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00:00Hello, and welcome to The Steamy, the Scotsman's politics podcast. I'm Alster Grant, the Scotsman's
00:12political editor. And to discuss all the latest in Scottish politics, I'm joined by Rachel
00:16Emery, the Scotsman's political correspondent, David Ball, our deputy political editor, and by
00:22Katrina Stewart, the Scotsman's education correspondent. Holyrood's long summer recess
00:27is almost at an end as August draws to a close. I'm sitting in the Scottish Parliament at the
00:31moment where the festival of politics is currently taking place. But what lies in store when Holyrood
00:37returns from recess? What are some of the big political issues to be keeping an eye on? We'll
00:42be diving into all of that a wee bit later on. But first, we should talk about the breaking news in
00:48Scottish politics this morning, as we're recording this, which is the MSP Jeremy Balfour's resignation
00:54from the Scottish Conservatives with immediate effect. Rachel, you've been covering this.
01:00Why has Jeremy Balfour quit the party to sit as an independent?
01:04As we have a shock to get this this morning. So this was announced on BBC Good Morning Scotland
01:09earlier on today, recording this on Friday morning, I should say. And it's quite interesting,
01:15because I was actually on Good Morning Scotland on the segment after that, and the producer texted
01:18me and said, could you maybe have a little listen to this or something big coming up? Was not expecting
01:23that to be the big thing coming up? So really quite interesting. So he's the Lothian's MSP for
01:29the Conservatives. He's also the party's social security spokesperson. So a frontbench role as
01:34well. And he's now no longer in the party. The resignation letter that he has posted on social
01:40media, it is quite scathing. It does go into a lot of the sort of his portfolio of social security,
01:46particularly when it looks at benefits for those who are the most vulnerable in society and the cost of
01:51the benefits bill, for example. But he's also quite critical of the leadership, saying that
01:56leadership is more interested in listening to less experienced advisors rather than senior MSPs like
02:03himself. And also saying that they're more interested in reacting to issues from other
02:09parties and to chasing cheap headlines as well. So it's not a great resignation letter if you're the
02:16party leader, Russell Finlay, and also not a great because this is the second MSP to leave the party
02:23under Russell Finlay's leadership. And I seem to remember as well when Jamie Green left to go to
02:29the Lib Dems earlier this year, again, a little bit critical of the leadership and the direction the
02:33party was taking. So to have a second MSP also criticising the direction of the party is really quite
02:39interesting at this point. Now, he was on the radio this morning, he was asked, you know,
02:43why, what's going to happen next. And he's very adamant that he's going to stay as an independent
02:47until the next election. At least he was asked, you know, are you going to go to reform, for example,
02:52or are you going to follow Jamie Green and go to the Lib Dems? And he said no to both those things.
02:57He says, no, I am a Conservative. My values, my politics have not changed. It is the party that has
03:03changed. So very interesting to see what the party does in reaction to this, not least because on
03:09Monday, Russell Finlay is due to make a speech in Glasgow. I think David's, I think you're heading
03:14along to that particular speech, and he's going to be setting out what is going to happen with the
03:20party over the next few months as it goes back to Holyrood in September. Really interesting to see
03:25if he touches on that point. I think he'll have to touch on that point, surely.
03:28Yeah, David, it'll be fascinating what he says about this, because even if he doesn't bring it up himself,
03:31he'll be asked about it, probably repeatedly by journalists. I mean, what did you make of this in general?
03:36Because it's just another sign of the deep unhappiness within a section of the party.
03:41I wrote a piece for the Scotsman back in April, talking about some of this, in which an MSP, a Tory
03:46MSP was making some of the very same points that Jeremy Balfour has been making about kind of cheap
03:51headline grabbing, the concerns over the direction of the party. What did you make of it?
03:58Yeah, it's a huge blow. As Rachel mentioned, Russell Finlay was going to set out kind of a blank slate
04:04and a good starting point going back to Holyrood for the party. And this is just another disaster.
04:11And yeah, he's just going to face questions. And it's hard to ignore the fact that he's kind of
04:16superficially anyway, taking the party backwards since he's taken over. Not saying that he's done
04:21anything wrong. It's kind of out of his hands, the kind of impact that reform have had. But the way he's
04:25reacted to it has obviously upset quite a few of his MSPs. I mean, they're not alone in this,
04:32the anger, whether other ones will walk as well. It's just the last thing. He's trying to please
04:38everyone. He's trying to kind of pander a little bit to the reform vote, although he would deny that
04:42is what he's doing. But obviously, the Scottish Tories built quite a lot of its base, particularly
04:49under Ruth Davidson's leadership by appealing to that center ground. And that's where a lot of
04:53their vote and their success has come from. So by moving away, it's kind of alienating not just
04:58their MSPs, but some of the voters as well. And it's very difficult to see how Russell Finlay can
05:03claw back some momentum. When Jamie Green quit, he quite openly said that he can't control how many
05:09people leave. But he's in a real danger now of in the lead up to the Hollywood election,
05:14seeing his number of MSPs dwindle even further, potentially.
