AFTER 15 years at the heart of the Scottish Government, John Swinney stepped back from frontline politics in 2023. But just over a year later, the “men in grey kilts” came calling. The former finance, education, and Covid recovery secretary – and deputy first minister for nearly a decade – was thrust into the top job by a party in search of stability.
Now First Minister, Swinney sat down with The Sunday National to reflect on 10 things that shaped his journey and changed his life – even if, he says, “I could have gone on for an awful lot more than 10”.
1: His parents
AS I sit down with the First Minister in his office in Holyrood, the question of how to begin the interview inevitably comes up. We’re to talk about the 10 things that changed his life, but “what’s number one then?” isn’t exactly the sharp opening question political reporters hope for.
But I don’t even need to ask it. Swinney is ready, a list in hand, and his first entry has never been in doubt.
“A fundamental influence in my life is my parents, my mum and dad,” he says. “I grew up in a very supportive, encouraging and loving household, so I benefited from all of that.”
“I would watch him as a boy,” Swinney says. “He was incredible. He could lift the bonnet of a car, stick his head in, and from listening he would tell you what was wrong with it.”
As the conversation turns to his mother, Nancy, who passed on in 2020 at age 89, Swinney’s tone softens.
“My mum was a kind, generous, non-judgmental woman,” he says. “I never, ever heard her speak in a kind of gossipy way about anybody, she just didn't do it.
“In all the walks of life that she was involved in, she was a giver.”
He recalls her voluntary work with St Columba’s Hospice, the church and the MS Society – long before her daughter-in-law’s diagnosis.
The First Minister says he has been “undeniably” shaped by the hard graft of his father and “generosity of spirit” of his mother – but while his parents supported his ambitions, overt political discussion at home was rare.
“My father won't tell me anything about him and the ballot box – and that maintains to this day.”
2: The 1979 Scottish Assembly referendum
IN 1979, Scots were asked to vote on a devolved Scottish assembly. The “Yes” side won – but a clause stipulating that 40% of the electorate had to vote in favour meant the choice was blocked.
For Swinney, the result was instrumental in his political journey.
“I'm seeing this vibrant campaign about Scotland taking control of our own affairs, and I get interested in it. It captures my imagination,” he says.
“I remember vividly thinking to myself, ‘look, if you care about this, you should do something about it’. So I wrote to the SNP in May 1979 and joined the party.”
Years later, SNP staffers unearthed that very letter at party HQ.
“I now am in possession of not only the letter that they sent me back saying welcome to the SNP, I've got the letter that I sent to them,” Swinney says.
3: Elizabeth Quigley
NUMBER three needs little introduction. “Elizabeth Quigley, my wife,” Swinney says. “She’s a remarkable individual because, well, she's prepared to put up with me, which makes her very remarkable.”
Was it love at first sight? “It probably was actually. Yes, I'd say so.”
That may have been slightly awkward, given their respective positions when the pair first met in 2001.
“She was BBC Scotland's political correspondent,” Swinney says. “I was leader of the SNP.”
But, Swinney goes on: “I'm blessed with the fact that when I go home and I talk about something politically, I'm talking to someone, to my wife, who is politically astute, experienced, informed, clued up.
“She can interrogate and challenge without ever saying to me, you should do this. She never does that.”
As a BBC journalist, Elizabeth has written about her diagnosis with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) in 2000, something Swinney says weighed heavily in life decisions – not least whether to run for First Minister.
“She's totally determined to avoid MS getting in the way of leading a full life,” he says. “But it's a factor.”
4: Becoming a father and a grandfather
THE First Minister is father to three children: Judith, born in 1994; Stuart, in 1996; and Matthew, in 2010.
Becoming a parent “automatically, instantaneously makes you a grown up”, Swinney says. “I think it brings out an even more intense sense of care, responsibility, empathy, encouragement, nurture, all these things. That's what it's done to me anyway.”
Earlier this year, he welcomed his first grandchild when Judith gave birth to Rua.
“I said to her, about a week before her due date ... I said, look, I think we should just stop being in touch with each other because I will just quite literally be so worried. Just phone me when you've had the baby. We'll have a no-call zone for a wee while.
“When I got a phone call at 6:30 on a Monday morning, I realised, ‘ah, something has happened’.”
5: Running
THE First Minister’s love of running is well known nowadays. He was even talked into a literal foot-race against Holyrood’s other party leaders for charity a few weeks ago.
But it all began back in 2009, with an impromptu visit to the hospital. Though it was a false alarm, one doctor’s question stuck: “How heavy were you when you became a member of parliament?”
“I'd never thought of this,” the First Minister says. “I was four stone heavier. I thought, I can't go back and see this guy without doing something about it.”
Now, Swinney says, running is about much more than keeping off that extra four stone. It is meditative and a part of his “equilibrium”.
“I find that I can go to bed at night, a question in my head that I can't quite resolve, and when I'm running in the morning, it gets answered,” he says.
6: The SNP winning the 2007 election
THE SNP’s 2007 Holyrood election victory was a turning point in Scottish history. But for Swinney, it was also a hugely personal moment.
