John Swinney wants to convince voters that independence is necessary to “protect” the Scottish Parliament from Reform and further distance Scotland from right-wing influence. But independence could be the making of the Scottish right, says Herald columnist Rebecca McQuillan

Vote SNP to save Scotland from Reform: that’s the new line being road-tested by John Swinney.

He took it for a spin last week at a conference run by think tank IPPR Scotland. Doing his best impression of a preacher predicting that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse would be here by tea-time, he said the parliament wasn’t strong enough to defend itself against a future Farage government at Westminster, which he warned would attack Holyrood’s powers. The only route to salvation was, you guessed it, independence.

This isn’t subtle politics. The SNP has had past success converting anti-Tory sentiment into votes and are trying to repeat the trick with Reform. The fact that we have a Labour Prime Minister in Downing Street now – lease not up until 2029 – is simply overlooked. The SNP must have a Westminster bogeyman to rail against. With the Tories gone, strategists are forced to look ahead, half in horror, half perhaps secretly in hope, towards the possibility of Nigel Farage beating Labour on the cusp of the 2030s. Which, of course, has the benefit of distracting voters from the real issue at hand........

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