John Swinney had a “very salutary experience” during 2017's snap general election that he drums into his activists.
The SNP had a bad night, losing a third of its seats and around 477,000 votes it had won just two years earlier.
High-profile casualties included Alex Salmond and Angus Robertson, with both men defeated by the Tories.
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In fact, the SNP lost 12 seats to the Tories. In Perth and North Perthshire, Pete Wishart held on by just 21 votes.
“In the last week of that campaign, we had identified about 100 people who were SNP supporters who were unlikely to be with us," Mr Swinney tells The Herald on Sunday.
“When Pete, Rosanna [Cunningham] and I went and saw them, in some cases we spent half an hour on the doorstep, which is completely against the canvassers’ manual. But it was necessary.
“And when you win by 21 votes, you stand at the count in the wee small hours, and you think to yourself, I'm glad I spent that time on those doorsteps, because it's what gets you the difference between winning and losing.
“And that is a story that I regularly tell to my campaign people around the country to say to them, look, I know it's cold, I know it's wet, but it has got to be done, because that's how you win.”
One of the consequences of the SNP’s bad night in 2017 was that Nicola Sturgeon put her independence referendum plans on hold.
She had gone into the election calling for a vote to be held in the autumn of 2018 or spring of 2019.
In the wake of the result, Mr Swinney, the then deputy First Minister, admitted that a second referendum on Scottish independence had been “a significant motivator of votes against the SNP in this election, and we have to be attentive to that point”.
In a documentary to mark the tenth anniversary of the vote, he revealed that at the time he had raised concerns with Ms Sturgeon about the strategy.
But now, at this vote, Mr Swinney has put the constitution at the heart of his offer to voters, urging his activists to “make the case for the fresh start of independence”.
Independence has, of course, been a key plank of SNP manifestos since, but attempts by Ms Sturgeon and her predecessors to convince the UK Government to agree to a new vote have faltered.
Mr Swinney will try again if, as some polls now suggest, he wins a majority of seats next month.
Under a strategy agreed by SNP members last year, if the party wins more than 65 seats at May’s election, this would be taken by the Scottish Government as a mandate to start negotiations for a second vote on independence.
However, there is no mechanism to allow the Scottish Government to unilaterally hold a vote.
What happens when the UK Government says no?
“The UK Government can't stand in the face of the democratic wish of the people of Scotland, and I won't allow it to happen,” Mr Swinney says.
“If people in Scotland want to move on, they have got to give me the backing to enable me to do so.
“And that is the appeal that I make to people in Scotland. We have tried a UK Labour government, there is widespread disappointment at the performance of that government.
“So in two short years, Keir Starmer has proven to us it does not matter if it is a Labour government or a Tory government in Westminster, it doesn't deliver for Scotland. Westminster doesn't work for Scotland.
“So I am saying to people in Scotland, let' not waste the opportunity.
“Let's take the opportunity, let's move on. Give me the backing and I will work to deliver Scotland’s choice about Scotland’s future. And that is what I will do.”
One barrier to an SNP majority could be the number of undecided voters. A slew of polls released this week suggests many Scots have still to make up their minds.
Why does he think there are so many undecideds, and does that worry him?
Mr Swinney says his conversation with voters tells him that they “are very worried about the international situation” and this could be distracting from the election.
“If I look at how I felt last Tuesday night, Wednesday morning, the level of anxiety I had about what might happen after the expletive-laden tweet from President Trump, I don't think I was feeling any different to how most people in the country were feeling.
“And that is what people are seeing. That is what is occupying a lot of the bandwidth in the country.
“So I think people are increasingly focusing on the election.
“My sense is that the decisions that people are making are now firming up.”
During the campaign, what has been striking is Mr Swinney’s tone towards Reform UK. He has spoken about them in a way he has not spoken about Labour or the Tories — as if they are dangerous.
“That's because I think that,” he said. “I think Reform are the embodiment of divisive politics.”
He hit out at the party’s first billboard campaign, which featured migrants on a small boat alongside the words “Scotland is at breaking point”, with a caption below reading: “Glasgow has become the illegal migrant capital of the UK. Only Reform Scotland will stop this.”
“It was a bluntly racist message,” Mr Swinney says. “The idea of somebody turning up in Scotland on a small boat is just laughable.
“But it's been weaponised. So that's what I mean. I find it dangerous because sensitive issues are being weaponised in a way to stoke division and to pit individuals against each other in our society.
“Now, I don't believe in those politics. That is not what I am about. I accept there are political choices, there are different opinions, and we express them respectfully and democratically.
“But Reform are expressing arguments in a different way. They are pitting people against each other, and I think that has got to be called out.
“Now, there are some people who have been attracted to Reform because they are angry, they're frustrated.
“And my job, as a political leader, as First Minister, is to present a set of possibilities to those people that give them hope, which is what I am trying to do in this election campaign.
“So there are some people I accept that it will be really, really difficult for me to reach because they just believe fundamentally different things to me.
“But there are people in all parties who I think it is possible to reach because if they are angry, they might be persuaded by the benefit of another argument.”
Polling suggests voters are angry and frustrated for a range of reasons, including unhappiness with public services and the economy.
Given the fiscal pressures facing the next government — including a projected £4.7 billion funding gap by 2030, driven by low productivity, an ageing population and slower economic growth — there have been warnings about the trade-offs ahead.
Mr Swinney argued that reform, rather than cuts, would be needed to address fiscal pressures.
“There is going to have to be substantial reform in public services,” he said.
He pointed to a shift towards early intervention, particularly in healthcare.
“When you present at A&E, you're presenting at one of the most expensive areas of the public services,” he said.
“And I want to make sure that people get the access to services they require in the most accessible way to them and in the most sustainable way for the public purse. So that is the type of redesign that is going to be the hallmark of five years of the SNP government in the next parliament, if the public support us.”
On tax, the First Minister refused to pre-empt his manifesto, but defended Scotland’s six-band income tax system and argued that people were still moving north despite higher rates for some.
Asked about concerns that some middle-income earners face an effective marginal rate of 50%, he said: “The data tells us that more taxpayers are coming to Scotland, so the taxpayer base in Scotland is growing because people are coming here. So that is welcome. And I think it is a sign that our tax policies are effective.”
“Because there are other things that people benefit from and experience as a consequence of being in Scotland,” he continued. “So free prescriptions, access to free higher education, free eye tests, the bus travel concessions that are available."
“All these different things that are part of the social contract in Scotland have got to be considered as part of the overall context of tax issues," he added. "Along with levels, I accept, in the public sector, of public sector pay, because you have got people who are comparatively paid more as a consequence of working in Scotland than in the rest of the UK.
“So all these things have got to be taken into account. But I'm constantly mindful of the issues in relation to tax and we will set out our proposals in the manifesto.”
The Herald's Unspun Live podcast is speaking to all party leaders during the election campaign. You can read Kevin McKenna's interview with Anas Sarwar here and Andrew Learmonth's sit down with Alex Cole-Hamilton here.
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