The Executive takes a holiday

This one comes from HW, who has picked up on today's Executive Press Release about what John Swinney got up to over the weekend.

Now, by not bothering to report on the Finance Secretary's work until a couple of days after the event, and with the First Minister briefing journalists himself over the Holiday period, you could argue that this is the first waves of the promised 'efficiency savings': by not calling the staff in to work extra hours, you avoid having to pay them overtime. By not calling them in to work over a holiday weekend, you avoid having to pay them extra for that.

Of course, seeing as the First Minister did without them, and we now have to wait days for a press release anyway, perhaps there's scope to make further efficiency savings. HW suggests "a bomb under the lazy sods". I think a P45 or two might suffice!

A few things

Of which the biggest is that Elish Angiolini is to remain as Lord Advocate, but will no longer be a member fo the Cabinet. The SNP had been calling for this role to be depoliticised while in Opposition and it looks like that's what's going to happen. Angiolini herself was always apolitical, and the fact that she's survived a change of government highlights that. It's likely that she'll be invited to Cabinet to give legal advice but unless such advice is needed every week, she won't be going regularly. John Beckett, however, will not be continuing as Solicitor General. It's not totally clear who's in the frame to replace him, but we do know that the Parliament will be discussing this tomorrow.

Also, it looks like the new Executive's first move will be to get rid of the tolls on the Forth and Tay. Assuming that all the SNP Members turn up to support this, and the Tories make good on their stance, that makes 63 votes in the bag for the Executive. Margo MacDonald might well support the move as well, so that would be 64. The Greens will definitely oppose, so it's down to the LibDems and/or Labour to come on side. Tellingly, Helen Eadie (Lab, Dunfermline East) has proposed the Abolition of Forth and Tay Bridge Tolls Bill, so it looks as though Labour (or at least, Labour in Fife) might well support the move.

Oh, and memo to Nicol Stephen: you do realise that you haven't publicised your Shadow Cabinet yet? The only other Party not to have done so are the Greens, who only have two members so there's hardly any point...

And finally, is it just a co-incidence that less than three weeks after Tommy Sheridan loses his seat, Ken Macintosh (Lab, Eastwood) proposes the Sunbed Licensing (Scotland) Bill?

Cabinet

Well, we now have a Cabinet as well. The Law Officers haven't been settled yet, but the Ministers (sorry, Cabinet Secretaries) and Deputy Ministers (sorry, Ministers) have now been settled.

Anyway, we know about Alex Salmond's ascension to First Minister-dom. This also means he has to carry the Queen's handbag. His Department (yes, the FM now has a department) will contain Bruce Crawford, who will have the joyous task of dealing with the new Bureau and trying to get the Executive's business passed, and Linda Fabiani, the new Minister for Europe, External Affairs and Culture. I must admit to being concerned that there's a perceived semantic link between 'External Affairs' and 'Culture' (suggesting that Culture is a foreign concept), but Jack McConnell was Henry McLeish's Minister for Education, Europe and External Affairs, so there's a precedent. Jack McConnell, however, was not in possession of an Italian knighthood, whereas Linda Fabiani is. By the way, if she requires a SpAd with a working knowledge of three European languages (plus how to say 'May you have a healthy sex life' in Estonian) to go on trips, then she only need e-mail me for my CV.

Nicola Sturgeon is the new Deputy First Minister, and is also Cabinet Secretary for Health & Wellbeing. Shona Robison will be the Minister for Public Health. Most people had tipped Shona Robison to be the Health Secretary, but someone had to make room for Sturgeon as she made room for Salmond, Robison has to content herself with the #2 post for now. Stewart Maxwell, he of the smoking ban, will join the department as Minister for Communities and Sport. This will tread on the toes of Tricia Marwick and Christine Grahame (previously spokespeople for Housing and Social Justice respectively), but such is life. Could Committee Convenerships be in the offing for them?

