Back to business: An interview with Richard Lochhead

If ‘Richard Lochhead’ was the answer in a political pub quiz, the question might be, ‘who is the MSP that has won most elections to the Scottish Parliament?’.

It’s one for the political anoraks. While Lochhead was elected to the first Scottish Parliament, he can’t claim to be one of the small group of so-called 99-ers that includes the current first minister who have served continuously to the present day. That’s because he was briefly out of parliament when he stood down in 2006 as a list MSP for the North East of Scotland region to fight a by-election in the constituency of Moray following the death of Margaret Ewing. He won that election and has held the seat in every election since. So, basically, Lochhead has won seven elections to Holyrood compared with the ’99-ers’ straight run of six.

In that time, he has served in the ministerial team of every SNP first minister and held a variety of briefs, including being cabinet secretary for rural affairs, food and the environment for over nine years; minister for further and higher education for three; minister for just transition, employment and fair work for two; and is now minister for business. He stood down from government in 2016 when his wife, Fiona, was diagnosed with breast cancer, and sat as a backbencher until 2018 when he returned to government after Nicola Sturgeon appointed him to the education brief. 

He is a political veteran in every sense of the word. And as we sit down to explore his part in the SNP’s journey, he tells me that the recent general election in which his party was decimated, losing 37 of its MPs and reduced to a group of just nine, was the first election he had not campaigned in for 40 years. His reason was an emergency admission to hospital and open-heart surgery. 

After suffering from what he thought was a 48-hour flu bug, Lochhead drove home to Elgin from Edinburgh and after a few days of trying to recover through bed rest, collapsed on the bathroom floor and was blue-lit to Dr Gray’s before being transferred to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary where he received open heart surgery.

“I don’t remember a lot about it,” he tells me. “But they basically said I had sepsis and endocarditis, which is an infection of the heart, which led to the emergency replacement of one of my valves. I then had to stay in hospital for six weeks rehabilitating – learning to speak and walk again and getting antibiotics every four hours. The rest is kind of history. I made a miraculous recovery, according to my doctors. I’ve got a good prognosis, but I’ve still got to build up my muscle mass and my strength. But all things considered, the doctors have said that I’m in really good health and I’m happy to be back at work.”

With our limited powers we can make a difference. We can’t make as much difference as we’d like, but we can make a difference

Typically, Lochhead minimises what was a near-death experience, which, to be fair, he says he has since reflected on and realises that had he not made that decision to drive home, he would have been alone in the Edinburgh flat he lives in while at Holyrood, and things could have ended very differently.

“It feels like quite a surreal experience to be honest. I didn’t at any point think I was going to die, but equally I was relaxed about the thought. That sounds strange but then strange things go through your mind when you’re sedated and on heavy medications. To be honest, I just thought, well, I’ve had a good life, and, you know, if this is it, this is it. I wouldn’t take that attitude now. I wouldn’t want to die now obviously, but it’s out of your hands in hospital, people are caring for you and you just have to resign to what’s for you. But it was much tougher for my family.

“Since, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’ve been through, and it makes me want to live for the moment a lot more. The amazing thing about illness, whether it’s loved ones or yourself, is how quicky the day job is not so important and you put things into perspective. Okay, I confess I did keep an eye on social media to see what was going on politically but actually I found switching off from politics really rather easy, albeit it was forced upon me.”

It’s no exaggeration to say that politics has been Lochhead’s life. He joined the SNP when he was 15 and for the last 40 years has been in and around the tight-knit circle of SNP politicians who would lead the party from the fringes of politics into government and to then take the country to the brink of independence. He remains characteristically modest about his contribution.

“I guess I would describe myself back then in the late 1980s as being on the outside circle of my generation within the SNP. You had John Swinney who was seen as a senior member of the party, and I certainly looked up to him although he was probably only in his early 20s at that time. You had Nicola Sturgeon, Fiona Hyslop, Shona Robison, people like Ricky Bell, Brendan O’Hara, and so on, all hanging about together. There was a lot of obvious talent in that group, formidable politicians, big personalities, and you could tell they were the future of the party. I wasn’t really in that group, I was looking in. I was in my late teens, early 20s, and I was active, campaigning, going to conferences etc, and I would come across them from time to time.

“They were like the advanced guard to take on the Labour Party and it wasn’t just a generational dimension because there were people slightly older like the Alex Salmonds and the Margaret Ewings of the party, but Nicola and the others, they were like star players, the strikers, going on the pitch to score goals against Labour.

