POLITICAL leadership has been the theme of the week – or rather the huge variations on that skill which are presently on show in Scotland.

Scottish Labour have a perpetual leadership crisis and that hasn’t changed though the likeable, but badly miscast, Richard Leonard deserves better than being talked down to by that blustering Baron George Foulkes.

The LibDems are apparently in the throes of a UK leadership contest featuring two people who are scarcely household names in their own households. The only interest I can summon up in the whole process is to wonder if they issue leaflets against each other that have bogus bar charts and dishonestly allege in special internal campaign editions of Focus that so and so “can’t win here”.

The Westminster-controlled Tories, having made the Jim Murphy mistake, will now have to live with it. It was bad enough to tell Scottish members that none of them is capable of leading, but worse still to lie about what happened when this very London coup was laid bare. No doubt Ruth Davidson will have plenty of time to reflect on that when sitting ermine clad on the red benches of the House of Lords.

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In the SNP, however, despite the difficult times, two of our number have shown that what real leadership demonstrates is determination and a conviction that listening to people in order to do the right thing is what counts.

The situation in Aberdeen is worrying but the First Minister is facing up to unpalatable decisions and making them in the interests of all our futures. No-one wants to see restrictions reimposed nor a delay in allowing some much wanted activities and businesses to get going again. But the greater prize is eliminating the virus so that we can move to the fourth stage of the plan, and we are simply not there yet. It is therefore essential that we all accept what has to be done – and that we insist on responsible behaviour in order to get it done.

I have known John Swinney for more than 30 years. He is a man of unimpeachable integrity and he cares, sometimes in terms of his own welfare almost too deeply, about the consequences of his decisions upon not just the country but on each individual.

Any and every education secretary has a duty to maintain the integrity of the examination system, the gold standard of Scottish education, and I know that at first hand because I have done the job, though in nothing like the difficult conditions he has had to face.

But equally importantly education secretaries also have a duty of care for each young person in the school system so that they get every opportunity to flourish and John knows that too, at the very core of his being.

The oppositional politics of education we have seen demonstrated by people such as the embittered Labour former leader Iain Gray in the past few days are alas more about opposition than education.

John is right to address himself directly to those personally involved and upset and to reassure them that evidence-based appeal is the route forward. Moreover by removing any barriers to appeal and accelerating urgent ones he is insisting on action, not mere words.

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None of us will be content until all those affected know that they are being fairly treated in what are the most troubled of times and John is making that happen.

In my own small way I too have been trying to lead. The decision to introduce an all-woman shortlist in my constituency next year has caused a little murmuring on Twitter, though not much in Argyll and Bute itself.

However I back the move 100% and I have been defending and justifying it with a single set of figures.

Of the 13 people elected to Westminster and then Holyrood in Argyll in the 102 years since 1918 (when the act to allow women to stand was passed) 12 have been men and only one – the much missed Ray Michie – has been a woman.

The figures about the chances of being elected here are even more stark – one in four for a man (12 elected from 49 who stood) but only one in nine for a woman.

So the right thing to do is to lead by exercising that degree of positive discrimination which is allowed by law and ensure that in Argyll and Bute next May it is the best woman that will contest for the SNP – and I hope she wins.