First minister John Swinney says he has "healed" the SNP after inheriting a "fractured" party and parliament from predecessor Humza Yousaf.
Swinney has been in the role for a year now, coming in after Mr Yousaf ended the party's power share agreement with the Scottish Greens, leaving the SNP without a majority.
The SNP also lost 30 seats in the general election two months later in July 2024, dropping to just nine.
A recent True North survey though put the SNP back in pole position for next year's Holyrood elections.
When asked by Holyrood magazine how his party was doing, Swinney replied: "I have healed it."
He said he felt the job had “come to me at exactly the right moment in my life”, and that he had been “able to draw on a very deep well of experience and perspective to help me through the situations I’m going to navigate”, The Times reports.
He also said he had developed more “generosity of spirit” after realising he had “not been talking to people across the political spectrum" as much as he used to.
Swinney said: “If I look back at events of the last 12 months when I was elected to leadership of a government of a fractured party, and of leading a fractured parliament, I don’t think many people would have given me much chance of being able to bring my party together.
"They might have given me some optimism in bringing my party together, but they wouldn’t have given me much optimism in bringing parliament together.
“But a seminal moment, for me, was seeing the government’s budget supported by four political parties in parliament, which was an indication to me that the discourse had changed, that there was a more respectful and collaborative environment, a more courteous environment, which enabled four parties to come together to support the budget.”