If John Swinney is only Full-on John now, what was he before?

We now have a funky new moniker for Scotland’s first minister, one he has cleverly crafted himself and is using with gusto, laughing with the boys at his own small joke – Full-on John.

It comes with a snigger, a side eye, and the tacit understanding that this is a reinvented, reinvigorated, rehash of the old John, previously known as Honest John, but who has dropped that upstanding sobriquet in favour of a more exciting one that represents something of a shiny new order – less comfy slippers and more Adidas Samba. A shape-changing recreation of a political leader that looks reassuringly familiar but who can deflect the past and rewrite history.

Full-on John is the old reliable, bank manager-like John but with something extra: Swinney Max. The same John, with a different energy. And so, clearly not the man who stood down from government after 16 years to sit on the back benches having “done his bit” and who ruled himself out of standing to be leader [again], to create space in his party for “fresh perspective” which, surprise, surprise, turned out to be him – the old perspective.

And now we are expected to swallow that this is well-kent John but with a sprinkling of fairy dust. A magical John that has hypnotised a nation into a state of complete amnesia such that the country must wipe its memory clean of the fact that this is the same party that has run the country for almost 18 years. That has a blind spot to John Swinney’s pivotal involvement in the leadership of the SNP for decades, and his role at the heart of every Scottish Government since 2007, bar the mere 14 months when he sat on the backbenches following Nicola Sturgeon’s departure as first minister and the selection of Humza Yousaf as her successor. A seemingly wide-eyed, gullible electorate that sees no hint of duplicity in the Holier-than-thou John who backed Humza Yousaf to be FM, questioned whether someone of Kate Forbes’s views should ever hold the top job, and then, having sealed the deal – for what has since been described as a calamitous year under Yousaf’s tenure – then appointed the same woman he had earlier crucified to be his deputy when Yousaf was forced to stand down and Swinney became the Walk-on John to replace him.

Forbes is perhaps required to not only forgive but also, like the rest of us, to forget.

I’m all for positive reinvention; indeed, I would suggest the likes of Keir Starmer could do with fast revealing another side and Donald Trump needs more than just a reboot. But if John Swinney is only Full-on John now, it begs the question of what he was before.

What gear was the apparently Less than full-on John in when he held the purse strings to the country’s coffers for nine years? And if he had been on full throttle, could he have done more for less? And what about when he was deputy first minister for 16 years or was in charge of education? Perhaps the answer to that lies in the fact that on his watch the poverty-related attainment gap was only swollen by his efforts. And when he was in charge of Covid recovery, the NHS was sliding into crisis, young people’s mental health plummeting, and the economy faltering, and all when he was full-on deleting WhatsApp messages to Nicola Sturgeon and opposing FOIs.

What mode was he in when children in care were being let down on every matrix? Or when William Brown and Katie Allan were incarcerated in a young offenders’ unit only to take their own lives, noting that despite such tragedies it took 17 years in power for the Scottish Government – of which he was an integral part – to finally put a ban on under-18s being housed in places like Polmont.

Did he, like Sturgeon, have his eye off the ball when drug deaths soared, and prisons got full to bursting? And why was he not all over child poverty when he was finance secretary if his driving mission now is to eradicate it? Remembering that it took him and his party 14 years in power before introducing the life-changing Scottish Child Payment? And what speed was he running at when the country declared a housing crisis, when the ferries didn’t run, the roads weren’t dualled, climate targets were abandoned, a Deposit Return Scheme aborted, a National Care Service was winding its way to the scrap-heap, and the Royal College of Nursing was exposing the Third-World state of our hospitals, with patients cared for in corridors and coming to more harm than good?

And then we have Right-On John, putting himself out there in jokey sunglasses and a rainbow lanyard, purporting to be a guardian of equality while refusing to be clear on women’s rights, unable to admit Sturgeon and he, as her then deputy, got the policy of self-ID so wrong. And he can attempt to ride two horses at one time as he argues for the preservation of single-sex spaces while his own government is spending thousands of pounds arguing in court that biology is not the determining factor in a definition of ‘sex’, but that is not an easy canter to sustain.

It takes chutzpah to present the second-hand as brand new even when it is a perfectly serviceable model. But Honest John’s currency lay in a perception of his truthfulness and his transparency. His longevity in politics viewed as an asset and his managerial style, serving to give the impression of a steady hand. But when you parade yourself as the emperor in new clothes, absolving yourself of whatever has come before, you should be prepared for people to strip away the froth and ask for what you stand.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for change. I applaud a U-turn when it is for the good. All I’m questioning is why the FM needs to rely on a collective memory loss for him to be a success. And if he does, then why?

Swinney is riding high in the polls without having to be anything other than himself. His party, despite its record and the fact that almost half of Scots are unhappy with how the SNP is delivering on key public services, is currently predicted to win the next election regardless. There is less need to makeover the messenger than to make real change to stop some of the rot.

And while we may have all become inured to how bad things are, if Scottish Labour really wants to make a dent in the SNP’s Teflon-coated brass neck, then its leader needs to play Full-On John at his own game of reinvention, and be more Kick Ass Anas and show how, to coin a phrase, things can only get better.