Exactly who I thought of! 
Even if Scottish politics has been focused on Sturgeon for so many years, how could a major candidate to succeed her be such an unknown quantity?
Also: Is the SNP such a big tent, or is Kate Forbes just a complete anomaly?
That guy at least tried not to make himself the story, whereas the guy who let himself being quoted saying that…
It sort of depends what you mean by unknown quantity. Forbes’ membership of the Wee Frees was never a secret and never a bar to her reaching very high office. It hasn’t been placed under much scrutiny vis a vis how it affects her policy positions until now, not even, as far as I can tell, within the party. In so far as she was a Finance Minister rather than, say Minister for Children and Families, that’s fair enough but clearly there was some stuff that needed sorted out. She’s certainly not the only Wee Free: Ian Blackford, who was SNP leader in Westminster until recently, is also a member. However, a big difference there is that he has said he does and would have and will support gay marriage which frankly raises further questions.
As to your second question: as a lot of people are being surprised to discover, the SNP is a veritable circus marquee. People share an overarching goal of Scottish independence but in terms of values and even policies there is not much agreement.
As @SanVito mentioned above, there is a tendency among English leftists to see the SNP as cuddly tartan keepers of the flame. Mainly because the SNP hate the Tories. But the SNP are not a basically left-wing egalitarian party that has an amusing little sideline in nationalism. They are a nationalist party that dabbles in left-wing egalitarianism while it suits its purposes to do so. But within its ranks you will find aficionados of low-tax low-spend government, oil-industry boosters, and, yes, small-town religious conservatives (of which Scotland still has a surprising minority, particularly in the island communities. You will also find climate change activists, redistributionists, land-reformers etc. The unifying belief is that Scotland should be independent but: for some that is a simple end in itself, for others it is simply a means to an end and those ends are not commonly agreed on. It is in some ways a miracle - and a tribute to the leadership of both Sturgeon and Salmond - that these divisions have not become the focus of either media attention or party intrigue.
The most current and egregious example: Sturgeon’s recent leadership on gender recognition and trans rights did reveal that the party had a sizeable gender critical minority. Some of those have left and joined Alec Salmond’s breakaway Alba Party* but there are quite a few still left. Ash Regan, who is running, resigned as Minister over the GRR bill. So far the focus has been on Forbes’ radical honesty about how her faith influences her policy decisions but there is plenty of room for some fierce intra-party debate once Regan is asked some probing questions.
In some ways, Forbes’ instant self-immolation may work out well for the party. There are already signs that support is crystalising around Yousaf in a damage-limitation kind of way. If that happens, these questions can once again be swept under the rug. However, if Forbes makes any kind of recovery, or if Regan gets her fair share of the mic, then there will be a fair chance of some pretty angry spats.
One problem here is that Yousaf, currently Health Secretary, is not terribly impressive and has now himself been hobbled by the release of a public audit into the running of the NHS which has concluded, among other things, that he doesn’t have a good plan for fixing its many problems and the plan he does have is being badly executed. This is not stuff you want quoted at you while pitching to run the whole damn country.
Now that right there is a really, really, really big tent.
Forgot to follow up on this asterisk:
Salmond was recently charged with 14 counts of sexual harassment or assault. His defence was that he was indeed a liability around women but it never quite rose to the threshold of criminality. Anyone joining a party led by him as part of a principled stand over “protecting women” is doing you the favour of removing their views from serious consideration.
Rightly or wrongly the issues around the gender recognition bill are pinned to Sturgeon but the outfall is certainly of interest to critical candidates, as are the the fairly unusual religious beliefs of Kate Forbes. The running of the NHS (which is arguably a much bigger issue) is definitely on Yousaf and that is going to make for fascinating intra-party debate (if such debates take place).
That’s not even touching upon the whole “road to independence ASAP” which was everything to Sturgeon but may be of less immediate concern to other candidates.
I just read a fascinating article in the current Mar/Apr issue of Foreign Affairs on the historical reasons for UK unity, their increasing irrelevance, and the likely future trajectory. It was written in the last few months; after Sunak became PM but before Sturgeon resigned.
It’s got a lot of useful perspective on now Scotland and the SNP fit into the current and next decade-ish of the UK. As such it says a lot about where SNP might go, and therefore who’s among the hopefuls is best suited to lead it there.
The article is paywalled. I don’t know what their policy on intro freebie articles is, so some of you may be able to see it anyhow: Disunited Kingdom: Will Nationalism Break Britain? | Foreign Affairs
I’m also going to cite this with a different intro in the Rishi Sunak thread. He’s mentioned in the article about the problems he will face that he seems ill-suited to manage.
Ran out of time on an edit, so sorry to double post:
The article with a couple of embedded pictures runs to 15 printed pages, so it’s impractical for me to usefully pick out quotes. But the punchline is that either the sitting UK government finds a way to re-kindle unity in the UK or it’ll either tear itself apart quickly or lock into a track to fall apart slowly. The near future will be decisive
Sturgeon was not an advocate of “road to independence ASAP” - she’s come under criticism from that faction in her own party for not ever doing enough to make independence happen.
