First minister’s equivocal response to Jackdaw approval stands in contrast to SNP’s previous strong position on North Sea and reveals him as putting party before country
For decades, it was more than a message, it was a mantra.
The SNP’s insistence “it’s Scotland’s oil” was central to its independence proposal.
Leading the Yes campaign in the 2014 referendum campaign, the late Alex Salmond based his economic plans on projected revenues from Brent Crude. Free from the United Kingdom, Scotland would retain that black gold and we’d all get fat on the endless riches it generated.
Salmond may have come up short 12 years ago but his opponents continue – privately – to concede that the SNP’s story on oil was a powerful one.
All of which makes the party’s current position on North Sea drilling all the more baffling.
Last week’s announcement by the UK government that the Jackdaw gas field had been approved has fully exposed not only the incoherence of the SNP’s position on energy but First Minister John Swinney’s inadequacy as a leader.
Swinney “greeted” the Jackdaw news with the blandest of written statements on social media.
“I hope,” he wrote, “today’s announcement on Jackdaw will provide some certainty for the North East after many years of difficulty thanks to UK government policy.
“It must also kickstart a renewed drive to deliver our long-standing clean energy ambitions.”
This may half been half-hearted stuff but it stood in contrast to Swinney’s remarks in February 2025, when he said blocking Jackdaw was “the only sustainable judgment you can arrive at in considering these questions”.
The first minister’s handling of this issue has been, in the words of a veteran SNP campaigner, “absolutely f***ing pathetic”.
Unwilling to commit his party to any kind of coherent position on North Sea drilling, Swinney was left looking weak and indecisive. Meanwhile, Labour’s Scottish Secretary Douglas Alexander swanked around playing the great champion of offshore workers.
The politics of oil and gas should be perfectly straightforward for John Swinney. There is broad consensus over the need for a move away from fossil fuels but polls show a majority of voters support new drilling at Jackdaw, 150 miles east of Aberdeen.
Salmond would have placed himself front and centre of this issue on behalf of communities across the North East of Scotland which, after years during which they could depend on a plentiful supply of offshore jobs, are now struggling.
Swinney prefers to adopt the position of observer.
The SNP’s sudden volte face on the North Sea oil industry came under the leadership of Nicola Sturgeon who, clutching for some kind of legacy, reckoned she might have a shout of making it as a great champion of the environment.
Under Sturgeon’s leadership, the SNP turned its back on an industry which had once been central to the party’s case for independence. Scotland’s oil became Scotland’s shame.
Sturgeon took for granted communities which had, during the Salmond era, seen the SNP as their greatest champions, while pitching to be seen as an international leader on tackling climate change.
This was never much more than Instagram politics, policy promoted for “likes” rather than because it was wise or achievable.
The ridiculous conclusion of Sturgeon’s drive was the agreement by the SNP that it should maintain a “presumption against” the granting of any new licences to drill in the North Sea.
Meanwhile, Scots continued to live in the real world where fossil fuels remained (and remain) essential. And, if we weren’t going to run our cars and heat our homes with fuel extracted from beneath the North Sea, we were going to have to do those things with imported oil and gas.
The SNP’s position on fossil fuels was pure virtue signalling.
Swinney knows better. He knows that plugging North Sea pipelines will not end the need for oil and gas in the here and now and knows, too, that the majority of Scots are in favour of further drilling.
So why, then, has the first minister ended up little more than a bystander to the news on Jackdaw?
The answer, I’m afraid, is that he is placing party before country.
When Swinney replaced Humza Yousaf as SNP leader in 2024, he sought counsel from a range of party veterans. The nationalists had endured a prolonged period of chaos and division. How, Swinney asked a number of peers, could he bring the SNP back together?
A paid-up party member since he was a schoolboy, Swinney’s first concern was for the SNP.
That pathological need to keep party together now clouds the first minister’s judgement on Jackdaw.
A stronger leader would have laid down the law to his party on oil and gas. He would have torn up the presumption against and shown voters in the North East, abandoned by the SNP, that he understood their concerns.
Instead, Swinney – fearful of upsetting a handful of younger government colleagues – pussyfoots around while Scottish Labour and the Conservatives jostle to be seen as the true champions of the North Sea oil industry and the Scottish workers who depend upon it.
Just four months ago, the Conservatives won their first Scottish Westminster by-election since 1973 when Douglas Lumsden took the Aberdeen South seat vacated by the SNP’s Stephen Flynn, who now sits in Swinney’s cabinet.
That result was a verdict on the SNP’s abandonment of an industry that, for years, it had both supported and enthusiastically exploited.
That should have been enough to wake Swinney up.
There are a few members of Swinney’s cabinet who cling to the belief a presumption against new drilling is the right position. They are wrong and the first minister should try to find the courage to tell them so.
For decades, voters were quite clear about where the SNP stood: It was Scotland’s oil.
Now, it’s Swinney’s embarrassment.