Nicola Sturgeon has made sweeping changes to her top team but with many of the new faces in the Cabinet still stubbornly familiar, the first minister appears to have gone for experience to help guide the choppy waters ahead.
Deputy first minister John Swinney, her most experienced minister, has been moved away from education – a job he was beginning to look increasingly beleaguered in – to a new enforcer role that seems to sweep up all the jobs no one else wanted.
As well as being the dedicated cabinet secretary for Covid recovery, the Perthshire North MSP has been put in charge of such a wide-ranging ministerial brief that the Scottish Government announced it with a bullet-point list of his new responsibilities.
Former economy secretary Keith Brown and former health secretary Shona Robison, one of Ms Sturgeon’s closest friends, return to the Cabinet covering justice and housing and social security respectively.
Former justice secretary Humza Yousaf has been promoted to health secretary and Shirley-Anne Somerville will take up the education brief but both are already very experienced government ministers.
Kate Forbes and Michael Matheson remain in the same roles, albeit with beefed up portfolios as Ms Sturgeon’s top team shrinks from 12 to 10, and Mairi Gougeon is the only junior minister promoted, taking responsibility for rural affairs and the islands.
Perhaps the most interesting appointment is the return of one of Ms Sturgeon’s oldest allies, Angus Robertson, who will take up the position of constitution secretary.
The former leader of the SNP Westminster group and depute party leader will be the person masterminding the SNP’s constitutional policy as it seeks to force Boris Johnson into granting a new independence referendum.
His role has been combined with the external affairs and culture brief – something that could play into the SNP’s hopes of piling international pressure on the prime minister as they seek to hold another vote on separation.
Posing with her new team outside Bute House on Wednesday, Ms Sturgeon said she was trying to build a “serious Government for the serious times we face as a nation”.
The Covid recovery, which she has said will be her first priority, will be shortly followed by the challenge of building a new case for independence, with the arguments of 2014 often appearing outdated during the Scottish Parliament election campaign.
Alongside the difficulties of an ongoing pandemic, tough negotiations with the Westminster government a possible Supreme Court showdown could lie ahead for Nicola Sturgeon and her team.
Her choices suggest she has placed trust and loyalty above all else as she sets herself up for the myriad challenges ahead – a hangover perhaps from the betrayal of Alex Salmond’s Alba Party defections.
Opposition parties have been quick to suggest her selections – and failure to help elevate the next generation of the party – indicate a government that is lacking in fresh ideas.