Finance secretary Kate Forbes leads race to be Scotland first minister

Shortly after she shot to prominence as Scotland’s youngest finance secretary, Kate Forbes dismissed talk she might aim higher by saying the vitriol directed at first minister Nicola Sturgeon made the top job “not a particularly attractive proposition”.

“I’m somebody who’s probably more inclined to hide from that public abuse,” Forbes told the BBC just weeks after she had been drafted in to deliver Scotland’s budget speech at a few hours’ notice in February 2020.

On Monday, however, Forbes announced she was joining the race to succeed Sturgeon as leader of the Scottish National party and first minister. Now the 32-year-old former accountant from the Highland town of Dingwall is bidding for a central role in the SNP’s drive for Scottish independence and the constitutional future of the UK.

But her status as bookmakers’ favourite took a hit after the deeply religious finance secretary told The Scotsman newspaper on Monday that she would not have voted to allow same-sex marriage as a “matter of conscience”.

Forbes, who was elected to the Scottish parliament two years after it legalised gay marriage in 2014, had previously made no secret of her traditional Christian views.

But after high-profile SNP colleagues disassociated themselves from her campaign following her comments, betting group William Hill was on Tuesday offering shorter odds on her highest-profile rival in the leadership contest, health secretary Humza Yousaf.

Mark Diffley, an expert on Scottish public opinion, said polling ahead of Forbes’ announcement on Monday of her leadership bid had given her a clear lead over Yousaf among Scottish voters.

Forbes impressed even SNP opponents when she delivered the 2020 budget speech just hours after her then-boss, finance secretary Derek Mackay, resigned after he was found to have sent hundreds of social media messages to a 16-year-old.

She burnished her status as a rising party star by capably handling the finance and economy portfolios until taking maternity leave in the summer of last year.

“She’s good under pressure, a good communicator and good with the business community,” said Diffley.

Some in the SNP believe Forbes could present a more compelling economic case for independence than did Sturgeon and provide fresh thinking on how to overcome the UK government’s refusal to approve a rerun of the 2014 referendum, in which Scots backed staying in the 315-year union with England by 55 per cent to 45 per cent.

A Gaelic speaker who learnt the endangered Scottish language at school and has used it for parliamentary speeches, Forbes studied history at Cambridge and Edinburgh universities and later worked as an accountant at Barclays bank.

In 2018, she helped produce a blueprint for Scottish independence that took a more realistic approach to the fiscal challenges than previous SNP plans had, but was unpopular with party members for its embrace of relatively liberal economics.

While seen as more sympathetic to business interests than many in the left-leaning SNP, she has stressed the need for more progressive taxation.

“We should use all levers — tax-raising powers and tax-spending powers — to tackle inequality and to support economic growth,” she told the Financial Times in a 2020 interview.

But some SNP colleagues focus more on the finance secretary’s views on social issues, which they see as running against the party’s progressive agenda under Sturgeon.

Forbes’s proud membership of the Free Church of Scotland, which holds highly traditional Protestant Christian views and is against gay marriage, sets her apart in an increasingly secular nation. She tries to avoid working on Sundays, in accordance with the Church’s injunction to respect the Sabbath, and has repeatedly made clear the importance to her of her faith.

That is potentially sensitive in a nation where religious life was dominated well into the 20th century by often strict and intolerant Presbyterianism.

Still, Forbes has stressed that she is open to differences on such issues and makes her own decisions, rather than following the “diktat of any church”.

And some colleagues have bristled at the suggestion religion could play a role in the SNP leadership contest, particularly given that Yousaf is a Muslim.

Kate Forbes unveils the Scottish government’s budget in February 2020 after Derek Mackay resigned as finance secretary © Jane Barlow/PA

Joanna Cherry, an SNP member of the UK parliament, said Forbes was being attacked for her faith and that it was “disgraceful” to abandon the SNP’s tradition of allowing disagreement on issues of conscience.

“To my knowledge, Kate has never suggested she would roll back marriage rights,” said Cherry, contrasting the scrutiny of Forbes’s faith with the lack of fuss about that of Ian Blackford, the former SNP Westminster leader who is also a member of the Free Church of Scotland.

Blackford, however, has been supportive of SNP policies such as the 2014 legalisation of gay marriage by the Scottish parliament and backs “women’s right to choose on abortion”.

Forbes has been more equivocal on abortion — at a prayer breakfast in 2018, she expressed the hope that politicians would see the treatment of the “unborn” as a “measure of true progress”.

In her interview with The Scotsman newspaper, Forbes said she would not have supported the legalisation of equal marriage if she had been a member of parliament in 2014.

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She added that she would have “respected and defended the democratic choice that was made” and that same-sex marriage was “a legal right now and I am a servant of democracy”.

But such willingness to accept past party decisions will not appease some of her SNP critics.

“If a candidate for first minister of Scotland is asked whether they support equal marriage, the only acceptable answer starts with Yes,” Marco Biagi, a former SNP minister who signed the 2014 equal marriage legislation, tweeted at the weekend.

Another policy dilemma for Forbes is how to handle Sturgeon’s attempt to legislate to make it easier for trans people to gain official recognition of a change of gender, a move blocked by the UK government.

Since announcing her leadership bid, Forbes, who was on maternity leave when the Scottish parliament approved Sturgeon’s legislation, has made clear that she would not push to overcome the UK block in the bill’s current form.

Opinion polls suggest most voters and even SNP supporters are sceptical of the gender reform effort. Sir John Curtice, professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde, said it was unclear whether Forbes’s relatively conservative views on issues such as gender recognition would be an electoral disadvantage.

“We are somewhat in uncharted waters,” said Curtice, adding that voters might put more weight on Yousaf’s difficulties as Scotland’s health secretary, given the NHS is in the midst of a winter crisis.

“Which is the potential bigger risk, to be known to be not entirely wild about gender recognition or to be the person who is in charge of Scotland’s ailing health service?” he asked.