John Swinney says he remains friends with Nicola Sturgeon despite election criticism
John Swinney has opened up about his reaction to Nicola Sturgeon’s election criticisms.
John Swinney says he remains friends with Nicola Sturgeon and that the pair spoke over the summer, despite her criticisms of the SNP’s election campaign.
The First Minister also defended his Transport Secretary Stephen Flynn saying “nobody’s perfect” and doubled down on his claims that pensioners in Scotland will lose their pensions.
Mr Swinney made the comments while being interviewed by BBC Sundays with Laura Kuenssberg, where he said he won the May Holyrood election “commandingly”. In a new foreword to her memoir ‘Frankly’, Ms Sturgeon hit out at Mr Swinney’s election campaign, saying it lacked “vision” and “big picture thinking”.
Mr Swinney told the programme he last spoke to Ms Sturgeon over the summer, and added: “We’re still friends, but I think the point I’d make is that I won the election pretty commandingly.
“In a six-party system we hold 38 per cent of the vote, which is a higher vote share than Keir Starmer’s landslide election victory.
“We are dealing with a different situation - we have the largest gap between ourselves and our nearest rival in any moment in the history of the Scottish Parliament. It is bigger under my leadership than anyone else.
“When I came in the door as leader in 2024, no one gave me a chance of winning the election, everyone assumed we would be defeated. We won another five year term in which we can improve the lives of the people of Scotland and deliver independence.”
The SNP leader was also asked how he felt when Peter Murrell, the estranged husband of Ms Sturgeon and former SNP chief executive, was found guilty and sentenced for embezzling £400,000 from the party.
Mr Swinney said: “I felt at the same time absolutely gutted that someone I had worked with for a long time had admitted to that, but also relieved that we knew what we were dealing with and could get on with delivering a response.
“It has been a hugely damaging and traumatic experience for my party.”
When asked about the impact on party donors, Mr Swinney said: “That’s the bit I feel most conscious of and hurt by, to be honest.
“I know people who have worked hard to raise sums of money and made personal financial contributions.
“I have to act on their behalf and take steps to recover that money.
“There are two options - one is the confiscation process taken forward by the Crown and that is the one that is taking its course now and there will be a hearing about that later in the year. I expect that route to be successful, but there are civil remedies available to the SNP.
“But I reserve our position on that until the Crown process is completed.”
The First Minister also defended Transport Secretary Stephen Flynn amidst calls for him to be investigated over a recent committee appearance.
Mr Flynn was at the transport committee last month when he was asked about a news story on a flammable methane gas leak on the MV Glen Sannox while it was carrying passengers from Arran to Troon in June 2025.
At that meeting, Mr Flynn said he was not aware of this story as he had been on Facetime to his children before the meeting.
However a briefing document has since shown Mr Flynn’s office was contacted about the story twice in the half hour before the committee meeting began. Mr Flynn insists media reports that he was briefed before his appearance are false.
Mr Flynn has since posted on X: “This is not true. I should’ve seen the BBC news that morning - but the FOI confirms I was not briefed.
“Jeez, if I’d known, I’d have given a damn sight better answer than I did at the time! An answer that wasn’t acceptable and nobody was more frustrated than myself about that.”
Mr Swinney told Laura Kuenssberg: “Obviously, Stephen Flynn recognised he should’ve been across the issue in front of the transport committee, and he remedied it straight away.
“Material was not passed to him and he had not been briefed before he went ot the committee.
“Nobody’s perfect.”
He also doubled down on claims that Scottish pensioners will lose out on their pensions because of the abolition of the triple lock.
The triple lock guarantees that state pensions increase at the beginning of every new tax year based on whatever of the three is highest: inflation, average wage growth, or 2.5 per cent.
During his speech to party conference, Prime Minister Andy Burnham said he plans to scrap the triple lock to help pay for a proposed national care service, which is expected to cost around £18 billion.
Mr Swinney has since said pensioners will lose their pensions as a result of this. He has been asked to clarify this and correct this several times by opposition parties.
The First Minister’s spokesman then told journalists on Thursday: “Pensioners are going to lose their pensions.”
Mr Swinney was asked to clarify this by Laura Kuenssberg. He said: “Pensioners are going to lose out to the tune of £2,000 in Scotland because of the changes to the triple lock.
“That is the hard reality of the implications of what the Prime Minister is proposing.
“People are going to lose their entitlements to the pensions they were promised. The Treasury makes clear in their analysis, the sum of money that is not going to be delivered as a consequence of the abolition of the triple lock translates to £2,000 per annum per pension - that’s people losing out.
“I’m pointing out that at the heart of the [independence] referendum in 2014, people on the no side made the case for voting no to protect pensions, and here we are with pensions being eroded.
“Pensioners in Scotland will lose out because of the abolition of the triple lock.”
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