“I remember around the time of the Govan by-election in 1988, and I was out campaigning every day after work, and yes, I was on that bus with the Proclaimers, Pat Kane and Jim Sillars, and so on, and at that time I was at a party at Eilidh Whiteford’s flat near Ibrox and that whole group were at that party and I can remember looking around the room at them and thinking that this was the start of something big, that they were taking us somewhere.

“It was obvious that they were a serious group of people, of politicians, and were the future of the party and looking back I got to know them so well as the campaign for the parliament took off and also when I was working for Alex Salmond from 1994 to early 1998, I got to know all those key personalities within the party much better. 

“I guess I would have described myself as an enthusiastic activist who had a bit of a profile, but I wouldn’t have pretended to have been part of that inner circle.” 

I’ve known Lochhead myself for over 30 years. He was campaigning for Salmond back in 1992 when I spent a week travelling around Moray with Salmond in a minibus driven variously by Stewart Stevenson and Mike Russell for a colour piece ahead of that year’s general election for Scotland on Sunday. Then, and now, Lochhead struck me as a less tribal politician, calmer than those around him, and always more willing to stand in the shadows of what were increasingly the big beasts of politics. You don’t get histrionics from Lochhead. And his loyalty to the people and the cause were never in doubt. I ask him how difficult he has found the more recent travails within the party that have seen the once close relationship between Sturgeon and Salmond torn apart. 

“I’m not uncomfortable talking about the party [per se]. What I do find difficult to speak about is a lot of the things that have happened with personal and long-standing, close relationships. So, one minute I’m in a car as Alex Salmond’s campaign manager when he returned to fight for the leadership and I’m driving around Scotland with Nicola Sturgeon and Shona Robison in the same car because Shona was Nicola’s campaign manager, and here we are now, many years later, and that world’s changed beyond recognition. I’m sure that’s just politics, but as an individual, you know, I have found that really difficult. 

“Put all the circumstances and the reasons to one side, and I’m just talking about the human side of this, it’s been quite tough. And in politics we’re just expected to soak that up and move on, but you know, it’s quite traumatic in a way. So, I think that’s difficult to work through and to deal with, and it’s just very sad. On a human level, just very sad.

“I don’t speak to Nicola that often, but, you know, I still speak to Nicola when I have the chance. But I’ve only spoken to Alex Salmond, you know, at funerals. We have exchanged words and pleasantries. We were at the funeral of Stuart Pratt, a long-standing election agent whom I was close to for many years, and we acknowledged each other. And you know, at that human level you bump into people, and you speak to them, but given how close we all were… I don’t know… but we are where we are, things have got to move on, but yes, it’s been very sad the way things have panned out in some ways over the last number of years.

“There is an element of disbelief that the big personalities that you worked with day in, day out are no longer there and it’s a crying shame the way things have turned out, but the years have passed, and people make misjudgments, make mistakes, and the irony that our former first minister and leader of the party is now our opponent is extraordinary. Alex Salmond was in many ways my mentor. I recall many pivotal moments of the party’s history when I was by his side. He, of course, appointed me to the first SNP cabinet which at the time I was overwhelmed by, but I got stuck in and there were only six of us in the cabinet at that time and he was inspiring.

“There’s been lots of opportunity for reflection given everything that has happened with Alex Salmond, but for many years he had left my orbit and then of course everything happened and obviously I am so disappointed by the way things have turned out with Alex Salmond and some of his own decisions and the journey that it has taken us to where we are today. 

“Alex Salmond was the SNP. It ran through his veins, and now he is one of our most vociferous opponents. In politics, there are big personalities with big egos, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and obviously different circumstances with what has happened with Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond, but what I feel is just profound sadness.”

It’s interesting the way Lochhead constantly refers to Salmond with both his Christian and surname, as if formalising things gives some distance, but you can sense his hurt at how everything has turned out. I ask him why he never threw his hat in the ring for leader.

“As a politician or as a minister, as anyone would, I’m sure, I’ve thought about whether I should throw my hat in the ring, or what I’d be like in stepping up to the plate. And whilst I think I’ve got some qualities I could offer, you know, after being in cabinet from 2007 to 2016, when, certainly for the first sessions there were only six of us in cabinet, I found that demanding enough, and I take my hat off to anyone who steps up to the plate for leadership. Being party leader as well as first minister, that demands 24 hours a day, seven days a week, dealing with constantly difficult issues, [and it] can be quite stressful at times. It’s hugely demanding in this day and age. And I just never thought that’s for me.

“We all have different characters, and I have always thought I have to recognise my own limitations and maybe I have been too reticent to push myself forward further, but I think there are always other people in the party with more qualities for leadership. I am a hard worker, with some creativity and vision, I am always thinking about the vision and what we can do for the next generation and the future rather than the day-to-day point scoring and yes, of course I indulge in that as much as anyone, but I do try and retain that sense of vision and purpose.

