FIRST Minister John Swinney has issued a withering response after Scottish Secretary Douglas Alexander accused him of “crocodile tears”.
Alexander made the allegations in the Commons at Scottish Questions on Wednesday morning, after twice telling MPs that the SNP leader had declined invitations to meet with him.
Relations between the Scottish and UK Governments have been increasingly strained since Alexander became Scottish Secretary in September 2025.
In May, amid a row over whether Swinney could take any credit for convincing US president Donald Trump to drop tariffs on Scotch whisky, Swinney told media that relations had worsened “and I can trace it back to the appointment of Douglas Alexander as Secretary of State for Scotland”.
Speaking in the Commons on Wednesday, Scottish Tory MP John Cooper said to Alexander: “When the Secretary of State is away, the nats will play.
“We know that the First Minister has gone abroad using taxpayers' money to talk about the breaking up of Britain.
“Shouldn't the Secretary of State be inviting the First Minister down for a meeting without coffee [a euphemism for a reprimand]?”
After calling the suggestion “very good”, Alexander said: “I think he'd probably bring the coffee with him if he was willing to accept the invitation, but it's a serious point.
“I wrote to the First Minister congratulating him on his recent success, inviting to meet with him, and no acceptance was forthcoming.
“That followed exactly the approach after I was appointed Secretary of State where I offered to meet with the First Minister, and he refused.
“So I think crocodile tears are often spilled in Edinburgh at the suggestion we don't have good intergovernmental relations.
“Maybe if we want better intergovernmental relations, the ball's in the SNP's court.”
Alexander also told MPs, in response to LibDem MP Susan Murray: “It is a matter of regret to me that when I wrote to the First Minister offering to meet with him immediately on his appointment as First Minister, that opportunity has not been taken up by the First Minister.”
Asked for a response, a spokesperson for the First Minister said it was “welcome that Douglas Alexander has finally come out of hiding after chairing the Labour campaign which delivered their worst election result in the history of the Scottish Parliament”.
He went on: “While he will doubtless engage with Mr Alexander in due course, the First Minister expects to meet with the Prime Minister, not one of the most junior members of the British Cabinet.
“In the meantime, we would expect that Douglas Alexander would be grateful for the chance to spend his time ensuring that his transparency records are fully up to date to avoid any further scandals around undeclared meetings.”
The Scottish Secretary had been under fire after it emerged that he credited the disgraced Labour peer Peter Mandelson with his return to Westminster and the UK Government.
It then emerged that he had held a meeting with Mandelson’s lobbying firm weeks after being elected in 2024, but failed to declare it until MPs voted in early 2026 to publish all communications between the former US ambassador and Labour ministers.
At Scottish Questions on Wednesday, the SNP’s Westminster leader Dave Doogan raised the case, saying: “When the Secretary of State first took up his job in government [as a trade minister in 2024], his first priority should have been advancing the economic interests of Scotland across the world, but we now know what he was really up to instead.
“His first external meeting as a minister was to meet with Global Counsel, Peter Mandelson's international lobbying firm, and he conveniently forgot to declare that meeting for a year and a half.”
Doogan asked if it was “a case that when Peter Mandelson says jump, ministers like [Alexander] say how high?”
The Scottish Secretary responded: “He's going to have to do better than that. That was a meeting facilitated by, attended by and minuted by officials in the Department of Business and Trade.
“If he actually was aware, the Prime Minister has already stated that I have acted appropriately and no further action is needed, notwithstanding his attempts.”
On Wednesday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in a letter to Alexander, which was made public, that the failure to declare the meeting was “regrettable" but that there was no “further case to answer”.