05:18And Kat, you were speaking to the Tory MSP, Miles Briggs, this morning. He's seen as
05:23quite close to Russell Finlay. He's part of that kind of leadership group. What was his take on this?
05:29He was definitely trying to downplay the significance of Jeremy Balfour's defection.
05:35Well, it's not defection, really. It's defecting to himself.
05:38He, of course, was saying that he was very sad to see him go, that he hugely respects him as an MSP
05:46and the work that he does and the challenges that he's personally overcome to carry out that work
05:51as an MSP. But he definitely was downplaying the significance of this. He said that if he'd had
05:58the chance to speak to Jeremy Balfour about it, then he would have tried to talk him around,
06:03as he also tried to talk Jamie Green around, into staying. I think they are very keen to
06:12suggest privately, nobody is willing to go on the record to say this, but I had a couple of
06:18conversations this morning with people who are supportive of the leadership of Russell Finlay,
06:26saying that perhaps the run-up to the election is too grueling and that Jeremy Balfour is looking for
06:34a bit of an easier life, which I don't think is the case. I think he is a principled MSP. He has
06:40deep concerns about the tone that the party is taking, and I think he has done this for the right reasons.
06:49I don't know what he thinks the practical implication of this will be, because there has
06:54also been mention of the fact that it is much easier to change policy from inside the party than
06:58from outside the party, and I think that's right. But yes, we are very much trying to downplay this
07:05and make it out to not be too much of an issue. Well, I predict this isn't the last grumbling of
07:11discontent we will hear from within the Scottish Tory party ahead of next year's Hollywood election,
07:16in which the party is widely expected to be squeezed by the rise of Nigel Farage's
07:21Reform UK. But to move on to wider issues, Rachel, Holyrood is going to be returning from recess in
07:27a week or so. What are some of the big issues to keep an eye on from your point of view?
07:32Well, I think it's going to be campaigning for the next election. I feel like already the past year,
07:39the year before that as well, because of the general election, it really has been a campaigning
07:43parliament. And I feel like especially if you look at First Minister's questions each week,
07:47for example, particularly with the Labour Party, rather than trying to sort of get down to the
07:53nitty-gritty policy details, it is more here is why you should vote for us, here is why we should
07:58become the next government, here is why we should win the next election. And so we're just going to
08:01see that ramp up more and more and more going forward. So in a sort of kind of a boring sort of
08:09way, that's I think what's going to be the overriding theme going back, it is just going to be
08:13all on the election fitting. That being said as well, because there's only one year left, there's
08:18lots of pieces of legislation, lots of bills that need to be finished by the next election. So there'll
08:23be a lot of bills that you'll see getting a lot of more work done on them very, very quickly. So
08:29that'll be something to keep an eye out for as well. I think the two main political issues over the
08:35summer, I'm keen to know what you guys think are the main political issues over the summer as well,
08:40but I think two things that have really sort of cropped up time and time again are immigration and
08:46gender reform. I think those two are the sort of big talking points of the summer and I think that
08:50will spill over into Holyrood over the next few weeks too. Yeah, I think absolutely those
08:57issues have dominated the summer, particularly gender reform in Scotland. But David, just to focus in
09:04on the SNP, it's got its conference coming up in mid-October. The party's annual accounts were
09:08released this week showing, among other things, that it's lost more than 8,000 members and its
09:13deficit has ballooned to nearly £500,000. Just how tricky do you think this conference is going to
09:19be for SNP leader and First Minister John Swinney? Oh, it's gonna be very difficult for him to navigate.
09:26I mean, he was already under pressure, particularly over his independence strategy. There's lots of
09:32activists, which to be fair, whatever independence strategy, a lot of people in the SNP wouldn't be
09:37happy with. Trying to please everyone on this issue has been impossible. Nicholas Sturgeon struggled,
09:45Hamza Youssef just tried the same thing, it didn't work. So there's going to be a lot of
09:49pressure on him to do that. I don't know where the party goes from here. We've seen John Swinney
09:57trying to keep things calm and not do an awful lot as a strategy to steady that ship. But as we
10:03approach the election, people are going to expect more from him. They can't just rely on Labour's
10:08problems at Westminster. We saw in the Hamilton by-election that Labour can win in some of these
10:14seats, not by a margin that will give them confidence going into the election. But I do
10:18think when we come back and that conference is just going to be setting up their pitch to the public
10:22on independence, but also for that Holyrood election. And people will be looking for some
10:28kind of positive or some sort of vision that John Swinney has to reassure the public and members and
10:34activists that they have more to give government after so long in power. So I do think the pressure
10:41and the onus is on John Swinney to come forward with some ideas. Before his programme for government,
10:46which he brought forward in the spring, he said he was going to be radical. Obviously,
10:51that didn't actually happen. There's literally nothing in the programme for government of note.
