I don't think I've ever before copied and pasted someone else's comment from the National. But James Murphy sums up John Swinney so well that I felt this was worth sharing.
John Swinney doesn’t speak for people. He speaks at them. He delivers words like policy briefs — tidy, careful, utterly bloodless. Every sentence feels like it’s been triple-checked by a committee of civil servants terrified of offending anyone. There’s no passion, no instinct, no defiance — just calm, controlled detachment.
It’s not leadership. It’s management.
Where Nicola Sturgeon could command a room and Mhairi Black could shake it, Swinney enters like a man apologising for taking up your time. His tone is robotic. His presence, sterile. He talks about independence as if it’s a health and safety protocol, not a historic mission to liberate a nation.
He doesn’t rally people — he reassures them. He doesn’t challenge the Union — he navigates it. And when faced with an existential threat like Reform UK or Starmer’s hard "No" on democracy, his instinct isn’t to confront, but to recalculate.
It’s not that Swinney is unintelligent. It’s that he mistakes caution for wisdom. And in doing so, he’s steering a movement built on hope and fire into the grey fog of inertia.
Independence doesn’t need a caretaker. It needs a catalyst. And Swinney, for all his experience, simply isn’t it.
Correct on the character of Swinney....I have been calling him The Librarian for years. It explains Swinney and why we are becalmed....but Mr Murphy is more articulate in bis definition.
But it begs The question of the quality of the membership of the SNP to allow such a man to become leader of a radical separation party. The branches which used to be the foundation of a bottom up party has now been emasculated and Swinney is a symptom of that emasculation.
I hope never to have Murphy write a reference for me..
Thank you for re-posting this Peter. A brilliant character assassination of someone I merely describe as a traitor to Scotland.Mr Swiney knows what he is about and is leading Scotland ever so politely into oblivion...meanwhile holding rigidly onto his sinecure under the guise of being a 'gentleman'.
I read your excellent comments on the National. I wouldn't waste my time there and am glad I was kicked off. ( I likened the foreign english to mongrels slithering over the border which I felt to be a first class assessment of our parasitic neighbours and was surprised when the National objected to my comments...I could have said white trash but thought mongrel a kinder comparison.)
I did smile when Stammer said independence 'had never been mentioned' in his dealings with Swiney. What a masterstroke by devious Stammer! Any trust we had in Swiney delivering independence went right oot the windae. I would compare Stammer's aside to being stabbed in the back because any pathetic belief we had in our 'great leader' delivering independence was destroyed in a flash by those few words delivered casually by the crafty foreign englishman.
Yesterday after the by-election massacre I heard Mr Swiney say that they were 'making progress'. Speechless doesn't describe it. Does this mean when the SNP under his tutelage is totally destroyed he would describe it as a brilliant coup?
I emailed Mr Swiney and suggested he resign. Felt better after that. Meanwhile I looked at the quisling Labour excrement grinning and hugging each other.... and boked.