// BBC UK NEWS — CRONACA
Chris Mason: Burnham and Swinney tussle over where power lies in Scotland
UK political debate has had a distinctly Scottish feel these last few days.
As the Scottish National Party has gathered for its annual conference at the Event Complex on the outskirts of Aberdeen, the Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has been in Paisley and Edinburgh and the prime minister has been in Motherwell.
The SNP is buoyant, its activists gathering for the first time since it won, in May, a fifth consecutive Scottish Parliament election, albeit with fewer seats than they won in 2021.
Next year will mark the moment the party has been in devolved power at Holyrood for 20 years.
It is quite the contrast with where the SNP found itself just two years ago, pulverised by the landslide at the general election in 2024 where Labour gained 36 seats from the SNP.
As I wrote a year ago, the SNP's critics point to what they see as a dismal domestic record, on the NHS and the number of deaths among drug addicts, for instance.
The SNP counter Scotland has more police officers per person than England and Wales and the highest spend per school pupil in the UK.
No matter the arguments, the result in May was clear - the SNP leader and First Minister John Swinney has his own mandate. Little wonder, given the state of the party when he took the job, that the conference brochure has a front page photo of a smiling Swinney cradling a glass of whisky.
And remember it wasn't just an electoral pummelling the SNP was dealing with, but the jaw dropping details which culminated in the jailing of Peter Murrell, the party's former chief executive - and estranged husband of the former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon - for embezzling more than £400,000 from the party.
Swinney now looks ahead to a parliamentary term with all that behind them and a new prime minister to deal with in Downing Street.