By Jonathan Brocklebank for the Scottish Daily Mail
13:14 February 21, 2023, updated 15:51 February 21, 2023
She was smart, articulate, and—remarkably given her youth and the sheepish tendencies of many of her peers—a woman of her own. The problem with Kate Forbes, from the perspective of her allies, was her apparent lack of ambition.
When asked in 2020 if she was interested in the top job, she replied that she was “absolutely” not.
When the question came up again the following year, she was just as firm — and more explicit about why it definitely wasn’t for her. “The more I see the job up close,” she said, “the less appealing it is.”
So that’s it. The brightest rising star in the nationalist movement had no interest in replacing Nicola Sturgeon, especially in a political arena she felt “felt more toxic than ever.”
She had just married Ali – Alasdair MacLennan, a chimney sweep ten years her senior, and was adjusting to life as a parent to his three teenage daughters.
Kate Forbes (pictured here in the Scottish Parliament building) is entirely her own wife, writes Jonathan Brocklebank
She became pregnant shortly afterwards and took maternity leave in July last year as the Scottish Government’s first cabinet secretary.
Daughter Naomi is only six months old now.
Just in case Miss Forbes still had an ounce of doubt about keeping her name out of any leadership race, Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation speech could have been almost tailor-made to sweep her away.
Life as First Minister is “relentlessly” hard, she said, and “giving absolutely everything of yourself to this job is the only way to do it”. There is “virtually no privacy” and “a First Minister is never off duty”.
And yet, in her first public statement since Miss Sturgeon resigned on Wednesday, there was a slightly different assessment of the desirability of the post the SNP leader is vacating.
“We need a leader who is bold, courageous and energetic, with a fresh face and ready for new challenges,” explained Miss Forbes in a slick video posted to social media.
“I am that leader.”
Whether the Dingwall-born former chartered accountant is a leader at all remains to be seen. But it’s already emerging that she’s the candidate who will represent the biggest cultural shift since the Sturgeon era.
The pair are far from each other on almost everything except the independence goal itself. Regarding abortion, one of them is pro-choice, the other pro-life. One is for gender reform, the other against. One is a bright social progressive, the other a social conservative. One speaks of hating the Tories and the other of loving Jesus.
One is a lowland city dweller with an equally compact inner-city constituency, the other a highland countryman whose territory spans thousands of square miles.
If Humza Yousaf considers herself Nicola Sturgeon’s continuity candidate, Miss Forbes is certainly the screeching halt in her predecessor’s direction of travel. The gaping chasm between them is the fault line that runs right through their group.
In short, the newest entrant to the leadership race is the Sturgeonistas’ worst nightmare. Would she overthrow the party to the right? Break Parliament from its commitments to gender reform? Maybe even work constructively with the Tories in Westminster?
Hear the SNP’s obviously nervous Mhairi Black about the prospect of a new party leader who deviates from the hard left’s agenda of the last eight years: “Any attempt to move to the right would destroy the main motivation for many activists, the doors open,” she called.
“If you take that reason away, you won’t find anyone under the age of 35 willing to deliver your leaflets very quickly.”
Well, Miss Forbes is 32 – and handing out leaflets is where it all started for her at SNP.
When she first began helping with local party campaigns, she had spent several of her childhood years in India, where her parents were missionaries.
Fluent in Gaelic and a member of the Free Church of Scotland, she made no attempt to downplay her from the start of her political journey.
“To be honest, I believe in the person of Jesus Christ,” she explained in 2021. “I believe that he died for me, he saved me and that my calling is to serve and love him and me to serve and love his neighbors with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. Politics will pass. I am a person before I became a politician and that person will continue to believe that I am made in the image of God.’
In a party whose statements by members often appear interchangeable, this was anything but usual.
This politician could obviously imagine things that were more fundamental to her than independence.
From Dingwall Academy she went not to a Scottish university, as aspiring SNP politicians almost always do, but to Cambridge University to study history.
The newest entrant to the race for the lead is the Sturgeonistas’ worst nightmare
Upon returning to Scotland, she completed an MSc at the University of Edinburgh in diaspora and migration history – subjects dear to her heart after learning how the Highland Clearances drove her ancestors from the Applecross Peninsula in Wester Ross.
She later studied to be an accountant and spent two years with banking giant Barclays.
She then became an assistant to MSP David Thomson before – almost by accident – at the age of just 26 she landed on the spot he vacated in 2016.
Despite many urging her to run, she said, “I looked at myself and thought, ‘Too young, too immature, too little life experience’.”
The fact that she was back in her childhood bedroom at the family home in Dingwall only seemed to underscore her youth.
But she prevailed, increasing the SNP’s majority in the constituency of Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch – and she remained in the family home for months after her election.
Her real coming of age in politics, however, came at age 29, when she was asked at the very last minute to deliver the SNP budget after Treasury Secretary Derek Mackay, it turned out, resigned out of favor, according to News to a Teenage Schoolboy.
It seemed like an impossible question. It was 7 a.m. on the day of the testimony when the call came from Miss Sturgeon’s office. Miss Forbes had to go through 283 pages of budget plans before she could deliver it.
She recalled, “In that moment, you don’t have the luxury of thinking too hard about what you’re asking of you, you just do it.” And she did it with more aplomb than the shamed Mr. Mackay had ever mustered.
From that day on she was traded as a possible successor to Miss Sturgeon. In fact, the party leader is said to have privately admitted that of all the possible candidates for her successor, Miss Forbes was the most talented.
Less than two weeks after taking office, she was appointed Treasury Secretary, becoming the youngest person ever appointed to the role and the first cabinet secretary born in the 1990s.
However, the intervention that Miss Forbes made last year was less remembered.
She was one of three government ministers to sign a letter raising concerns about the potential impact on women of allowing people to self-identify their gender and urging the Scottish Government to delay its controversial gender reforms .
Ash Regan, who is also challenging for the SNP leadership, was another.
In January last year, Miss Forbes confirmed that her position on the matter was unchanged and expressed fears that the Gender Recognition Reform Act (Scotland) could be a “bad law”.
If not for her maternity leave, she would have had to either vote for this “bad law” or leave her government post, as Miss Regan did last year.
Perhaps, by Miss Sturgeon’s reckoning, that same maternity leave would put Miss Forbes out of the leadership race if she snapped it up fast enough.
If that was the plan, it surely failed.
The next-generation ‘fresh’ candidate has Bute House in her sights – and should she get there, her predecessor’s legacy could be the first to be shredded.
