JOHN Swinney will call for "consensus" in a speech as he bids to gain support for the SNP's Budget next month.
The First Minister will make a speech on Wednesday to caution against “surface solutions” to the problems facing the country.
He faces the challenge of trying to pass the SNP’s first Budget without a deal with the Greens since 2021.
The SNP have ruled as a minority government since Swinney's predecessor Humza Yousaf (below) junked the Bute House Agreement with the Greens earlier this year.
But Swinney will reach for an optimistic tone in a speech in Edinburgh, which he will use to argue for collaboration and consensus-building.
The First Minister is expected to say: “Scotland is best served when we collaborate, when we build consensus and work together across sectors, across disciplines and across cultures.
“The need to do so has never been more urgent. For the issues we face now are complex, pervasive and entrenched – and they are mounting.”
Swinney will highlight “global challenges stacked upon global challenges”, including Brexit, Covid and the war in Ukraine as well as “domestic problems” including the housing crisis and hospital bed shortages.
He will add: “Yet, too often – and particularly in politics – discussions and the public discourse are dominated by surface solutions, because they are the few that can gain consensus.
“The temptation then arises to throw money and strategies at a problem, or simply to find someone to blame for it, because the hard work of finding true consensus, of peer reviewing ideas in good faith, can feel unrealistic in our increasingly polarised reality.”
His expected comments echo campaign speeches made by Keir Starmer (above) in his bid to become Prime Minister earlier this year, in which he cautioned against “sticking plaster politics”.
Since Labour’s election victory, Swinney has backed Starmer’s ambitions to “reset” the relationship between Edinburgh and London, which both consider to have deteriorated since Boris Johnson’s premiership.
The First Minister will say the country must “maintain enough hope and energy to work together” to tackle the “root causes” of problems.
He will add: “These solutions may not always be quick or easy – but that does not make them any less necessary. This is the approach that people should expect from a Swinney government.
“I want to bring people closer to their communities, which is particularly important in a country like Scotland, where the picture in the central belt or the Borders can be so different to the Highlands or the Islands.
“Being closer to our communities also makes it easier for us to bring those communities into policy-making: government from the ground up.”