John Swinney takes over as Cabinet Secretary for Finance & Sustainable Growth. Jim Mather will be Minister for Enterprise, Energy and Tourism. Either Mather or Swinney would have made a good #1 here, so Mather is unlucky to lose out. Also in the Department will be Stewart Stevenson, the new Minister for Transport, Infrastructure & Climate Change. Does that mean he has to implement Climate Change? In any case, it's a fortunate position to be in for a man who was the Shadow Deputy Minister for Justice before the Election.

Fiona Hyslop is now Cabinet Secretary for Education, & Lifelong Learning. She can thank her lucky stars for this: it was previously thought that she would be the one to make way for Nicola Sturgeon, but Fate and Alex Salmond have clearly smiled on her. Maureen Watt will be the new Minister for Schools and Skills (she can also feel lucky, she's only been in the Parliament for just over a year), and completing the line-up will be Adam Ingram, now the Minister for Children & Early Years.

Kenny MacAskill is now Cabinet Secretary for Justice (no surprise there) and Fergus Ewing is now his Minister for Community Safety, and is lucky to get even that given the Greens' intense dislike of him.

Richard Lochhead is now Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs & the Environment, and his #2 is Mike Russell.

The Cabinet is missing the aforementioned Grahame and Marwick, and Michael Matheson who resigned from the Frontbench in March. Sandra White, Brian Adam and Rob Gibson are all backbenchers having been Deputy Spokespeople (this was probably a consolation prize though), and there is no mention of Roseanna Cunningham or Alex Neil, who are probably likely to reprise their role on Committees.

Press Officers - the reporting type

I thought I'd quote this story from Scottish Political News - it seems that an Executive Press Officer decided to broadcast her life story on a crowded train, unaware that other people might actually hear what she was saying. The old axiom, 'With friends like these...' springs to mind:

What I will tell you is her thoughts about the election. It seems that right at the heart of the Executive even the spin meisters themselves have doubts that Jack will hang in there. Apparently they are already being mega careful about being on-message for Executive policy rather than espousing Labour or Liberal propoganda. Makes you ask, were civil servants previously getting paid to promote party lines-to-take? This press officer was certainly all set for a change of government and was just glad that her job didn't rely too much on which party was in power.

I agree with SPN's conclusions: when your press officer starts planning for a new boss, you're in trouble.

Blowing one's own trumpet

Clearly, the good folks at STV (I refuse to do the lowercase thing) do not read this blog. Tonight, they expressed surprise that Rhona Brankin is the new Communities Minister, but when Chisholm resigned I discussed his replacement, and used the words: "My money's on Rhona Brankin, the Deputy Environment Minister."

Granted, I reached the conclusion by simple process of elimination, but all the same, I have been proven correct this time. Why can I predict this, but not the correct football results on a Saturday?

Anyway, Sarah Boyack is the new Deputy Environment Minister. Boyack was Transport & Environment Minister under Donald Dewar, then Transport & Planning Minister under Henry McLeish, then Backbencher under Jack McConnell, so this post has a 'Back to the Future' feel about it. There are three conclusions that we could come to (if we wanted to) about the appointment:

1. McConnell has been stung by criticism that his Ministerial team has a West of Scotland bias. Therefore the MSP for Edinburgh North & Leith (Chisholm) has been replaced by the MSP for Midlothian (Brankin), who has been replaced by the MSP for Edinburgh Central (Boyack). Even if Boyack's seat is very, very vulnerable.

2. McConnell is so worried about his long-term survival as Labour Leader that he is desperately trying to patch up the differences caused by his sacking of almost the entire Labour Ministerial team upon first taking office. Wendy Alexander is Convener of the Finance Committee. Tom McCabe is Finance Minister. Jackie Baillie seems to have become the Labour Party's 'fixer' and has got the Executive out of a number of tricky situations. Angus MacKay lost his seat in 2003 and Susan Deacon is standing down, so neither of them are a post-2007 threat.