10:56So it's really up to him and his team around him to kind of bring forward something. And as you
11:03mentioned, the membership is dropping, which means the funding has dropped. That was last year when there
11:07was a general election and there's always like a deficit. Parties run on a deficit in election year.
11:13So hopefully this year they can recover. Stuart MacDonald, the treasurer, said that they've kind of
11:17put measures in place to get them back on a more sustainable footing. Obviously, that election next
11:23year ramps that pressure right back on them again. Yeah, and Kat, I want to ask you about education
11:30specifically. But before that, I know you're interviewing Nicola Sturgeon shortly, I believe,
11:36at the Usher Hall. And she's, the release of her memoir has cast a bit of a shadow over the party in
11:42terms of bringing up some of these issues that they'd probably rather were consigned to history. Do you
11:47think that's still to play out? Some of those things that we've seen in the headlines over the last few
11:51days, last few weeks, do you think they will continue to kind of dog John Swinney going into that
11:57holiday election next year? I think there's no doubt. It's not just Nicola Sturgeon's book,
12:02it's the book tour. So we had a lot of problematic headlines coming from the contents of the book.
12:10But then, of course, journalists have been really trying to drill down into some of the finer details
12:16of this. We've had the Alex Salmond versus Nicola Sturgeon war re-emerge. Jeff Aberdeen, who is
12:24a case aide of Alex Salmond, have been talking about that this week. That generated a lot of really
12:30negative headlines around that. And the book tour continues, she is going to keep promoting this book,
12:36she is going to keep being asked questions. Journalists are determined to get news lines out
12:41of this, and none of it is coming out as being particularly positive for the SNP. And it is giving
12:47journalists the chance to question her on her record and on some of the bigger issues that she said that
12:54she wanted to make progress on. And there aren't robust answers to these. And all of this has been
13:01a wider knock-on effect because the questions that Nicola Sturgeon is being asked become the questions
13:06that are then put to John Swinney and other senior members of the SNP at media calls. So the timing of
13:12this is really interesting. There's been a lot of talk about the timing of this book, why it was
13:16brought out now. And I think in the run up to an election, it was absolutely the last thing that
13:21the SNP needed. Yeah. And on education, what lies on the horizon for schools, for universities,
13:29for colleges? Is there anything in particular to keep an eye on? It's going to be a really jam-packed time
13:34for education. Rachel talked there about the run up to the election. It's all going to be about campaigning
13:40and there'll be a need to try and get some bills through quickly. But I think also the flip side of
13:45that is there's going to be a lot of bills that are perhaps kicked down the road because they're too
13:52meaty to try and get into. There isn't funding for them. So I think something that we need to keep a
13:57close eye on is the pace of some of these bills. And there's sort of smaller issues like the
14:03residential outdoor education bill is coming up. That is a very well-meaning bill. It would give
14:11all young people in Scotland access to outdoor education, which is really important.
14:15It's also really expensive. Where is the money coming from that? Nobody wants to be the MSP that
14:22goes against giving kids outdoor education, but it's expensive. We'll see what happens with that one.
14:29Daniel Johnson has quite an interesting bill coming up on restraint, which falls into the legislation
14:37that goes towards making the promise, which of course was a big Nicola Sturgeon campaign issue.
14:44It was something that she pledged to do to implement the promise. That has moved infuriatingly for
14:51campaigners slowly. And I think that will be really one to watch in the run up, particularly as we're
14:58discussing Nicola Sturgeon's legacy in the run up to 2016 election. University funding is going to be
15:06a massive issue. Of course, all the focus has been on Dundee University and the issues around governance
15:13there. But that plays into a much bigger picture about the issues around university funding. I have a
15:19long read about this in Scotland this week that's going to get into a lot more of the issues around that.
15:25But there's been a huge reliance on the sector, on overseas students that's susceptible to global
15:33political changes. There have been issues with the UK government, hostile immigration policies that
15:41have discouraged overseas students from coming to study here. And I'm struggling to find anyone who's
15:48positive about the sector. There are huge concerns about what the next five years are going to hold.
15:52There's going to be a lot of heavy discussions about free tuition places for Scottish domiciled students.
16:00So that's a really massive issue. And then legislation like the tertiary education bill is going to have
16:06big impacts for colleges. Again, speaking to people in the sector, there's real worry about unintended
16:12consequences around that. At the moment, one of the big pushes is to encourage young people,
16:19as well as doing hires to also look at college courses and look at foundation apprenticeships.
