When everything realistic has been tried and didn't work, you just have to shrug and say it wasn't meant to be - but at least there's now a quick turning of the page

Without wanting to be overly critical, I think it's probably reasonable to say that Graeme McCormick has behaved slightly oddly, and not entirely fairly to the SNP members who went to considerable lengths to back him.  There's a place for abortive leadership bids that end with a "long and fruitful" chat with the chap who wants a coronation, but that place had already been filled by Kate Forbes.  Realistically the only reason members were nominating a little-known candidate was because they had made up their minds they definitely wanted an election rather than yet more tales of a behind-closed-doors fireside chat, and they must be bemused to have ended up with the latter instead.  However, if it's any consolation to the people who nominated him, if I was in your shoes I'd be saying to myself that at least all the stops were pulled out to prevent a stitch-up. Strenuous efforts were made to persuade Kate Forbes to run, and when she didn't, an unlikely Plan B was found and only failed to work because of one person's rather peculiar decision.  If you genuinely try everything and it still doesn't work out, all you can really do is shrug and say it wasn't meant to be on this occasion.

The silver lining now is at least we (and by 'we' I mean Scotland and the independence movement) can turn the page on the mistake of Yousaf's leadership immediately, rather than waiting a few more weeks.  John Swinney is not the right person to be leader, but he's less wrong than Yousaf.  If anything, judging from the dismal mood music from him on the Sunday politics shows, he's even less likely to do anything about independence than Yousaf was, but the first priority is to get the SNP and the independence cause out of jail at the general election, because unless that happens everything else is moot.  We'll have to see what Swinney can do about that, hopefully as part of a broad and collegiate leadership team that prominently features Kate Forbes and Stephen Flynn.  The first test will be whether the promised 'key role' for Ms Forbes is actually delivered - if she's shafted with a lesser offer than she was led to expect, Swinney's leadership will be poisoned by bitterness from the word go.  Hopefully he's sensible enough not to do that.

On a personal level, at least, I can congratulate him.  He's been SNP leader before, but only in opposition, and when that stint ended in failure it must have seemed that what he could achieve in the remainder of his career was going to have a ceiling on it.  But no, twenty years later he's made it to the very top, or as close to the very top as is possible in a devolved system, and that's a remarkable story.