Kate Forbes: I do think that's fairly significant someone from the Highlands is in the running to be First Minister
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Entering the last weekend of campaigning for the SNP leadership Kate Forbes believes it is important that someone from the Highlands is in the race to become the next First Minister.
Ms Forbes is seen as one of the frontrunners along with Humza Yousaf with the announcement of the winner to be made on Monday.
Despite her campaign being targeted over her religious beliefs she stands by her "deliberate" decision.
She said: "My Highland community would have known I was being dishonest for political gain and I don't think there's any future in that level of dishonesty."
The Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch MSP also believes that she may be helping to dismantle a "stigma" attached to being the north.
That is something she rejects totally, adding: "Highlanders are thinking, intelligent beings who are internationalists in outlook and are just as well informed as anyone else in Scotland and able to make their own minds up."
The full interiview:
Is it significant that a Highlander is going for the top job?
I do think that's fairly significant and even to be in the running is quite remarkable for somebody from the Highlands, who went to school in the Highlands and finally, perhaps, the Highlands feel like they're being represented on even the the national stage through the debates in the hustings in a way that they might have been not have been otherwise.
Do you feel a sort of responsibility in that sense to particularly represent the Highlands?
Absolutely. And I think that some of the issues that you're seeing being discussed in this hustings suggests a bit of an illiteracy about the Highlands too. I do think there is a difference between Highland communities and the Central Belt and too often policy has been shaped from the Central Belt but it's not just about substance but it is also about style and someone like Charles Kennedy was renowned for being caring, community-minded, authentic, and honest. And I would like to think that those words could be used to describe me as well.
Whether people agree or disagree with my policy approach or even my party allegiance, I would hope they've always found me to be somebody who's authentic, honest and compassionate.
A lot of people feel that it may have been a smarter move to keep quiet about your religious beliefs but you were open about it, clearly that was a deliberate decision, do you agree?
Deliberate but also just inevitable to be honest, as in everybody in the Highlands who knows me knows that I go to church, my parents are involved with the community, I've got a wide family.
So if I had not been truthful and to not have been honest would have been instantly recognisable by my Highland community who would have known I was being dishonest for political gain and I don't think there's any future in that level of dishonesty.
Criticism from some parts of the nationalist movement and others towards the left of the political spectrum focussed on you being a Highland MSP and somehow pulled one over on the locals due to your beliefs, what do you say to that?
Highlanders are thinking, intelligent beings who are internationalists in outlook and are just as well informed as anyone else in Scotland and able to make their own minds up.
And so, I don't think there's any distinction between Highlands and the lowlands in terms of the approach of voters in both previous elections through hustings albeit local hustings, people asked questions about my faith and policy, and still elected me.
And on two counts selected me with an increased share of the vote. You know, it's not because Highlanders aren't thinking.
Do you feel there is in some ways almost like a glass ceiling when it comes to Highlanders going for the top jobs?
No, I think that there has historically been a stigma attached to being from the Highlands and I think that's why for stigma, a fear of being seen as backward, uninformed, anti-intellectual, small-minded, provincial.
And on the contrary, the Highlands have produced some great intellectual giants, great contributions to culture and so on but I think you see that in the way that even if I choose one area like language – it wasn't that long ago, we're probably two generations away from our forebears growing up here and speaking Gaelic, which has been drummed out of people and now perhaps the healthiest Gaelic schools are in the lowlands where they haven't had that association with the fear that Gaelic is a source of stigma.
Whereas in the Highlands you do have more of a close alignment with it, you know, ‘country pumpkins’ perception.
