Kate Forbes, the deputy leader of the SNP, has announced that she will not be standing for re-election as a member of the Scottish Parliament next year. She has given as her reason the desire to spend more time with her family and especially her three-year-old daughter.
In our cynical world when a politician says they are stepping down for family reasons it is often assumed that that is code for some indiscretion that they have committed. But not in the case of Kate Forbes. She really is standing down for the honourable and beautiful reason of wanting to spend more time with her family, even if there may be other factors involved as well.
Perhaps she is aware that, despite all the noise and fuss, there is no chance of Scotland becoming independent within the next 10 years? Perhaps the limitations of being an MSP are not worth the hassle and trouble that she has had to go through? Perhaps she realises that her considerable talent can be used to better effect elsewhere to help people?
Kate is one of the most high-profile Christian politicians in the UK, and her departure from politics (for the moment) raises some significant questions. Not the least of which is whether it is possible for a biblical Christian to remain in any significant role in any major political party in the UK?
When Tim Farron resigned as leader of the not so Liberal Democrats in June 2017, he stated that he was "torn between living as a faithful Christian and serving as a political leader”. But the treatment he received was mild in comparison to that ditched out to Kate Forbes.
When she stood for party leader against Humza Yousaf in 2023, she received a level of personal abuse and attack which is sadly all too indicative of how illiberal and narrow Scottish civic society has become – especially when it comes to Christians. This was noticed not only nationally but internationally. As a former moderator of the Free Church of Scotland I was asked to comment many times – for example on the BBC World Tonight and on Spectator TV.
The journalist Stephen Daisley commends Kate Forbes for refusing to lie or be evasive about her beliefs. She was asked about abortion, gay marriage, sex before marriage and trans rights. She was honest. Something which many people admired, but the civic, media and political elites were horrified. How dare anyone not go along with the group think?!
Daisley comments, “Compelled to bear witness, she did so with her head held high, fighting the good fight and keeping the faith. It is one of the most personally admirable and politically suicidal decisions I have ever seen.”
The orchestrated mob attacks came even from the top. John Swinney, the current First Minister made a somewhat shocking personal attack on her during the 2023 leadership race, questioning whether her views on gay marriage made her “appropriate” to be leader of the SNP.
Mr Swinney is a professing Christian and a member of the Church of Scotland. Quite how he squares that with suggesting that someone who holds the same view of marriage as Christ is not fit to lead the country, is difficult to explain. More recently he sat silent in the Scottish Parliament when Patrick Harvie and Ross Greer of the Scottish Greens viciously attacked Forbes in the chamber.
There will be some in her party and in the Greens who will be popping the champagne corks just now. The progressives takeover of the SNP will now be completed. But it is difficult to see this as a smart move for them electorally and anything but disastrous for Scotland if they get back into power.
Meanwhile Forbes leaves with her stock high having been a backbencher, finance minister, finance secretary, leadership candidate, deputy first minister and economy secretary. She is widely regarded as Scotland’s most competent and effective politician and the only one in the SNP who business leaders admired.
Her witness to Christ and care for her family are to be commended. As Daisley points out, “perhaps she truly values motherhood above career, one of the few remaining mortal sins in a non-judgemental age.”
We pray for her – and her family. And we pray for a Scotland that is now far poorer because of the loss of its best leader.
David Robertson is the minister of Scots Kirk Presbyterian Church in Newcastle, New South Wales. He blogs at The Wee Flea.
