IT is easy to forget that Bute House – as well as a venue for press conferences, grand political announcements and resignations – is also a home.
Just as I shook hands with John Swinney in the building’s drawing room ahead of an exclusive sit-down interview with The National, I was reminded of that fact.
In came his wife of 22 years Elizabeth Quigley, a former BBC Scotland journalist who has secondary progressive multiple sclerosis. Last week, the First Minister said “things are not too good” with her health but she was all smiles that afternoon.
Particularly when discussing how Newsquest photographer Gordon Terris, who was by my side, is apparently in the background of one of Swinney and Quigley’s favourite wedding photos.
Their teenage son, Matthew, is stood between them in his red hockey kit. He had just won a local cup with his team, The Devils, Swinney said with pride.
Then, it was straight to business – a quick switch from family scene to the responsibilities of holding this country’s highest office.
Gaza
I first asked the First Minister (full video above) about the Scottish Government announcing last week that it is “considering” a full state boycott of Israel.
It was in response to a letter from Scottish Greens leadership contender Ross Greer, who asked Swinney last Thursday to adopt the principles of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, which aims to put pressure on the Israeli economy in the mould of the anti-apartheid boycott of South Africa.
A Scottish Government spokesperson said ministers would “consider” the proposal, which would see official guidance issued to businesses urging them to end trade with Israel, as was done with Russia in 2022.
It’s a strengthening in position that has also come alongside a stronger stance Swinney himself has taken on the issue of late – finally saying last week, for example, that what is happening in Gaza is a “genocide”.
But that hasn’t yet been accompanied by concrete action.
During the interview, he wasn’t keen to get drawn into any steadfast commitments, either, but did say he is looking at a “whole range of measures” to take against Israel.
Only after a fair amount of pressing, he added that ending public grants for arms firms supplying Israel is an “area we are, of course, looking at”.
The Scottish Government has come under mounting scrutiny over the public money it has continuously provided for these companies.
The government agency Scottish Enterprise (SE) has given £8 million to 13 companies involved in weapons manufacturing since 2019 – although the SNP Government maintains that the funding doesn’t go directly to the production of munitions and that “due diligence” checks are thorough.
To note, that has been called into question given that, of the 199 human rights checks between 2021 and 2023, no firm ever failed. Pressure has also built around arms firms' links to Israel.
When asked about this funding, Swinney made the same argument around munitions.
“We won't support the production of munitions. That's our hard line. And we get criticised for taking that hard line, and I'm very confident that hard line is applied,” he said.
I hit back and called it a “weak argument”, because it is – bringing up his business background (before entering politics, Swinney worked as a management consultant and for a life insurance company) and how any funding for a company will evidently help its cashflow, freeing up capital to be used elsewhere.
His response? “I understand that point. But there are also defence requirements of Scotland.
"Scotland is part of an island nation. We require, for example, shipbuilding resources to support the maritime defense of the United Kingdom because nobody wants to see us vulnerable to an attack from Russia. I certainly don't want to.”
For the first time, arms firm BAE Systems – which received £9.2m from the Scottish Government in June – made an annual profit of more than £3bn in 2024. Italian arms giant Leonardo – which received £700k of Scottish public money in 2023 – reported a 16.8% increase in orders in 2024, reaching over £18 billion.
Meanwhile, more than 500 letters have been sent to the First Minister through a campaign by the Scottish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign urging Swinney to back South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, to speak with the South African ambassador about how to support the case.
Despite calling it a “genocide” himself, Swinney was again reluctant to make that commitment to me.
“In a case like that, you would get into the territory where Scotland does not have the negotiating place to argue for that in terms of international action because these issues will be reserved,” he said.
Swinney did attempt to draw a line in the controversy over his own external affairs minister Angus Robertson’s meeting last year with Israeli diplomats.
The details were revealed by The Ferret and the Sunday National after a months-long FoI battle last month, including that Robertson described the Scottish Government as a “critical friend” of Israel – despite publicly denouncing the atrocities Israel has committed in Gaza.
Asked if Swinney agreed, he responded: “No, we're a critic.”
It certainly remains to be seen whether it will be all bark and no bite with Swinney when it comes to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, perhaps the defining moral issue of our time.
Scottish independence
The First Minister put forward his plans for Scottish independence last month, saying getting a second referendum could only be achieved if the SNP win a majority in Holyrood.
To say it has been met by some opposition from SNP members would be an understatement.
At least 43 SNP branches responded by backing a rival proposal, which called for the list votes at the 2026 Holyrood election to be treated as a de facto independence referendum, with ballots for pro-independence parties and Unionist parties representing Yes and No votes respectively.
SNP members are also set to hold a second rebel meeting in September in Glasgow to challenge John Swinney’s independence strategy ahead of the conference in Aberdeen the following month.
