Euan McColm: John Swinney is a changed man from the one once labelled incompetent’ as SNP leader

A couple of days earlier, Curtice had been asked about the politician’s previous spell at the head of his party between 2000-04. “Some of us,” he’d replied, “remember John Swinney when he was SNP leader, and he wasn't really that good at it.”

I remember it, vividly, and Swinney wasn’t the total incompetent it’s now, generally, agreed he was.

Swinney inherited from Alex Salmond an SNP that was entirely dysfunctional. Warring groups - gradualists who favoured a slow-and-steady move towards independence and fundamentalists who demanded radical (if not always clearly defined) action to break the Union - spent more time attacking each other that holding the then Labour-Liberal Democrat administration at Holyrood to account.

A small group of what I remember being utterly exhausting arseholes were relentless in their efforts to undermine Swinney. These obscure, unreasonable and childishly petty figures from the fundie faction – geed-up by senior MSPs, bitter that gradualist Swinney had taken control of their party – briefed against the leader, made public demands for his resignation and, eventually, launched a challenge against his leadership putting up Bill Wilson (a scientist or “mouse poo expert” as the tabloids of the day had it) as their candidate.

Swinney saw off his challenger (Wilson was later to be elected to Holyrood where, during his four-year term, his talents were ignored by the SNP leadership) but there was no way of concealing from voters that his party was so bitterly divided as to be unsuitable for government.

When Swinney was ousted, after a poor showing for the SNP in the 2004 European Parliamentary Election, he left returning leader Alex Salmond a party in better shape, organisationally, than the one he’d previously led.

Swinney modernised internal party democracy, fixing serious flaws in the SNP rule book such as a particularly bonkers bit that permitted branches to split, on a whim, and for each new branch to be given an equal vote in party elections. This rule had allowed factions to maximise their voting power and led to a number of experienced gradualist candidates being scuppered by fundamentalists.

The John Swinney who - acts of God, notwithstanding - will soon be Scotland’s seventh First Minister is a different man to the one who led the SNP 20 years ago. As he said in his answer to that question, he’s been through a lot since then.

The SNP’s current decline may be unstoppable but his colleagues are correct to think Swinney presents their best chance of slowing it.

Having first met him quarter of a century ago, I know Swinney a little. He’s clever, affable, and – rare among SNP politicians – regarded with a degree of respect by his contemporaries in other parties. He has always been a more ruthless (a necessary quality) politician than his reputation suggests and he has – or certainly once had – pretty good instincts about voters’ priorities.

The SNP rose to power in 2007 by connecting with the people of middle Scotland, those on neat estates with that old-fashioned but entirely noble ambition of doing a bit better for themselves than the generation before in the hope that their kids would do better still.

Announcing his candidacy on Thursday, Swinney said he stood on the mainstream centre left of politics; that’s where the people are and that’s where his party had to be.

Having identified the problem - the SNP’s drift away from the voters on whom it depends - how, then, does Swinney fix it?

It’s abundantly clear to all but the most unthinking partisans that the SNP’s refusal to accept the result of the 2014 referendum did not advance the cause of independence. A decade of shouting at the people that they were wrong and insisting that they wanted another referendum, when the people had repeatedly said they did not, simply cemented positions.

The SNP has spent 10 years massively irritating the very people it needs to win over if it is ever to achieve a solid, stable majority in favour of leaving the United Kingdom.

No senior SNP figure truly believes there will be another independence referendum any time soon so Swinney should level with his members and try to persuade them that actually doing – and not just talking about doing – the difficult stuff of government must be his priority.

Swinney should end the ridiculous war footing assumed by the Scottish Government in all its dealings with Westminster. Scotland currently has two governments and Swinney should have the confidence to be seen working with the Scotland Office for the benefit of the country.

If I were him, I’d invite Scottish Secretary Alister Jack for tea and make damned sure that nobody briefed anything negative about it.

Swinney needs to persuade some very sceptical people that his party is not merely a grievance machine.

The other key challenge facing Swinney when it comes to trying to reconnect with voters is how he handles ongoing controversy over gender ideology and the clash between women’s rights and the demands of some trans activists.

Nicola Sturgeon’s support for reform of the Gender Recognition Act was deeply unpopular with voters and played its part in her becoming so divisive a figure that even she recognised her time was up.

Humza Yousaf took the decision to kick the Greens out of government after a straw-that-broke-the-camel’s-back moment when their co-leader Patrick Harvie’s refusal to accept Dr Hilary Cass’s extensive review of NHS service for gender-confused children and young people as a “valid” scientific document infuriated SNP backbenchers.

Swinney needs to get his lines ready on these issues, which aren’t going away.

At the same time, Swinney must try to unite a party bitterly divided over independence strategy and gender issues.

Can the man SNP members hounded from office 20 years ago achieve all that and save his party?