Who is early SNP party leadership favourite Kate Forbes? Will she replace Nicola Sturgeon as First Minister?
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ONE of the early favourites to replace Nicola Sturgeon as leader of the SNP and First Minister is likely to be Highland MSP Kate Forbes – who has been touted as a potential future leader in the past.
The 32-year-old's star has risen sharply in recent years, and has proven popular in polls for future leaders. A Sunday Times poll just last weekend asking if Sturgeon should resign also asked who should replace her – with Forbes topping the list after 'don't knows' were stripped out of the answer.
Ms Forbes first entered the Scottish Parliament as an MSP after the 2016 election representing the Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch constituency which she won with more than 47 per cent of the vote.
She is originally from Dingwall, where she is now based, although she spent part of her upbringing in Glasgow and India.
Before entering Holyrood she was an accountant in the banking industry having studied history at the universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh.
She has served on Holyrood’s environment, climate change and land reform committee as well as the the rural economy and connectivity committee among others. She has also worked as parliamentary liaison officer for finance and the constitution.
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As well as leading a campaign to ban plastic straws, Ms Forbes has participated in several cross-party groups at Holyrood including crofting, Gaelic, human trafficking, palliative care and rural policy.
Ms Forbes – who is a fluent Gaelic speaker – made history in 2019 by becoming the first female MSP to give a plenary speech entirely in Gaelic in the current Scottish Parliament chamber.
During her time in Holyrood, she won the one to watch award in 2018 at the annual Scottish Politician of the Year awards in Edinburgh and was named a finalist for Holyrood magazine’s backbencher of the year for 2017/18.
In June 2018, she was appointed as minister for public finance and digital economy.
She assumed the senior ministerial role of Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy in dramatic fashion in February 2020 when she took over from her shamed predecessor Derek Mackay.
Mackay was forced to resign on the eve of the Scottish Budget after he messaged a 16-year-old.
Despite stepping in to deliver the Scottish Budget speech just hours after his resignation, and having little time to prepare, Forbes' assured and confident performance at the dispatch box won widespread plaudits and quickly saw her earmarked as a a possible future party leader. She was formally appointed to Mackay's former role as finance minister just two weeks later.
In post during the dark days of the Covid-19 pandemic, she was one of several key SNP politicians who saw their polling popularity rise due to their handling of the crisis. She later warned of "very difficult" financial choices facing the government as a result of the Covid outbreak, and was criticised by council leaders across Scotland for a real terms cut to funding in 2021.
A member of the Free Church of Scotland, she married husband Alasdair MacLennan at a Free Church service in Dingwall in July 2021, and gave birth to her first child in August last year.
In 2018 she courted controversy at a National Prayer Breakfast event when she delivered an anti-abortion statement in which she said treatment of the “unborn” was a “measure of true progress”.
She has also been a critic of the controversial Gender Recognition Act. She was one of 15 SNP politicians who signed a letter in April 2019 calling on the party to delay implementing its manifesto pledge to introduce the act. She later abstained on the final vote to introduce the act in December last year - becoming the only SNP MSP to abstain.