3. The Labour MSPs who have not been appointed to anything at any point since May 1999 are such dodos, that even Jack McConnell will not let them near any levers of power.

Chisholm presses the nuclear button

I've written a good deal about Malcolm Chisholm over the past few months, more than any other minister with the possible exception of Jack McConnell. I might have written slightly more about Gordon Jackson, but 1) I'm not sure, and 2) he's not a minister so he doesn't count. Anyway, the Chisholm saga being one of the longest running stories on this blog, it's only fitting that as we come to the end of the year, the tale should come to an end. It did so last night, as the Communities Minister left his post, after voting with the SNP over Trident.

It's pleasant (but sadly rare) that someone values their principles over their ministerial post, and Chisholm has to be congratulated for his stance. Sadly, it's the only real justification I have for saying anything positive about him. This was a man who had to be re-shuffled out of the Health portfolio simply to stop the wave of embarrassing headlines concerning the NHS. This was a man who failed to secure support for the Executive's key Communities policy in Edinburgh, Stirling, Renfrewshire and Highland. And when does he finally resign? When he votes with the SNP over the positioning of nuclear submarines in Scotland. I hope readers will excuse me when I suggest that maybe, just maybe, Chisholm does not deserve a tickertape parade for this one.

McConnell will of course have to find a replacement, but as (s)he can't be ratified until after the holidays, he has a few weeks to consider the situation. When Peter Peacock resigned, I tipped Allan Wilson to succeed him. This didn't happen and I don't see him succeeding Chisholm either. The Communities brief requires some basic people skills, and Wilson appears not to have any, preferring to spend his entire waking life complaining about the SNP's Higher Education policy. This probably suits McConnell so he's staying put, I suspect. It might be tempting to stick Lewis MacDonald in there to raise the profile of an MSP in a marginal seat, but Aberdeen Central is too marginal (so raising his profile would serve only to provide the SNP with a high-profile scalp) and with the problems that Chisholm faced in the job it might damage MacDonald's standing rather than enhance it. Given that McConnell is only performing 'sticking plaster' appointments now (promoting a Deputy Minister to replace a Minister, promoting a Backbencher to fill the Deputy's post) rather than actually moving sitting Ministers around, Patricia Ferguson and Margaret Curran's Hands will also stay put. My money's on Rhona Brankin, the Deputy Environment Minister. She has experience of Community issues, having helped to establish Ross-shire Women's Aid. She's also not Johann Lamont or Des McNulty, who only got their current positions last month.

Of course, the interesting thing to come out of the Trident debate was not the resignation of a Minister, or the fact that none of the Parties' positions gained enough support (all but four Labour MSPs are too busy to consider issues of global geo-politics and the morality of Weapons of Mass Destruction, when they have to stop the SNP from winning a vote), but that Jack McConnell mysteriously contracted bronchitis just in time to miss yesterday's business. I know that he used to lose his voice on reserved issues (Dungavel springs to mind, when you could write down everything Jack said about it on a single piece of toilet paper), but I never realised that he literally lost the ability to speak.

Oh, and while I'm here, Iain Gray has been selected to fight East Lothian in place of John Home Robertson. Given that the seat was reasonably secure, that's him almost certain to return to Holyrood.

Oops

Turns out McConnell's going with Deputy Justice Minister Hugh Henry. Problem is, the SNP have their eyes on Paisley South as well, so either McConnell's gambling on this boosting Henry's profile and helping him keep his seat, or he's going to look ridiculous come May. I know which one I'd pick.

In any case, McConnell is now looking for a new Deputy Justice Minister.

Peter Peacock resigns

The headline is pretty much self-explanatory: Peter Peacock has resigned as Education Minister, following symptoms comparable to those of a mild stroke. It seems that his decision is based not only on current health problems, but also on fears that his job will only make them worse as time goes on.

