The Saturday Read Feature: Kate Forbes
An interview-profile with the first minister Scotland almost had.
Good morning. Welcome to the latest Saturday Read Feature. This is Harry, along with Will and Pippa.
We will have the main email with you on Saturday: stand by for the Christmas issue. Ahead of that we wanted to send you a feature written by Jason Cowley, our editor-in-chief. He has been on the road with Kate Forbes, who narrowly lost the SNP leadership election to Humza Yousaf in March of this year.
The primary calling of life, Forbes tells Jason, “is to be in the dirt of reality”. That belief is a religious one for her. It is the basis of her politics: to alleviate the suffering of the “underprivileged, under-represented, and voiceless” among whom Christ lives. How then did Forbes come to be condemned as a candidate fit only “for the 19th century” whose views should disqualify her for high office today, as critics and some of her SNP colleagues have claimed? “Does she simply love God too much,” Jason asks, “to do politics well?”
An excerpt from the piece runs below. Click to read in full. (If you would like to receive the main email alone you can adjust your settings on Substack. If you do not wish to receive emails from us you can click to unsubscribe at the end of this email.)
There is a compelling scene in Hugh Hudson’s reimagination of the story of the rivalry between British sprinters Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell in the Oscar-winning film Chariots of Fire. Liddell (played by Ian Charleson) is a fervent Scottish Presbyterian who, at the 1924 Olympics in Paris, in the film’s recasting of events, excites press attention when he refuses to compete in the 100m heats on the Sabbath. To do so would be to betray his faith, to violate all that he believes. In the end, a compromise is reached and Liddell switches to the 400m. Before the final, he is approached by the US athlete Jackson Scholz, who slips him a handwritten note: “It says in the old Book, ‘He who honours me I will honour.’ Good luck.”
The race begins and Liddell, a “flyer”, more used to the shorter sprints, pushes out in front. The camera intently tracks his pale, agonised face and we hear Liddell’s inner voice: “So where does the power come from to see the race to its end – from within!”
When I travelled with Gordon Brown to Newcastle and Sunderland, in the last days of the 2010 general election campaign, he told me he was inspired by Liddell, who later worked as a missionary in China, where he died in a civilian Japanese internment camp aged 43. Brown quoted a line from the Olympian: “The first half of the race requires outer strength, the second half inner strength.”
Brown felt profoundly misunderstood and knew power was slipping away from him and New Labour. A new era of Conservative rule was upon us. He had absorbed more blows during the campaign than would have broken most men, and yet, inspired by Liddell, Brown had carried on and said that through suffering and adversity he had “grown” spiritually.
Was it something similar for Kate Forbes? Had the experience of the leadership campaign and her public vilification deepened her self-understanding? Unlike Liddell at the Paris Games, she did not win the race. Humza Yousaf did. But she achieved something else: she told the truth about who she is and what she believes. She did not give up as some political friends urged her to do, or cynically adapt her personal views to appease her disparagers, or to win favour with the selectorate. But nor did she seek to condemn the moral choices of others.
“I draw so many conclusions from what happened,” she said. “The first is that I have met so many people who’ve told me – and this is like secular feminists – that they feel braver to be honest in the public square at a time where cancel culture and the illiberal creep is dominating. I’m not saying my views are popular, by the way…"
Since February she has been pondering the question of honesty in politics. What are its limits? How truthful can one reasonably be about the human heart, about what lies within? What is the appropriate balance between one’s personal ethical codes and public positions and utterances?
Charging up and drilling down. Whilst today we’re mostly in oil & gas, we’re also working to roll out EV charging hubs and recently opened up the UK’s largest public hub in Birmingham. And, not or – that’s our approach. See how bp is backing Britain.
Have a good week, and catch you on Saturday for the main email. Thank you.
