Kate Forbes is upsetting all of the right people

I didn't write about it at the time because I didn't want to tempt fate, but when the announcement was made that Kate Forbes had been appointed as Deputy First Minister, the first thought that went through my head was that the appointment was not automatic, and that it was actually quite hard to see where the parliamentary arithmetic was going to come from to get her approved.  So the outcome yesterday was a tremendous relief, and for that we have to partly thank the Liberal Democrats for constructively abstaining.  

But why did they do it?  Logically they would have stood to gain from an early election.  In the past, when they were led by serious figures like Jim Wallace, Malcolm Bruce or Russell Johnston, there would have been no difficulty in believing they were just doing the right thing and putting the national interest ahead of party interest.  But they're now led by the ultimate cynical opportunist Alex Cole-Hamilton, so it's hard not to believe there was an ulterior motive.  Could there have been an informal deal with the SNP government behind the scenes?  Or are the coffers relatively empty and they don't want to risk fighting two elections in one year?

The most Machiavellian explanation is that the opposition party that has most to lose from an early election is the Tories, so perhaps the Lib Dems were acting on the Tories' behalf, allowing Douglas Ross the free hit of voting against Forbes without having to live with any consequences.  But quite what the Tories would have been able to offer the Lib Dems in return is anyone's guess.  Maybe helping Douglas Ross out is simply Cole-Hamilton's comfort zone, who knows.

Now that Kate Forbes is in harness, she seems to be upsetting all the right people.  That may seem like a brutal thing to say, but given the extremist ideology that many of her critics represent, and their belief that anyone who disagrees with them should be shunned by civilised society and lose their livelihoods, the sign that the SNP was moving into a better place was only ever going to be proper meltdowns from those people.  Kelly Given said in her column that the party used to be a "safe space" for her and her fellow travellers, by which she meant they were able to run a reign of terror in which the SNP was an intolerable space for those with other views.  

The mask really slipped, though, when Given suggested Forbes was not acceptable as Deputy First Minister because she once said she could never conceive of having an abortion herself.  Just think about the implications of that.  The standard pro-choice position is that women have a right to privacy when making reproductive decisions, and a right to control over their own bodies.  That's not really consistent, is it, with lecturing a prominent female politician about how she has no place in public life until she states she would actively consider, as she would see it, killing her unborn child.  That's not only intolerance, it's downright bigotry.

If Given and co will give Forbes credit for nothing else, can they at least give her credit for being a fluent Gaelic speaker who simultaneously holds the second highest office in the land and the post of Minister for Gaelic?  Nobody else, surely, could be better placed to protect the language before it's too late.

I was very pleased to hear that Alba had voted in favour of Forbes while the Greens were busily voting against her.  That will repair some, but probably not all, of the damage to Alba's reputation done by the vote to bring down the SNP government.  It also sets my mind at rest because I was starting to anecdotally form the impression that Alba were lining Forbes up to be the latest designated traitor.  We've already got more than enough of those.  A small party that puts up walls around itself and says in George W Bush fashion "you're either with us, or you're with the terrorists" will not only make itself look ridiculous, it will also quickly discover just how small it is.  Whereas if it doesn't act like a narrow sect, and allows the borders of the party to be porous, it'll find a lot more independence supporters under its roof.