was safe. As the Scottish Mail on Sunday revealed, the First Minister and his hapless Health Secretary Neil Gray also kept the two infections - and two other suspected cases - secret as a political storm erupted over conditions on ward 4B. In a tirade at Holyrood back in February, when he was questioned about the QEUH, Mr Swinney said Labour leader Anas Sarwar had ‘basically attacked my personal integrity.’ He said: ‘What Mr Sarwar is doing is unrelenting, and how he is conducting himself is a sign of total desperation.’ What Mr Sarwar had done was to highlight that there had been 14 alerts to the Scottish Government between 2015 and 2018 about conditions at the QEUH. Mr Sarwar had also urged Lord Brodie, heading an inquiry into the superhospital, to summon Mr Swinney and Ms Sturgeon to give evidence after NHS bosses said ‘pressure’ had been put on the board to open the QEUH, admitting it had happened too soon. It later clarified that the pressure had been ‘internal’. Faced with these disclosures, Mr Swinney accused Mr Sarwar of ‘political interference’ in Lord Brodie’s inquiry - rather than trying to address the points he had raised in any credible fashion. Mr Swinney was also a champion of the SNP’s Orwellian – and ultimately abortive – Named Person scheme, which sought to appoint state guardians to all children, including unborn babies. During one of the shabbiest episodes in Holyrood history, Mr Swinney denied that Liam Fee, a Fife two-year-old murdered by his mother and her partner, had been subject to an early version of Named Person. In a show of righteous indignation, he said it was ‘atrocious’ to make that connection - effectively that it was a slur on hard-working social workers. Later, an official report confirmed that the Named Person policy had ‘contributed to confusion’ about who was responsible for providing support for Liam. Mr Swinney has never apologised. Meanwhile, a press release from 2016 headlined ‘Swinney commits to roll-out service as legal bid to scrap NP [Named Person] scheme fails’ remains on the government website, despite being manifestly false. The initiative was ruled to be largely unlawful by Supreme Court judges, but only after the SNP fought tooth and nail to salvage it, wasting time and around £800,000 of taxpayers’ money. Mr Swinney also claims he’s determined to tackle child poverty – though his government has missed its own legal targets to reduce it. As Education Secretary in 2020, he presided over an exam results fiasco which led to mass downgrading, disproportionately affecting pupils in some of Scotland’s poorest areas – a decision that was later reversed. Mr Swinney apologised and survived a vote of no confidence in August 2020, with the help of the Greens - and we now have a new, re-branded exams quango (which looks suspiciously like the old one). As Ms Sturgeon’s consigliere, Mr Swinney was trusted with carrying out tricky tasks with a high risk of political damage. When parliament demanded legal advice on the Government’s ill-fated bid to contest Alex Salmond’s judicial review against its deeply flawed sexual harassment probe, it was Mr Swinney who oversaw the process of piecemeal publication. In 2021, he ignored two votes urging him to publish the documents and later caved in - or appeared to - only at the 11th hour after he faced the Tory-led threat of a no confidence vote, which was initially put on ice when he claimed he had complied. But the vote later went ahead amid a row over whether all of the relevant advice had been published. Mr Swinney won with the support of the Greens, then de facto SNP backbenchers who would shortly go on to become partners in the ill-fated power-sharing deal known as the Bute House Agreement (which, chillingly, could be revived in some form after Thursday’s vote). On Wednesday, the eve of polling day, the Scottish Government will face contempt of court proceedings for allegedly obstructing the release of details linked to the 2018 harassment probe into Mr Salmond, and a related ministerial code inquiry into Ms Sturgeon. Mr Swinney, that self-professed paragon of integrity, also wiped his WhatsApp messages from the time of the Covid pandemic, as did his old boss Ms Sturgeon and a host of other important figures - depriving the subsequent inquiry of a potential treasure trove of information. Honest John was also unusually reticent when he refused to say if his aides knew about the Jordan Linden sex scandal following claims it was covered up, though he insists he was in the dark about it - despite having been at the heart of the SNP government for 19 years. Erstwhile rising SNP star Linden, former North Lanarkshire Council leader, was found guilty in March of five sex assaults and of sending sexual communications to several teenagers, one aged 14, and is due to be sentenced on Tuesday. And would a man of integrity have backed Michael Matheson, the former Health Secretary who claimed £11,000 on expenses for a mobile roaming bill racked up while he was on holiday? The First Minister stood by Mr Matheson - and argued a proposed 54-day ban from Holyrood was too harsh. Tribalism trumped propriety in that instance, and on many others, as Mr Swinney ranked the old pals’ act above all other concerns. Don’t buy a word of the Honest John schtick: he’s a charlatan who - like his clueless colleagues - deserves to be consigned to political oblivion. No comments have so far been submitted. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. 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