Talk is of course moving on to his replacement, and there is speculation that this might be an opportunity for a wider reshuffle which would involve clearing out the deadwood. Regular readers of this blog will understand that by deadwood, I mean a certain Communities Minister. Mark reckons that the Deputy Health Minister Lewis MacDonald will get the job. As to the wider reshuffle: I don't think that's going to happen, as 1) McConnell has had ample time and opportunity to dump Chisholm and has not done so; 2) firing Chisholm on the back of Peacock's health problems would be somewhat craven, even for the First Minister; and 3) McConnell would then have to find two replacements rather than one.

Regarding the Lewis MacDonald speculation, Mark writes:

MacDonald is currently MSP for Aberdeen Central which is an SNP target seat - if confirmed it would suggest Labour are worried as it would be seen as a move to boost his profile and take him away from a controversial portfolio where he has been responsible for trying to manage the dental crisis in Scotland.

This is perfectly possible, but I reckon that McConnell might not want to risk the embarrassment of losing a Minister in a key portfolio at the election - to lose Iain Gray in 2003 was bad luck, but to lose an Education Minister in 2007 would be careless. The way I see it, the FM has two options. Firstly, he could go for the uncontroversial, safe pair of hands approach. This would put Culture Minister Patricia Ferguson in prime position for the job, and then perhaps put MacDonald in there (a Ministerial portfolio to boost his profile, but not such a major one as to cause embarrassment if he loses his seat). Secondly, he could use this time to put a Natbasher General in a key position. In which case, step forward, Allan Wilson.

Malcolm's mire

The Malcolm in question is, of course, Communities Minister Malcolm Chisholm. Today he found out that a third local Council has had stock transfer plans rebuffed in a referendum of tenants. Renfrewshire joins Stirling (which rejected the plans last week) and Edinburgh, Chisholm's home patch, which rejected them at the end of last year. All three defeats (the only defeats so far, though Inverclyde and Highland are to consult their tenants on similar proposals) have taken place since Chisholm took up the Communities brief.

Chisholm has, of course, issued the usual dire predictions on the future of housing in Renfrewshire, but he might want to be worried about his own future: the Scottish Tenants' Association is calling for his head. Meanwhile, this latest reversal affects two key marginal seats: Paisley South (Hugh Henry) and West Renfrewshire (Trish Godman), so the SNP's chances of taking the Constituencies next May have probably increased with this. The only thing saving Chisholm now is that McConnell has missed what is probably his last opportunity - the resignation of Colin Boyd QC as Lord Advocate - to reshuffle him to a job where he's less likely to face calls for his head, as he had to endure when he was Health Minister as well. Unfortunately for Chisholm, there's little sign that McConnell is minded to create a Minister of Getting The Sandwiches For Us in the foreseeable future. And even if he did, Chisholm would probably spark a row there as well.

Then there's the post-May future: these defeats are an embarrassment to the Executive, so if Jack McConnell is still FM after the Elections, he might have to axe Malcolm Chisholm, or perhaps put him forward for a Committee Convenership where he doesn't reflect quite as badly on other Ministers. If Labour do find themselves in Opposition, he might just retain a frontbench post, but only if a number of key Labour people lose seats (Chisholm should thank his lucky stars that Deputy Ministers like Lewis MacDonald and Hugh Henry are in marginal seats). I know I seem to have it in for the guy, but really, I don't see a future in the Executive for Malcolm Chisholm.

Of course, if Jack had read and taken my advice in January, and reshuffled Chisholm out of Communities over the summer, then that might not have stopped the stock transfer defeats in Stirling and Renfrewshire, but Chisholm might have had a chance to salvage his reputation and someone else might have been able to spin their way out of this.

Boyd quits (That's Colin, luckily, not Kris)

Colin Boyd QC has quit as Lord Advocate of Scotland, with his resignation apparently effective as of midnight tonight. It seems he wishes to 'play a full role in the House of Lords and seek opportunities in the private sector'. Does that mean he wants to join Oracle Chambers, the breakaway from the Faculty of Advocates? Probably not, actually, that's just idle speclation on my part.

