John Swinney appoints former Yes strategist as special adviser

THE former chief strategist of Yes Scotland has been appointed as a special adviser to the First Minister.

Stephen Noon is set to join John Swinney’s team just a week after he published a major report on breaking the independence stalemate alongside former Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale.

Special advisers or SpAds as they are sometimes known — are able to advise ministers on political terms, unlike other civil servants, who must remain politically neutral.

Swinney undertook a reshuffle of his internal advisers when taking office in May. Veteran spin doctor Kevin Pringle as well as former SNP MP Callum McCaig left senior adviser and policy roles.

Noon, 53, worked for former first minister Alex Salmond from 1994 — with a brief role in Swinney’s office in the early 2000s — before taking up the position as head of strategy for the Yes campaign in 2012.

Following the referendum result, Noon moved to Canada and lived as a trainee Jesuit priest until 2022. Upon his return to Scotland, he became a research scholar at the University of Edinburgh while providing analysis on the current independence movement as well as reflections of 2014.

Stephen Noon on Question Time (Image: BBC/Question Time) In the last two years, Noon has argued division in Scottish politics around the independence debate means it “is time to consider a third way” and to move away from the idea of a second referendum in the immediate future.

Last week’s report, entitled Scotland and the Constitution: Agreeing a way forward, said the “existing mechanism for triggering a unification referendum in Northern Ireland should be the basis for agreeing a pathway to a future independence referendum in Scotland”.

Noon and Dugdale argued for the Scotland Office to be given Northern Ireland-style powers to declare another referendum – if a majority of Scots are seen to want independence.