“I suppose in my heart of hearts, having joined a fringe party in 1979 that had two MPs and not much going for it, I didn't really think I would ever even become a member of parliament,” he says. “So to win the 2007 election and to be appointed a government minister was just literally the most remarkable moment of life.”
After a long night disrupted by problems with electronic counting, Swinney finally got to bed at 6am.
“At about 8 o'clock, my friend Brian Adam, then member for Aberdeen North, phoned me to tell me he'd been returned.
“I said, ‘Thanks Brian, I'm trying to sleep, mate’.”
But that was not going to be possible. The vote tallies were racking up, and it looked like the SNP might be in.
“You know that moment where you just know that you're about to doze off?” Swinney asks. It was then that the phone rang again.
Driving across the Forth Road Bridge, Swinney heard his then-leader’s words on the radio: “Scotland has changed forever as a result of what's happened today.”
“I was conscious that I had tears streaming down my face,” he says. “You instantaneously move from the periphery of politics to the heart of politics.”
Did he feel imposter syndrome? “No. I thought we were ready for it. It felt as if we had just arrived.”
7: The Jam
THIS one takes me off guard. Directly after discussing the high emotion of 2007’s election, I don’t immediately understand what Swinney means by “The Jam”.
He clarifies he means the band led by Paul Weller, and he is deadly serious.
“This is an integral part of my entire being,” the First Minister says.
“I fell in love with The Jam at about the same time as I fell in love with the SNP. 1979ish. I saw them play at the Playhouse in 1982. I just loved everything The Jam produced.
“I have a Jam tune in my running music. The Jam will always be in there.”
Favourite album? “Setting Sons.” It was their fourth, released in 1979.
A favourite song? “That’s not hard at all. Down In The Tube Station At Midnight.”
I don’t immediately know the number, but later learn that it recounts a violent right-wing attack in a London subway amid a wider disintegration of community values in 1970s Britain.
Perhaps it’s no coincidence that a song about creeping fascism and social decay resonated so deeply with a young, pro-independence Scot.
8: Faith
SWINNEY was raised in the Church of Scotland. His mother Nancy was a Sunday school teacher. But as a teenager and younger man, he says, he found himself naturally moving away from the Christian faith.
But, the First Minister says, some of the teachings never left him.
“Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself – the more I think about it, is the absolute foundation of my entire being,” he says.
Asked what brought him back to the church, the First Minister does not even stop to think. “Becoming a father,” he says. “That's when I started to think through, you know, what's happening here, and that was when I reconnected with my faith.”
Ultimately, he says faith has given him two central anchors in life. One, how to treat others. And two, that “however tough it all gets, you've always got the love of God”.
9: Scotland's islands
“I will never tire of seeing that picture, Iona rocks,” Swinney says, pointing to one of two similar paintings hanging on his office wall. “I will never tire of looking at white sand and turquoise water. Never.”
The second painting is of Barra, another of Scotland’s islands – which Swinney collectively names as the ninth thing to have changed his life.
But there is another island in particular that for him outshines the others: Tiree.
He explains: “When Elizabeth and I got together, we had a few days up in the north west. I remember standing just beside the terminal at Ullapool, and we watched the ferry come in and go out.
“Neither of us really knew our islands well, so we said, let's start going. Every year thereafter, we just went to a different island.”
So begins a test of memory, with Swinney recounting visiting Mull in 2002, Islay in 2003, Orkney in 2004, Tiree in 2005, the Western Isles in 2006.
By 2012, on another visit to Mull, Swinney says that Elizabeth’s mobility was “becoming a bit of an issue” due to her MS.
“So I remember walking out past Calgary Bay in Mull, I had Matthew up in a rucksack in my back, and I looked out from the peak and I saw Tiree out there.
“I thought, if we go to Tiree, it'll be easier to get Elizabeth on to a beach. So in 2013 we started going back to Tiree, and we've gone there ever since.”
10: Becoming First Minister
“THE final one you won't be surprised to hear,” Swinney says. “It’s becoming the First Minister of Scotland, in so many different ways, particularly because of the manner in which I became First Minister.”
When the world learned of Humza Yousaf’s resignation – Swinney says he was warned he would have a decision to make the night before – “my phone basically melted in front of my eyes”.
“It just went on like that all day. Utterly overwhelming, from all sides of opinion in the SNP – people who ordinarily would maybe not have me top of their pin-up list coming and saying, 'we need you to do this'.”
It was a family decision. Friends stepped in to offer support to Elizabeth and their teenage son Matthew to make it possible. But one absence hit hard.
“There was one person missing, and that was my beloved mother.”
He adds, visibly moved: “I thought I can't deliver this speech without making reference to her.
“I talked about how her local minister had written to me and she said, ‘your mum would have been quietly proud’. Those words from my mum's minister, that summed my mother up.
“There wouldn't be a big song and dance about it. She would not have thrown a party. She would have just held my hand with care and said, ‘remember what you've got to do’.
“That was the only bit that I struggled with. I still struggle with it.”
