by Eddie Barnes
THE John Smith Centre held its second “Surviving Politics” event in a packed Bute Hall at the University of Glasgow on Monday night.
Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes and Times columnist Fraser Nelson spoke for an hour and a half on the state of modern politics to a room of students and members of the public.
For Kate Forbes, this was one of her last public engagements before she leaves front-line politics when the Scottish Parliament election campaign is called in a few weeks’ time. Asked what she’s going to miss when she leaves ministerial office, it “is being able to get things done.”
“In politics it feels at times like you’re wading through treacle. But if I’ve learned anything, it’s that if you persevere and just fight at every hurdle, you can get things done that wouldn’t have been done, that wouldn’t have been completed, had you not really pursued it,” she said.
In his introductory remarks, Fraser Nelson reflected on his 30-year career in journalism, which he split into two phases. The first block, he said, was “the post-Soviet era where people assumed that there was going to be a new kind of consensus, and we were all working domestically and internationally towards that consensus.”
He marked the independence referendum in Scotland as the break point after which, he said, we have seen “rupture after rupture after rupture….so you get this world where politics seems that it was absolutely like granite, as if it was running on these historical rails, to a period where these political entrepreneurs were able to enter the arena and change the weather.”
As chair of the event, two points landed home for me from the two speakers.
Firstly, discussing the challenge of populism, Kate Forbes spoke about the need for people to step forward and get involved. “The populists will win until everybody else gets their act together and says ‘I can do something different,’” she argued. “If you can go from ranting in a pub or in your living room to actually doing something about it, then you can absolutely change everything – and if a group of people do that, it’s even more impactful.”
“At the end of the day, we just need more good people to step forward and stand in very different ways, either as politicians or as journalists, or in the civil service and so on.”
It’s a belief that drives the John Smith Centre too – that if we’re to create a better country, then we need more young people to step up and take action.
The second key message came as Fraser set out the case for ‘rational optimism’. “I would put my case for optimism quite simply – that if any of you could choose any time to be alive in Scotland…I’d be amazed if after careful thought, any of you didn’t choose right now.”
He added: “There are so many things I can talk about: the crime rates, the health rates, the communications options, the travel options, the education, the position of women, the position of minorities – it’s very difficult to think that things were better in any other decade. There therefore follows a kind of radical intrusive thought that this is the best time to be alive.”
“That sounds heretical because it sounds like dismissing all the negative things – but then again, if not now, then when?”
Our own UK Youth Poll 2025 found that – contrary to much received wisdom – young people remain broadly optimistic, not pessimistic about their own personal future. So perhaps Fraser is onto something….
The pair discussed a lot more besides: Trump, Scottish independence, economic growth, Brexit, religion – and more. Students in the audience asked a series of penetrating and challenging questions of both. We hope the event will have whetted their appetite to follow Kate Forbes’ advice and choose to make a mark of their own in public life and politics.