“It might sound a bit cheesy, but I’m in this to help Scotland and to make Scotland a better place, and I feel that if I can contribute towards that then that’s always just usurped the difficult days. I found the last leadership contest a tough experience and personally challenging. It’s always difficult in a party where you’ve worked with people for so many years, people you like and admire, then you have to kind of pick sides, and that’s always difficult, so it’s had some very difficult moments for me.

“Clearly politics generally is pretty toxic right now and the financial situation across the country and the partisan nature of politics offers lots of opportunity for people to drive wedges and take sides, but I feel more optimistic for some time that we can get back on track.

“The toxicity is hard for me at times and clearly a lot of politicians get affected by social media. And I have found that my use of the likes of X or Twitter, I don’t use it nearly as much now because the toxicity is just mind blowing. And politics has never been nastier, you know. And while most people in politics are there for the right reasons, I have noticed in my time in the Scottish Parliament, over the 25 years, the kind of politician coming in here has changed.

“There are more single-issue politicians. I still see the majority of politicians here for the right reasons. But politics has changed, you can see that in Westminster as well, that some people come into politics to stop things happening, stop Europe, stop immigrants, stop this or that. To stop things, that’s what is motivating them, as opposed to creating things and making things better.” 

Surely that single-issue approach applies as much to his party as any other?

“My party changed dramatically after the 2014 referendum. The huge rise in membership was a double-edged sword. We became a massive movement very quickly, or a massive party. It’s more challenging to have 125,000 people signed up to exactly go in the same direction, at the same pace, with the same priorities, than it is in a party of 20,000, you know. So, it brought challenges, and I think the fact that happened so quickly obviously had an impact.

“But despite all the problems we face at the moment and challenges, which are not unique to the SNP government in Scotland, I do think we’re closer to independence than we have been in past generations. When I joined the SNP, 15 years of age at secondary school, I remember my two friends and myself celebrating when the System Three opinion poll in The Herald newspaper, The Glasgow Herald as it was then, got into double figures. And support for independence would be in the 20s. So, I am as impatient as the next person for independence, because I think every day goes by that we’re not independent, we’re not reaching our potential. We’re losing big opportunities.

I am confident that were there to be a referendum tomorrow, Scotland would vote yes

“I am confident that were there to be a referendum tomorrow, Scotland would vote yes. There’s a question whether the time is right for a referendum. That’s a different question. You want to maximise your chances of winning. What we have to do is win support for independence and not worry about the process of getting a referendum. It’s much better spending our time building up support for independence to say 61 per cent and then other things will fall into place in a democracy and through social movements. Obsessing with the date of a referendum, or how the referendum will be organised, or who should try and instigate a referendum, to me, is the wrong way to go right now.

“I feel, personally, that we have to do a lot more to grow the Scottish economy. Focus on the economy. Focus on our economic opportunities. With our limited powers we can make a difference. We can’t make as much difference as we’d like, but we can make a difference. We can give people in Scotland confidence that we can go alone. If we’ve got very big, successful industries in this country and we improve the quality of life, build more better-paid jobs, increase the tax take, I think the people of Scotland will have more confidence that we can stand alone on our own two feet. I feel we should focus a lot more on that. 

“And I think my portfolio has got a crucial role to play, because these are really exciting sectors that are covered. So that’s everything from the space industry to financial services and fintech, to construction, to some of the critical technologies like photonics, which is light and lasers, and these hydro sectors, which are really exciting. They’re shaping not just Scotland’s future, but the world’s future as well. 

“The inventions, innovations that I’m seeing, it would blow your mind. Scotland’s got a history of invention and innovation, but we allow other countries to enjoy the benefits, to enjoy the jobs, to enjoy the technologies. But this time, we’ve got an opportunity to make sure we get the economic benefit of these innovations. That’s what I want to focus on.

“My view is that Scotland economically faces two massive opportunities right now. One is the energy transition, which can transform our country. The challenge here is to make sure that people notice that and feel it and it affects them directly. It’s not just something about targets and headlines, but they feel the benefit of that in their communities. The second one is what’s happening with the technology and the innovations I was speaking about earlier on. They’re high growth sectors. They pay often two and a half to three times the average wage. They’re growing fast, they’re export orientated, they earn a lot of money for the country, and they can widen the tax revenue base of the country going forwards. So, these two big windows of opportunity, I think, are what we should be focusing on, and they, in turn, can help reform public services and build that confidence that we can go it alone. There is so much we can do when we set our sights higher.”