Asked why he believes his plan will work, Swinney said: “I think it's going to work because it's an essential requirement to ensure that Scotland becomes independent. I'm not interested in just arguing about independence. I want to deliver independence.
“You can't deliver independence unless your country has domestic and international legitimacy and that comes about, as we all agreed in 2014, by a referendum on the question of Scottish independence, the rules of which are agreed across the board so that everybody is bound by the process.”
He added: “Now, I was bound by the process in 2014. I was, of course, bitterly disappointed by the outcome because I wanted Scotland to vote Yes and I gave everything I could to try to make that the case.
“I want Scotland to be in a position to become an independent country, and therefore we have got to have legitimacy – domestically and internationally around that. And that's why we’re in a logjam because the UK Government is holding its arms and saying, well, none of this is good enough.
Swinney went on: “So, what I think the UK Government needs to hear is an emphatic vote from the people of Scotland electing a majority of SNP MSPs because that's what we did in 2011, and that's what delivered the referendum in 2014.”
I then pressed him on the fact none of the polls are predicting an SNP majority in next year’s Holyrood election and concerns from many in the independence movement – SNP supporters and non-supporters alike – that this strategy is just a way to take indyref2 off the agenda until a more convenient time.
“This is me putting independence centre-stage in our campaigning,” he hit back.
“I've set out that, absolutely at the heart of the SNP's election campaign next May will be a positive front-footed argument for Scottish independence, because it is a crying urgency that Scotland is independent.”
Circling back to the other proposals made by SNP members, he said they just don't carry domestic and international legitimacy.
“Nobody will say, right, that's a clear mandate for independence. It won't be said. I just won't mislead people. If there was an easy way to do it, I would, believe you me, be right there trying to make it happen,” he said.
“We need the people of Scotland to emphatically back the SNP because that's what happened in 2011, and that's what got us a referendum. The crucial point is that 2011 created a precedent. We know what it looks like. We know how we can shape the debate and how we can apply the pressure, and that's how we do it.”
A public energy company in Scotland?
The Labour-run administration in Cardiff set up a publicly owned energy company Trydan Gwyrdd Cymru (which translates to Green Electricity Wales) in 2024, and in July announced plans for three wind farms on publicly owned Welsh woodlands – as well as more renewable energy projects yet to be finalised.
In 2017, then-Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon pledged to establish a “publicly owned, not-for-profit energy company”, but the policy was dropped after the 2021 Holyrood elections.
There are calls for Scotland to finally follow suit.
I asked Swinney, quite simply: If Wales can do it, why can’t Scotland?
He seemed to suggest the scale of the undertaking in mind prevents the Scottish Government from pursuing it.
“The type of project that I would want to see us undertaking would be one that would be in a position to significantly contribute towards reducing the energy costs of people in Scotland,” Swinney said.
“And I think that, what we're learning from the experience of the United Kingdom and the arrangements about the energy market is that these issues are fundamentally controlled by the Westminster system, and if we want to do something about that – we've got to change the constitutional arrangements to give us the ability to change the way in which the electricity market operates so that it can operate in the best interests of the people of Scotland.”
Pressed again on what particular constitutional arrangements are interfering, he reiterated: “I think what I'm trying to say to you is that if you want to do something that's going to make a meaningful difference in the lives of people in Scotland, it's the constitutional arrangements that need to change to enable that to be the case.”
Meeting with Donald Trump
The First Minister held a meeting with US president Donald Trump during his recent visit to Scotland.
The SNP leader attended the opening of the second golf course at Trump’s Menie estate in Aberdeenshire last month.
Asked about the decision to take the meeting, Swinney said he though it was an opportunity he believed the “overwhelming majority of people in Scotland would think I should take” as First Minister of Scotland and to “put forward Scotland's domestic and international concerns”.
“And that's exactly what I did. I put forward our domestic concerns about the impact of tariffs, particularly on the Scotch whisky industry, and then our international concerns about the situation in Gaza and imploring him to, as probably the only person in the world that can get Benjamin Netanyahu to do something different from the awful course that he is on, and also take the right actions on Ukraine – which is a critical issue in relation to European and domestic security.”
As my final question, I followed up to ask the First Minister if he had seen our viral Donald Trump front page last month.
The headline read: "Convicted US felon to arrive in Scotland".
It then goes on to say: "Republican leader, who was found liable for sexual abuse and defamation, will visit golf courses."
It went viral on social media, shared by celebrities including George Takei and Rosie O’Donnell and covered by US media outlets including CNN and the Wall Street Journal.
Swinney said he had seen it and when pressed on what he thought of it, he added: “It was a front page.
“It was striking.”
Bute House may be a home but it certainly is no typical one. I mistakenly assume as we say our goodbyes – at almost 6pm on a Saturday – that this was the First Minister’s final official appointment of the day.
I’m informed that he is still to host emergency services personnel at Bute House before later taking the salute at the Edinburgh Tattoo.
