DAVID STEWART: SNP stalwart Fergus Ewing’s journey from slow-burn resentment to full-flame anger
Local MSP Fergus Ewing has been hitting the headlines across Scotland this week with his resignation statement, where he announced his decision not to stand as SNP candidate in the Scottish Parliament elections next year.
Fergus has been a long-standing fixture in the Highland political landscape, running high-profile Westminster campaigns in 1992 and 1997 before the birth of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. He won the Inverness and Nairn Scottish Parliament seat at his first attempt, squeezing Labour into second place by under 500 votes.
At each subsequent Scottish Parliament election, Fergus has been returned by impressive majorities. He was close to former First Minister Alex Salmond and was appointed to a number of junior ministerial posts before promotion to cabinet secretary for rural economy and tourism from 2016.
He was sacked by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon in 2021 and he returned to the back benches where he ran a one-man internal campaign of dissent against established SNP policies such as the bottle return scheme and gender reform.
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He was vitriolic about the Greens, who he described in no-nonsense style as ‘wine bar revolutionaries’. In Magnus Linklater’s recent article in The Times, Fergus was quoted, saying: ‘The party I joined was a broad kirk and must again be so, otherwise we are not the national party, but a sect whose disdain for many who hold different views - on matters like gender, oil and gas, the economy - has alienated former supporters.’
His alienation with the bosses of the SNP at Holyrood seems to have been triggered/can be dated from his ministerial sacking in 2021 and has gone from slow burn resentment to full-flame anger and disillusionment with his former colleagues. However, his anger over the failure to upgrade the A9 and A96 was a genuine and authentic reaction to a poor SNP roads policy since 2007.
What direction now for Fergus? Elected politics is in his DNA. His mother, Winnie Ewing, was very much SNP royalty and was described by Alex Salmond as ‘the most influential Scottish nationalist of the 20th century’. If Fergus stands next year as an independent, he will be expelled from the SNP. Could he win?
It is interesting to look at the example of the career of the late Margo MacDonald. She was elected to the Scottish Parliament as an SNP member on the list for Lothians in 1999. However, she too was disciplined by the SNP for missing a parliamentary vote and was downgraded by the SNP for the regional list for the 2003 parliamentary election. She then stood as an independent and won a seat. Margo was expelled from the SNP in January 2003, but re-elected in 2007 and 2011.
Will Fergus follow in Margo’s footsteps and win as an independent? If he does, it will be an achievement of note.
Alongside Margo MacDonald, only two further people have ever been elected to the Scottish Parliament as independent MSPs: Dennis Canavan and Jean Turner. Fergus could also stand for election in the Highlands and Islands regional list.
His campaign will depend on his ability to convert former SNP voters, undecided electors and supporters of other political parties to his cause. Local voters will also be weighing up who they want as First Minister and which party should run the Scottish Government for the next five years.
Whatever the result, in May next year the Inverness and Nairn parliamentary contest will be a beacon of media interest across Scotland - hold on to your hats!