Any leader of the SNP is going to have to make noises about how independence is their number one priority; it’s a nationalist party whose founding documents state that it exists to get independence for Scotland. What the best route to doing that is is definitely up for debate and Sturgeon took a gradualist approach, ducking several of what others in her party saw as opportunities to push for a referendum. But it’s always been a case of “next year the time will be right”.
Some members of the SNP will have their vote swayed by the candidates’ performance in office or stance on trans rights - but all of them will be assessing the candidates on their plan for getting independence.
Here for example, is Ash Regan:
I respect everything my predecessors have achieved since 2007.
But recently we have lost our way.
Under my leadership we will re-establish our track record, we will reform our team, and we will reiterate the vision of an independent country, with parity of esteem in the world.
I am the unity candidate for the independence campaign bringing together the despondents who have felt excluded by accident or design.
The vehicle for this is the Independence Convention which I have committed to establishing.
I want the membership of the SNP to be left in no doubt.
For me, Independence is an immediate priority for Scotland.
Her three priorities: independence, independence, independence.
It’s a good article but I’m not sure I entirely agree with its framing. It cited one poll showing narrow support for independence: if you look at a tracker of polling sentiment, you’ll see that No is ahead more and more consistently than Yes:
It’s close, but that’s quite different from what the article suggests.
But the framing issue is about how it presents apparent Scottish disillusion with the Union as being fundamental and due to big historical shifts in the nature of the UK; but the awkward fact of continuing support for the Union among at least half the population as simply being a product of practicalities.
The demise of Empire, the loss of manufacturing, the degradation of Britishness were all well in place in 2014 after all, while Brexit - which apparently accounts for reluctance to go through economic separation from rUK - had yet to happen. So why did No win the 2014 referendum 55 to 45 then?
While it’s true that no-one is really banging the drum for Union, support for it is still rooted in something more than just inertia and fear of change.
E.g. here’s an independence supporter on this board criticising her for not moving fast enough:
I don’t know if @The_Stafford_Cripps is still around, but I’d love to hear their views on the leadership race.
She had tried to instigate another referendum less than a decade after the last, with no massive shift in the numbers and when that was knocked back wanted the next General Election to be a de-facto referendum on independence. Not a popular move.
She was very keen, I’ve no doubt that in the eyes of some of the nationalists it still counts as dragging her heels but some people are never satisfied.
She’s very keen compared to A N Other UK politician. But she’s the leader of a nationalist party. You said that other candidates - for the leadership of the SNP - might see independence as less of an immediate concern than she did. And by the standards of nationalist politicians, Sturgeon was middle of the road! These people wouldn’t be senior politicians in the SNP if they didn’t want independence really badly. What position do you expect to see one of the three candidates take on independence that is less concerned iwth bringing about independence than Sturgeon was?
Dropping the call for an immediate referendum and not trying to use the next General Election as a de-facto referendum. I expect most of them to take a longer term view of it.
Yousaf and Forbes will drop the de-facto referendum idea because: nationalists keen on getting independence ASAP thought it was a terrible idea that wouldn’t work. That doesn’t mean they’re lukewarm on independence, it just means they know a bad idea when they see it.
Regan has already said she’d drop it but in the same speech said that election of pro-independence parties was a mandate for a referendum - which is the boiler plate SNP position.
There is no call for an immediate referendum to drop. Having lost the court case about competence Sturgeon accepted the result and tried to use it to push for electoral gains - she was always far happier playing the grievance card.
ETA: if Sturgeon hadn’t resigned, the SNP would be gearing up for a massive conference on the topic of “how are we going to get independence?” because there essentially isn’t a current strategy other than the widely reviled de-facto referendum route which everyone knew the conference would shoot down. So to that extent the candidates have something of a blank slate.
Not suggesting they are “lukewarm on independence” just that they are probably going to be concentrating on more immediate concerns during the leadership campaign.
The trap there is that “more immediate concerns” pretty much involve dealing with SNP failures - drug deaths, ferries, NHS, education, for example. There’s nothing teh SNP like better than blaming it all on WEstminster and saying independence is the only answer, but if they’re going to actually address issues that’s really not going to wash.
Precisely. It’s easy to oppose/moan about something. Far harder to actually make a good job of it yourself.
If and when Scottish independence happens, I confidently predict it will be very like Brexit - suddenly the governing party (presumably the SNP) will no longer have a convenient scapegoat, and as problems mount up, they’ll face a catastrophic fall in popularity. It’s a real Catch-22 for the SNP - if they succeed in obtaining independence, it’s the surest way of bringing about their own downfall.
True, it is a tightrope that I’ll interested in seeing them trying to navigate.
“how can I blame the others without implicating the party or me”?
But but but … you lot promised me a miracle. And I didn’t get one. Waaah!!!
Sadly, this seems like “wet paint” signs. Everyone needs to touch it themselves before they’ll believe the sign. And everyone needs to vote for a radical transformation that turns to shit at least once in their life before they believe the accumulated wisdom of the ages: that trick never works.