DEREK Mackay was widely tipped as the likely successor to Nicola Sturgeon as SNP leader and First Minister. With his dramatic resignation as finance secretary and suspension from the party yesterday, Mackay’s chances of taking on that role have vanished.
So who might be the other candidates when the time comes?
Joanna Cherry: Cherry, 53, is the SNP MP for Edinburgh South West and the party’s justice and home affairs spokesperson at Westminster.
First elected as an MP in 2015, the lawyer and QC has a high public profile for her work on the legal challenges relating to Brexit. She became a hero to many Remainers following the successful campaigns she helped to spearhead which resulted in court rulings that established that Article 50 could be reversed unilaterally and that the Prime Minister had acted unlawfully in attempting to prorogue parliament. Her disadvantage currently is that she is not in Holyrood and has no ministerial experience.
Kate Forbes: Forbes, 29, is the SNP MSP for Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch and as the Scottish Government’s Public Finance Minister she was called in to deliver yesterday’s Budget in the absence of Derek Maclay. Elected to Holyrood for the first time in 2016 following a career as an accountant, she was quickly seen as a rising star. Forbes is a previous winner of the “one to watch” category at the Scottish Politician of the Year awards.
In June 2018, Forbes was appointed as the Minister for Public Finance and Digital Economy in a wide-ranging Cabinet reshuffle in which Nicola Sturgeon promoted a number of fresh faces. She is a fluent Gaelic speaker, delivering a full speech in the language during a Holyrood debate earlier this year, while MSPs listened to a translation on headphones.
Forbes’s career has not been without controversy. In June 2018 the devoted Christian made a pro-life statement at a prayer breakfast at the height of the controversy over the lack of abortion rights for women in Northern Ireland, telling an audience including SNP donor Brian Souter that politicians should recognise that the treatment of the “unborn” is a “measure of true progress”.
Angus Robertson: The former Westminster leader is known to have his eye on Ruth Davidson’s seat of Edinburgh Central next year – and on current polls you would expect him to take it (providing high-profile MPs don’t also challenge him). He was hailed for his performances at Westminster, holding David Cameron and Theresa May to account. Also a columnist for The National, Robertson speaks fluent German and regularly appears on German and Austrian television.
Humza Yousaf: Yousaf, 34, is the MSP for Glasgow Pollok, and was first elected to Holyrood in 2011 at the age of 25. When being sworn in, he took his oath in English then Urdu reflecting his Scottish-Pakistani identity and was dressed in a traditional sherwani decorated with a Partick Thistle tartan touch and a plaid draped over his shoulder.
His career at Holyrood progressed swiftly. In September 2012, Yousaf became the Minister for External Affairs and in 2016 he was moved to the position of Minister for Transport by Nicola Sturgeon. He became Justice Secretary in 2018.
Other contenders might include MPs Ian Blackford, Alyn Smith and Alison Thewliss.
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