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Hello and welcome to political thinking, a conversation with, rather than a newsy

interrogation of someone who shapes our political thinking about what has shaped theirs.

My guest this week has dreamed of his country becoming independent since he was a young man. John Swinney announced his retirement from frontline

politics though last year at the age of 60 with Scotland still very much part of the

United Kingdom.

But he was asked to come back as leader of the Scottish National Party

and as First Minister of Scotland

when his party faced the latest in a series of crises.

John Swinney, welcome to political thinking.

Love to be with you, thank you.

It has been something of a roller coaster six months, haven't it? You retire from front-line politics,

then the first middlester of Scotland is forced from office, and you decide to come back into

front-line politics, come to your party's rescue. then Ritchie Sunat calls a surprise early

election in the summer, then you have a bit of a kick in the general election, the Westminster

election.

Is it all be very stomach churning?

It's been absolutely a whirlwind, I think is the best way to describe it because I quite literally

in the days before Holmes Youssef resigned as first minister was making further plans about what

would be my gentle scaling down of political activity and I was actually on the day that he resigned giving a reflective speech about 25 years of devolution in Scotland down here in London and that was an opportunity for me to perhaps reflect a little bit from my experience of being a member of the

Scottish Parliament since its foundation and also the only member of the Scottish Parliament

that remains you actually voted for the Scotland Act which established the Scottish Parliament.

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