16:25And so there's some concerns that that bill is going to have knock on effects for the ability
16:30of young people to access these kind of courses in schools. And then, of course, schools are going to be
16:36a huge issue. There'll be a focus on overcrowding in classrooms, violence in classrooms. Again, the
16:43poverty related attainment gap, another big Nicola Sturgeon promise, is not closing in the way that
16:49the government had hoped. And I think the Scottish Government is very, very twitchy around all of these
16:56issues in the run up to the election. They're not wanting to make big promises, but they have previously
17:02made big promises that they're not filling. And again, we've already mentioned the single sex spaces
17:09guidance. That's awaited. And again, I think that's going to be a big problem for the government
17:15because they are absolutely stalling on doing this. They could do it for individual departments,
17:21but no one individual part of the government wants to put out their guidance around single sex spaces
17:28because the inevitable call will be, well, if the prison sector can do it, if the education sector can do
17:34it, why can't the NHS? Why can't the other departments? So they're trying to do a coordinated
17:39effort on this, and it's just delaying it, which again is leaving them open to challenge. So we have
17:47a really, really interesting term coming up in Hollywood. Yeah, we've also talked about the Tories,
17:54we've talked about the SNP. It'd be good to kind of touch on the other parties just briefly. Rachel,
17:59I know you have to shoot off to something very soon. So if you need to go, just feel free to drop
18:05out the call. But just before you go, in terms of the Lib Dems, the Greens, we've also got the Greens
18:11leadership unveiling coming up, I think at the end of next week. What do you think about the state of
18:17play for the other parties in Hollywood? Yeah, if we focus on the Scottish Greens,
18:22first of all, very interesting time. One week to go until the new co-leaders are announced. I believe
18:30the ballot closes in about 20 minutes. So if you're a Green Party member, by the time this is
18:35actually out on air, you probably missed the boat. We're looking at four candidates there. Lorna Slater,
18:41of course, is already co-leader, so has that experience. Not only that, has experience of leading
18:45the party into an election, which could be very valuable for the party at this point. You've then got
18:49Ross Greer and Gillian Mackay, two other MSPs who are well-known within the party and well-known within
18:55Holyrood, because they've managed to attach themselves to pieces of legislation that have
18:59successfully gone through, or to big, high-profile campaigns. The fourth candidate is Dominic Ashmole.
19:07We can't discount him completely, because there have been non-elected members who have been co-leaders
19:12of the party in the past, and he is offering something different to perhaps bridge the gap that seems
19:17to be growing between the Holyrood group and the rest of the party. That being said, I think we are
19:21looking at some combination of three MSPs at this point for the Green Party. So quite interesting to
19:27see who wins that, and then how they then take the party forward. If it is Lorna Slater with somebody
19:35new, or no Lorna Slater at all, we might see the party have a bit of a different feel from now on.
19:40David, you're I think going to that leadership announcement next week. Just before we all
19:48have to shoot off, what's your take on this, and where do you think the Greens stand in terms of
19:53the Holyrood election next year? They've obviously had some polling that suggests that they could do
19:58pretty well. Yeah, I think some of the SNP kind of thought they would be damaged by the Butte House
20:06agreement. But as the junior partner often does, but it's not really been the case of the Greens.
20:11They look quite solid going into the election. I would be surprised. I don't like to make predictions.
20:16I'd be surprised if Ross Greer and Ginny McKay didn't do well in that election. They've been kind
20:22of an unofficial joint ticket almost. I watched some hustings the other week, and quite frequently
20:29they were kind of agreeing with each other. That's a great idea, Ross. I agree with Ginny and that sort
20:34of thing, and kind of pointing out some problems with Lorna Slater's kind of ideas that she was
20:42bringing, some of the arguments she was making. Maybe reading too much into that, but I can see
20:46a new direction for the party. If there is a new leadership, I think they might be pushed back
20:53a little bit more on some of the Scottish government stuff, try and carve out their own identity, which I
20:57think were only doing them well going into that election. There's another dynamic at play as well
21:03about what the Parliament might look like after the election and that the Greens may well play a role.
21:08And with Kate Forbes kind of stepping down, that was one of the big barriers they had to going in.
21:14They kind of ruled out going back into the SNP coalition or whatever that is framed as.
21:20With Kate Forbes there, they had problems with her kind of equalities views. So with her kind of not
21:26going to be there after the election, it really does open the door. If the SNP can form a government with
21:31the Greens, that that is a real possibility again, probably on an informal basis rather
21:36than a repeat of the Butte House agreement. Yeah, well, it's going to be a fascinating time
21:42and it sounds like there's lots on the table in the weeks ahead, but that's all we've got time
21:46for this week. We'll be back at the same time next week, which will be the last week of recess. But
21:51until then, thank you very much for listening. Please stay tuned to the Scotsman's website for all the
21:55latest news, analysis, video, comment, and buy a copy of the paper too, and subscribe actually. Thank you very much.
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