THERE is a story that does the rounds in SNP circles every now and then.
Back in 2003, the then-SNP leader had to be talked down by a frantic Alex Salmond from coming out in support of Tony Blair and George Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq.
Perhaps it is apocryphal, as some senior nationalists have argued, but the tale certainly paints a picture of Swinney that seems to some too far off the mark.
Some in the party, pushing for the SNP to ditch its hard-line stance on unilateral nuclear disarmament within two years of independence, see Swinney’s relative agnosticism on foreign affairs as a plus.
And in Donald Trump’s new “America first” world, where Nato allies fear the US president would abandon them if the going got tough, the previously unthinkable suddenly becomes possible.
In a scenario where Trump abandons commitments to protect Nato allies, the SNP’s enemies will pounce on the chance to brand their anti-nuke stance “dangerous” and “not credible”.
Having spent 16 years in the weeds of domestic policy, Swinney has had little time to look up at the world around him.
“Swinney hasn’t really done a lot of thinking on these sorts of things because he’s been deputy first minister, that was all left to Nicola [Sturgeon] or Angus Roberston or Michael Russell when he was there,” said one party source keen to shift the party’s stance on nukes.
“His stuff on Gaza is a stale copy and paste of what Humza [Yousaf] was saying, though saying it a lot less, obviously; he’s focusing on domestic issues.”
For some, this was best exemplified by his response to a question about the party’s stance on nuclear weapons given the invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine, which is not a member of Nato, gave up its nuclear weapons only to find itself invaded by Russia about 20 years later.
Asked about the SNP’s anti-nuke stance at FMQs in March, Swinney said: “Nuclear weapons have not deterred Russia from invading Ukraine.”
A source described the response as “stupid”, adding: “It would suggest to me that Swinney actually probably isn’t sure what his views are on this, given events in Europe and Ukraine.”
In the age of Trump, against whom Swinney has spoken in strong terms, the First Minister’s foreign policy platform – or lack thereof – presents an opportunity to those who would move the SNP closer to that of Labour or the Tories.
Trump’s erratic behaviour on the world stage has spooked America’s allies deeply, culminating in Keir Starmer convening a “coalition of the willing” and Swinney expressing support for the Prime Minister’s now-ditched plans to send a UK “peace-keeping force” to Ukraine.
A party source pointed to some big interventions in recent months, which they believed showed that the party’s rank-and-file could be moving away from traditional SNP policies.
The reaction to former SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford’s piece in The Times two months ago, calling for the party to move to a multilateral disarmament policy, was more muted than might have been expected.
“I was expecting an absolute fucking uproar,” said an SNP insider. “Don’t get me wrong, you got cybernats online giving it laldy but there wasn’t actually that much pushback.”
While divisions on totemic topics such as nuclear weapons are deeply unlikely to come to the fore with a year out to the election, SNP members who oppose the party’s current stance see an opening, if that fight comes, in its stance on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).
According to this wing of the party, the position set out in the 2014 independence white paper – which would allow Nato ships carrying nuclear weapons to dock in Scottish harbours under a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy – is incompatible with the commitments of states party to the TPNW.
If the SNP softening their stance on nuclear weapons seems unthinkable, just consider how likely the prospect of a second Trump presidency seemed just four years ago.
