The Lurch to the Left

The Times has put up no less than six of its finest journalists to write about the calamity that is Kate Forbes standing down, next year. No doubt there will be more to come, but as it stands Laura Paterson (‘Kate Forbes, the rising star who couldn’t land the SNP leadership‘), Michael Glackin (‘SNP’s last pro-business voice has walked off the stage‘), Laura Paterson and John Boothman (‘SNP has transformed from broad church to narrow cult’), Marc Horne (‘Kate Forbes to stand down as MSP’), Magus Linklater (‘Kate Forbes choosing family over Holyrood leaves a vacuum in the SNP‘) and Marc Horne, John Boothman and Laura Paterson (‘Kate Forbes allies fear lurch to left after her decision to quit‘).

Setting aside the obsession with this story – is this really the only thing The Times can report on in Scotland? There’s also the hyper-ventilating language – is the governing party really a ‘cult’? So what’s going on?

It’s about mandatory conformity to a very narrow economic agenda. They are terrified of any deviation from this, as they should be. The Overton Window of British politics is so narrow and has shifted so far to the right that any variation from the agreed script is considered unacceptable. Hence, you have Laura Paterson and John Boothman talking of a ‘cult’ and Michael Glackin demanding that the Scottish Government ‘scrap the income tax differential between Scotland and the rest of the UK’.

With the idea of a Scottish Tory administration ever being elected at Holyrood being completely impossible, the right-wing Unionist media resort to policing the other parties to fall into line. Any deviation from orthodox economics, however meaningless and minuscule is not to be tolerated, and tax or social policy that marks a different path in Scotland is intolerable. This is why The Times Scotland page is littered with frightened and paranoid copy.

Who exactly has ‘fears’ that the SNP will ‘lurch’ to the Left under John Swinney?

The media class is so cowed, so barren and so inept that it sees challenges and catastrophe at the standing down of a woman wanting to spend more time with her family. It’s laughable.

But, and here’s the thing, the rise of a possible alternative in the as-yet-unamed party under Sultana and Corbyn is a threat, and not just to the cosy, dysfunctional neoliberal orthodoxy prized by The Times Crew, but also the SNP, who haven’t been seriously challenged by the Left since they entered government.

The paranoia and wild framing isn’t confined to The Times. Here’s the Holyrood Sources gang waxing lyrical:

“The SNP wasn’t ready for somebody like Kate Forbes and the Government wasn’t ready either… she has a level of sophistication and political maturity that the rest of the Government doesn’t have.”@akmaciver says Ms Forbes’s departure tells us a lot about Scottish politics. pic.twitter.com/ke65Sm7eBA

— Holyrood Sources (@HolyroodSources) August 4, 2025

When Andy MacIver says “The SNP wasn’t ready for somebody like Kate Forbes and the Government wasn’t ready either… she has a level of sophistication and political maturity that the rest of the Government doesn’t have” he is speaking in code, and the code is this: austerity and perpetual growth economics and deregulation are the only acceptable political economics that will be accepted by the commentariat, anything else is juvenile and useless and irresponsible.

But here’s the thing, these politics are broken and proven failures, and the rise of a populist right that has arisen from this failure now has a mirror on the left. The conventional orthodoxies played-out by almost all of the MSM and legacy media are finished, and almost everyone knows it except them.