HOW did he do? Not John McGinn – but his namesake, John Swinney.

Page one, line one of the SNP manifesto, launched yesterday, was indeed a commitment to independence – as promised, despite sarky remarks from media commentators.

But beyond that, did the SNP leader do well?

Actually, how could he not?

Swinney is helped by the UK context of this debate. Since the SNP won’t provide the next prime minister, they don’t need fully costed plans. And of course, since Westminster politics is so hopelessly right-wing, adversarial and short-term, Swinney doesn’t need to be Che Guevara to sound revolutionary.

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Even beginning the manifesto launch with a description of the SNP as a “moderate, left of centre party”, delivered in that softly-spoken, managerial Scots brogue still sounded vaguely radical.

After all, the SNP are the only big party to match policies to mainstream Scottish thinking – clearly and happily to the left of English voters But beyond that low bar, how to judge the performance of the manifesto and the man?

Firstly, Swinney’s presentation was assured, clanger-free and somehow very Scottish.

The First Minister moved into top gear raging over Labour’s refusal to axe the two-child benefit cap: “Why is beyond me. It’s a simple test. Are you in government to help kids out of poverty or so morally lost you push them in?”

This was Swinney at his strongest, sounding like a mix of Dr Findlay (one for the teenagers), Andy Murray and Canon Kenyon Wright – a polite, trustworthy and utterly exasperated by the political meanness of his opponents. Of course, it’s a mistake to judge a book by its cover.

And I’m certain the SNP leader is as much of a wheeler-dealer as the rest when necessary. His open-faced, genial default masks an ability – indeed an instinct – to tear the heid off any opposition.

But despite provocation from the full gamut of the media at the launch, he managed to keep smiling.

A second measure of success – did Swinney close down Labour’s claims about the SNP and establish credentials progressive enough to deter any wandering voters?

Well, he gave it a good try. Scottish Labour wants voters to believe that Swinney in Edinburgh and Rishi Sunak in Westminster are – to use the vernacular – two cheeks of the same arse. Equally bad. Equally bad, duplicitous and incompetent.

Even a cursory glance at government policy makes that contention utterly absurd.

And I’d guess the more Anas Sarwar trots out his “peas in a pod” line, the harder that line will fall. But even if the idea of government equivalence is absurd, a spirited rebuttal of Holyrood incompetence must still be made.

Meanwhile, the SNP must persuade voters that Labour are lying when they say NHS privatisation will happen over their dead bodies. Yes, they concede, Labour will use spare private capacity when the NHS is full.

Which sounds quite reasonable. But no private operator can keep beds and staff vacant and waiting – just in case.

This could only possibly work if private health providers are given a minimum income guarantee. And that’s got to be more expensive than just financing the NHS properly in the first place.

It smacks of the same inverted logic and awful outcomes of Labour’s last wheeze for improving services without taxing wealth. Colin Fox wrote an excellent column about PFI recently quoting Professor Allyson Pollock, its leading critic: “PFI is where you pay for three NHS hospitals and get one – and even that doesn’t belong to you.”

With Labour’s covert NHS plans to keep the private sector on permanent standby, here we go again. It would be great to see the SNP leadership push much harder and press for more detail on this one.

A third aspect of the SNP manifesto “success” is whether it highlighted the enduring reality of Britain’s underfunded public services under Tony Blair, Gordon Brown or any of the Tory PMs. And it did – a bit.

Amazingly, a Scottish BBC correspondent explained for the first time I can remember that whilst health is devolved to Holyrood at an operational level, funding is entirely reserved to London.

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Thus, if the Westminster government spends more on public services, Scotland gets more too – but the reverse is also true. A point made succinctly by none other than Wes Streeting with reference to Wales, when he pointed out all funding leads back to Westminster. Indeed, it does.

The SNP needs to keep delivering these political reality checks.

Stephen Flynn, on Politics Live at lunchtime, was asked by presenter Jo Coburn why Westminster should give Scotland any more money with its record waiting lists?

I didn’t register the answer – raging from the implication that Scotland exists only as a mix of Oliver Twist asking for more and a naughty teenager looking for a pocket money raise.

After Flynn’s (below) riposte about GB Energy in an earlier debate – It’s not GB Energy. It’s Scotland’s energy and we want more than an HQ, we want control – I was really hoping he would turn the tables again and challenge the whole idea that benevolent English MPs are bailing out poor, broken, dependent and deluded little Scotland.

Perhaps that level of challenge is hard to deliver in the five minutes BBC network devotes to (evidently) boring old Scotland.

Though to be fair, the BBC news channel put 100% more effort and analysis into the SNP launch yesterday than Radio Scotland whose newsroom had already mentally moved east to ponder every aspect of our chances in Germany.

So finally – independence policy. Did it get mentioned and did the new strategy stack up?

Well yes and no.

Swinney spoke with enthusiasm and at greater length about independence at a manifesto launch than I can remember, effectively rebutting the either/or approach favoured by the media.

“Never let anyone tell you independence is separate from people’s everyday concerns. It is fundamental to [resolving] them.”

He put flesh on the bones of what an indy Scotland would look like with a constitutional right to NHS treatment and Westminster’s creeping privatisation agenda along with its hostility to migrants – both over for good.

No austerity. No Trident. Bairns not bombs.

But the SNP leader was on the ropes over whether a failure to “win” on July 4 would mean the people have spoken and don’t want the Scottish Government to pursue an independence agenda – the logical flip-side of his insistence that winning will enable talks with Number 10 over another indyref.

The SNP leader suggested several times that the gold standard was the 2021 Holyrood election where a majority of pro-indy MSPs were elected, only for that mandate to be ignored.

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He justified that emphasis by adding a D – democracy – to his existing ABC list of election grievances on austerity, Brexit and the cost of living crisis. Fine – but the questioners are right. Either winning this election in Scotland matters, or it doesn’t.

The new stance didn’t quite add up – but then neither does the Labour Party automatically vetoing indyref2, however Scots actually vote.

In the end, the biggest problem will be persuading voters that an SNP victory in Scotland matters enough to fight for – and that’s tough.

It’s an election in difficult circumstances and although Swinney in his previous guises may have contributed to the loss of SNP trust he is now trying to make up, his ducking and weaving around the contradictions of his party’s stances appeared elegant enough.

But energising?

Does anyone watch launches on a big match day?

Maybe the only manifesto message that really matters is the game is still on, and a narrow SNP win still possible. The latest polls have the SNP and Labour even and YouGov suggests the SNP has halved the gap with Labour over the last two weeks.

Momentum is with the SNP.

How will they generate enough excitement now to keep that ball rolling?