Mandy Rhodes

I suspect my husband dodged a bullet when he didn’t win the contest to be the SNP treasurer back in the autumn of 2021. But I also know that someone with his financial background, scrupulous morality and strict adherence to corporate governance would not have stopped asking questions just because the leadership demanded it of him. Which perhaps explains why that was one election he was never going to win. Scotland is a small place. There’s not much that separates any of us from one another.

Even Nicola Sturgeon, the chief architect of the division that characterised the last session of the Scottish Parliament, recognised its toxicity, although she admittedly showed less regard for her own part in sowing the seeds of strife than she did for promoting herself as an enabler of consensus.

It’s 18 years since I last interviewed Alastair Campbell and in the intervening period politics and the country have seen seismic change.