AN SNP Cabinet Secretary has called out a Scottish political journalist over an article written in the wake of news that Kate Forbes will leave Holyrood in 2026.
The soon-to-be-former Deputy First Minister said she had decided not to stand for a third term in parliament because she did not want to miss “precious” early years with her family. Forbes gave birth to her daughter Naomi in 2022.
But don’t worry about what Forbes had to say for herself, there are political reporters on hand to inform us all what she really meant.
According to the Daily Record’s Paul Hutcheon, Forbes’s decision to stand down is because “independence is off the radar”.
“Forbes cited a desire to spend more time with her young family as the reason for her departure, but she knows the SNP is jaded and past its best,” he wrote.
The analysis drew the ire of Forbes’s fellow Scottish Cabinet member: Social Justice Secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville.
“Bloke knows better about being a mum while holding [a] ministerial role and pressures of balancing both when he demonstrably has been neither,” the top MSP wrote in response to the Record.
“I know political hacks are trying to find another angle but maybe just maybe it’s about someone doing what’s best for her and her family.”
Somerville’s sharp rebuke is a reminder of the tendency in parts of the Scottish press to contort every SNP move into comment on independence.
But then, spare a thought for The Telegraph, who somehow managed to get even further from the mark.
According to that paper, Forbes's decision is due to a "transgender row [which] is splitting the SNP".
It goes on to report that Mhairi Black is the "[[SNP]]’s deputy leader in Westminster", apparently having missed that she did not even stand in the 2024 General Election.
The Scottish media, ladies and gentlemen.
