Dale and Alistair dissect the goings on at First Ministers Questions in The Scottish Parliament
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00:00Hello, welcome to the Scotsman's Politics Show. It's Thursday, that means we're here to
00:05wrap up First Minister's questions. It was a lively one to open the year, Alistair Grant,
00:12political editor joining me from Holyrood. Populism or populist, a curious word that
00:19was being thrown around a lot today at FMQs. Yeah, this was Russell Findlay,
00:24the Scottish Conservative leader, accusing John Swinney, the First Minister of populism,
00:28essentially accusing each other of populism. Actually, we were having a conversation as a
00:33newsroom before we came on this video call about what exactly a definition of populism is. It's
00:39used as a bit of a political insult. It's obviously been very topical recently with
00:43Elon Musk and the rise of Donald Trump in America for the second time.
00:48Essentially, Russell Findlay was having a go at John Swinney over comments he made on Monday
00:53about the Scottish budget. John Swinney had said that if MSPs voted down the Scottish budget,
00:59this would lead to potentially medicine shortages, potentially operations getting cancelled because
01:04of funding not being available for the NHS or at least a funding rise not being available for the
01:10NHS. But he'd also said that if MSPs voted down the budget, they'd be playing into the hands of
01:15Elon Musk and other populists because they'd be demonstrating that the political process isn't
01:21working for ordinary people. Russell Findlay very much saying that these comments were
01:26ludicrous, I think is the word he used. He was kind of throwing this populist word around,
01:31accusing John Swinney of populism, accusing the SNP of populism. John Swinney then stood up and
01:36said that he's looking at the shadowy face of populism as he looked at Russell Findlay across
01:42the chamber. So it was a good kind of slagging match between them, I guess. But I don't think
01:46we really go any further forward in terms of new information in that exchange.
01:52It's a curious one, isn't it, Alistair? Because populism, some would think in politics,
01:57winning more of the popular vote would be a good thing, not a bad thing. But
02:01we'll see if this continues to crop up in rhetoric moving forward. Anna Sawa, though,
02:05he, I guess, got a bit real with current issues and referenced on the NHS. We've spoken numerous
02:12times that Labor like to talk about health, but on the back of the figures coming out of last week,
02:18it's probably hit home. Yeah, Scottish Labor always, or very often, bring up health at First
02:24Minister's questions. It's very much fertile terrain for them. It plays into their kind of
02:28overall narrative about Scotland needing change, Scotland needing a new direction,
02:32about public services not being fit for purpose. And Anna Sawa, the Scottish Labor leader,
02:38bringing up the scenes we've seen in hospitals over recent weeks. Obviously, Christmas, the
02:43winter months are always a difficult time for the NHS. There's always stories about hospitals
02:49creaking under the pressure, and that happened again this year. There's a huge kind of flu
02:53outbreaks across Scotland, massive rise in flu cases. John Swinney saying there was colossal
02:59demand over this period. I think he was saying that in the latter half of December, hospital
03:03admissions, because the hospital admissions related to flu more than doubled over that period
03:10from the week ending December 15th to the week ending December 29th. So a huge amount of pressure
03:15for NHS staff to have to deal with. Anna Sawa saying that this was a crisis they knew was coming.
03:22He accused the SNP of burying their heads in the sand, of allowing this to descend into what he
03:27called a deadly crisis. He raised an individual issue, a man, Robert, I think it's in Lanarkshire,
03:35he'd been attending, he'd had to go to A&E at Wishaw over the Christmas period, and I think
03:40he'd been forced to lie on the ground essentially for five and a half hours before he was given a
03:45bed. He was having severe abdominal pain. So obviously, a very serious issue. John Swinney
03:51apologising to Robert's family, but again pointing to the kind of general pressures within the health
03:56service. I think it's a difficult issue for the SNP because going back to the issue of populism,
04:00actually, if you look at the rise of populism and why people are attracted to political parties or
04:06pushing those kind of messages, often it's because, or you could argue it's because people are not
04:12happy with the state of the country at the moment, and a lot of that is because of dissatisfaction
04:17of public services. They're not happy with public service, they don't see there's any change
04:21happening in public services, they don't see that things are getting better, and I think if the SNP
04:27and Labour at UK level want to combat that, they have to make real improvements in public services
04:32that people can really notice on the ground, and it's such a difficult issue for them. No one's
04:37pretending it's easy, but the health service is in a bad way. I think everyone in Holyrood would
04:43accept that, and there really needs to be these changes if they want to, if they want to combat
04:47some of these things that they point to as a problem in Holyrood. Alistair, I'm just curious,
04:53John Swinney was almost scaremongering at the start of the week where he spoke about medicine
04:57shortages if other parties didn't back the budget and the money to finance the budget,
05:03but Anas Sarwar sort of pulled the rug from under him by saying his party would have stayed and we
05:09know that the budget will effectively be passed now. Was there much talk about the budget and
05:13the different positions at all at FMQs? It was always referenced, I mean it was referenced by
05:19Russell Finlay quite a lot at the beginning, because he was pointing to what you just touched
05:23on there, the fact that Anas Sarwar has come out and said that Scottish Labour will abstain in the
05:27budget, which is enough to make sure the budget passes. They won't vote for it, but they'll abstain,
05:33that's all the SNP really need, but John Swinney very much wants more support for the budget. I
05:38think he does want the support of the Liberal Democrats or the Greens for another kind of group
05:43of MSPs to come out and actively support the budget. He's got a minority government, it's
05:47much easier to govern if you can get that in place. But yeah, I mean there's lots of, on Monday he was
05:53making all these quite apocalyptic sounding warnings. I think there is, you know, there's a
05:58logic to them in the sense that if the budget doesn't go through, you know, that's an unprecedented
06:03situation in Scotland, we've never had it before, it would be spectacularly messy, there's no way
06:09around it. For a start you'd have to pass the tax rates somehow before the end of the financial year,
06:15and presumably they'd have to do that separately, but you'd also have to go back to, you'd have to
06:19basically put in place this year the spending plans that were in place last year, which obviously
06:24doesn't take account for things like inflation. You'd also have to do it on a month-by-month basis,
06:29so it's no exaggeration to say that it would be a complete mess, but you know, whether that would
06:33mean medicine shortages etc. is a different matter, I don't know. But certainly even when
06:40John Swinney said it on Monday, we knew it wasn't going to happen because everyone in Holyrood
06:46basically knew the budget was going to pass, because no political party really wants an election at
06:51the moment, particularly with a Holyrood election coming in 2026 anyway, no political party
06:56really wants to be seen as the cause of that kind of political mess, and that's sort of what
07:01John Swinney was alluding to on Monday, you know, saying that the public wouldn't really understand
07:05it if the budget was voted down for, you know, what are quite slight political differences between
07:12some of the political parties in Holyrood. Alistair, I'm always curious about what our
07:17viewers and readers think about this. If you do have some thoughts, please send it in,
07:23we've got a letters page and you can respond on comments on any of our articles up at
07:28scotsman.com. You'll be able to read all the latest that come out of FNQs on our website
07:33throughout this afternoon, scotsman.com, there's a politics tab in the navigation bar to get all
07:39your latest, and we'll have a full wrap of things in tomorrow's paper. Alistair, thanks to you,
07:44and thanks everyone else for joining us.