JOHN Swinney has been elected First Minister of Scotland.
MSPs officially backed the SNP leader to retain the office in the first vote of the new Holyrood parliament on Tuesday afternoon.
All six of the party leaders in the Scottish parliament put their names forward for the vote (with the Greens putting forward co-leader Gillian Mackay), but Swinney emerged victorious as he leads the largest party.
In the elections on May 7, Scots elected 58 SNP MSPs, 17 from Labour, 17 from Reform, 15 from the Greens, 12 from the Tories, and 10 from the LibDems.
All six party leaders took their turn to argue their own case before Swinney was ultimately elected.
Making his case, the SNP leader said he was "confident" that although his party had not returned an outright majority in the elections, a majority existed across the parliament in support of "all of the policy proposals" they had made during the campaign.
"The challenge for me, which I readily accept if I'm elected as First Minister, is to work in ways that enable that majority to emerge," Swinney said.
He further welcomed comments from Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, who had conceded he would lose the vote, congratulated the SNP on their victory, and signalled he would be more willing to work with the party than he had previously been.
"While I will not win this vote today, I will continue to argue for the kind of Scotland I grew up in and the kind of Scotland I want my children to grow up into," Sarwar said. "One that's based on all of us, not on 'us versus them'.
"Because our duty, every single one of us, is to come to this parliament to act and to serve and to deliver for the great people of Scotland, and let's get straight to work."
Swinney then said: "Yes, we can disagree robustly, but we can also still work together to deliver for the people of Scotland, and in that respect I welcome the substance and the tone of Mr Sarwar's comments, because that is what Scotland needs of us at this moment.
"Not simply debate, but delivery, not simply difference, but progress. And ultimately, it is by that progress that we will all be judged.
"Presiding Officer, I am ready to lead a government that meets this moment with clarity, energy and purpose, a government that takes action, a government that delivers, and a government that is always on Scotland's side.
"Presiding Officer, with the mandate we have been given, with a clear plan for the work ahead, and with a determination to deliver for the people of Scotland, I ask for the support of this parliament to serve as Scotland's First Minister."
Malcolm Offord, Reform UK's leader in Scotland, claimed that the SNP and Greens had seen the "politics of envy take root".
He claimed that "inherently Scottish values of hard work, endeavour and honesty are being actively discouraged by this rotten system at every turn, with grievance and envy stoked in their place".
"If we want a Scotland of endeavour and enterprise, if we want Scots to enjoy prosperity and plenty, we must urgently, urgently change course," Offord added.
Speaking for the Greens, Mackay said, as Swinney did, that there must be a conversation about how Scotland can move to independence.
However, she went on: "For the Scottish Greens, independence isn't an end goal in itself. It's a tool that we can use to make Scotland better, where democracy and decision making is closer to people.
"That's why alongside that push for a referendum, we must use all the powers we have already to make Scotland a better place to live right now."
Scottish Tory leader Russell Findlay said that although the vote was a "forgone conclusion", he had chosen to run so he would have a chance to speak. He then used made a campaign pitch to votes in Aberdeen South, the Westminster constituency where there will be a by-election on June 18 to replace Stephen Flynn as MP.
"People in the North East know that we are the strongest challengers to the SNP, and we came within just over 1000 votes of beating Stephen Flynn," Findlay said. "If pro-UK voters unite behind the Scottish Conservatives in Aberdeen South in a few weeks' time, we can beat the SNP again."
Scottish LibDem leader Alex Cole-Hamilton used his speech to note that "when looking at the constituency map of Scotland, we are the second party”. The LibDems won seven constituencies to the SNP's 57, but were ahead of the Tories' four, Labour's three, the Greens' two, and Reform UK on zero.
Cole-Hamilton added: "[Swinney] stated for the whole country to hear that if he was to achieve the mandate necessary to go about calling for a second independence referendum, then he needed the public at large to award his party with an overall majority.
"He fell well short of that, and in large part it was because of Liberal Democrat gains in the villages and towns of this country [that] he was rendered unable to deliver what he asked the people to give him.
"As such, I ask that we as a parliament now lay those divisive issues aside, and we put talk of the constitution in the deep freeze."
