Government is going rather well for John Swinney.

The First Minister took the reins last May, almost exactly two years ahead of the 2026 Scottish Parliament election. The received wisdom at the time was that his primary job was to save the SNP from internecine warfare. His secondary job was to manage the SNP’s decline and allow it to exit office more gracefully than it otherwise would have.

Less than one year into his two-year gig, the primary job is clearly ticked off the list; the SNP will never again have the enforced unanimity that it had during parts of the last decade, but all rebellions and factionalism are well suppressed for now. As for the secondary job, all expectations have been exceeded. A combination of the inexplicably poor performance of Labour in government at Westminster, and the popularity of Mr Swinney’s double-act with his Deputy Kate Forbes, has shelved all talk of an exit from office. Bute House’s curtains are no longer being measured, and removal vans have been cancelled.

But just as rapidly as Labour has fallen in the half-year since the Westminster election, the same fate could befall the SNP, to Labour’s advantage, over the next year ahead of the Holyrood version. The question is how? What is it that would cause Mr Swinney a problem enormous enough that the SNP could lose 10 points in the polls and hand Labour’s Anas Sarwar the keys to the castle?

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