In any case, this has been a bad year for Baron Boyd of Duncansby: his involvement in the Shirley McKie affair has tarnished his reputation, as has the row over his peerage after he took his seat as a Crossbencher, prompting opposition politicians to argue that it wasn't possible for him to be an Independent at Westminster AND a member of the Cabinet in Scotland (incidentally, this complaint forever rules out the idea that a party can be in government in one Parliament and in opposition in the other, but let's not go there right now).

Boyd was appointed as Solicitor General in 1997, and being promoted to Lord Advocate in 2000 following Andrew Hardie's appointment to the bench. Since then, he's seen First Ministers come and go, with only Ross Finnie holding the same job for longer, and even his job description changed in 2001!

For the moment, therefore, his deputy, Solicitor General Elish Angiolini will do the work. McConnell will have to ask Holyrood to vote on a permanent successor (whether it be Angiolini or someone else), and any candidate the Parliament backs will have to be appointed formally by the Queen. My guess at this stage (though I'm not a legal eagle) is that it's between her and Neil Davidson, or rather Baron Davidson of Glen Clova. Angiolini wins this contest on the grounds that: 1) McConnell dropped Davidson as Solicitor General in her favour when he took office as First Minister; 2) Davidson is already the Westminster government's Advocate General, Blair has lost one of these already this year, and it's not outwith the realm of possibility that Davidson will prefer the status quo; and 3) although Davidson is an unashamedly Labour peer, there's already been a headache about allowing one Lord Advocate to go to the Lords, and McConnell probably won't fancy a row over recruiting one from the Lords.

There's also a wider question here: could McConnell use this as his last big chance to instigate a broader Cabinet re-shuffle before the Election? Does he dare?

Panic Stations

Not a good day for the Executive, who accidentally released a report on the economy (some good points on the environment, but otherwise grim), then took it off their website after realising the error, then decided that they had to put it back up again. Needless to say, the SNP reacted with glee.

And the Coalition may not be damaged over the Environment Committee's report on a carrier bag tax after all: although they've said that they're not going to go ahead with it (hence Alasdair Morrison's satisfaction), they aren't going to rule it out completely either, so Mike Pringle has a couple of straws to clutch at.

Meanwhile, in UK politics, a poll for Sky suggests that in the event of a Westminster election with Brown as Labour leader, and Cameron leading the Tories, the result would be Conservatives 38%, Labour 33%, LibDems 18%, resulting in a hung parliament with Labour still the largest party by one seat. The SNP would gain from this scenario: on the numbers it looks like they could take Ochil & South Perthshire and Dundee West, bringing their tally of MPs up to 8. The Tories would take Dumfries & Galloway (bringing them up to 2 in Scotland). Another poll puts Labour and the Tories at 36% each: this would hand Ochil & South Perthshire to the SNP but would mean no change for the rest of Scotland.

The Smackdown Files

It's clear that the people at the Home Office don't particularly like Jack McConnell. Our Jack wanted to encourage international students to stay in Scotland after graduation as part of the Fresh Talent Initiative, only for the Home Office to increase the visa renewal costs for non-EU students. Then, Jack had made it quite clear that the Home Office's practice of dawn raids to deport failed asylum seekers went against the grain somewhat in Scotland. Following his repeated criticisms of the system, and pleas for Scotland to be made a special case, the Home Office has decided...to maintain the status quo. The SNP and the Tories are of course demanding a statement to the Parliament so that McConnell can explain the Home Office position.

But don't worry, folks, the relationship between Whitehall and the Executive is 'evolving'!

Egad, if it's like this now, just imagine what'll happen if Alex Salmond makes it to Bute House in 2007, and/or one of the Davids somehow gets into Downing Street in 2009.