{"id":806340,"date":"2026-10-18T07:10:20","date_gmt":"2026-10-18T07:10:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/806340\/"},"modified":"2026-10-18T07:10:20","modified_gmt":"2026-10-18T07:10:20","slug":"swinneys-emotional-explanation-for-his-commitment-to-independence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/806340\/","title":{"rendered":"Swinney&#8217;s emotional explanation for his commitment to independence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">There was a more obvious dig at the prime minister, who visited Motherwell this week to promote regional devolution within Scotland and drew on his experience as mayor of Greater Manchester.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Again, without mentioning Andy Burnham by name, the first minister said: &#8220;Some think we should just be like Manchester. Well, I&#8217;m afraid I disagree.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Scotland is no city. We are no region. We are a nation and soon we will be an independent nation.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">That went down well in the conference hall &#8211; even if the first minister is perfectly prepared to work with the prime minister on plans to create a regional level of government in Scotland, with powers transferred from both Westminster and Holyrood.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Swinney also claimed that independence is &#8220;very close&#8221; in the full knowledge that there will not be another referendum unless there is a sustained surge in public support for Scottish statehood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There was a more obvious dig at the prime minister, who visited Motherwell this week to promote regional&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":806341,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-806340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=806340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/806341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}