We knew that Humza Yousaf wasn’t the sharpest tool in the ministerial box but no one expected him to mess up quite so spectacularly on his first day. It only took the new First Minister a couple of hours to undermine his own authority and provoke a potentially ruinous split in the Scottish National Party. Way to go, Humza!
Forcing his rival Kate Forbes out of his cabinet by making her an offer she couldn’t accept – demotion to rural affairs – Yousaf has deepened the divisions that emerged during the leadership campaign. He has also exposed as false his claim to be a unifier; has lost the most capable minister in the Scottish government; and has made himself look petty and vindictive. Oh, and he’s probably ensured that Kate Forbes will be his successor in the not too distant future.
Yousaf has also exposed as false his claim to be a unifier; has lost the most capable minister in the Scottish government; and has made himself look petty and vindictive.
The sensible thing for the victorious First Minister might have been to evince a measure of conciliation, a soupçon of magnanimity. At least, we thought, he would try to keep his enemy close: in the tent, rather than out where she could create a focus of opposition. Finance and economy would’ve been the obvious berth because Kate Forbes knows the brief well having served in the post with some distinction. She would also be locked into collective responsibility for policies like the troubled deposit return scheme and the marine conservation measures that have so antagonised constituents in Forbes’s highland back yard.
Yousaf could have sat back and watched this ‘neoliberal’ apostle of business and growth fail to manage the national finances with all that ‘competence’ and lack of ‘mediocrity’ she boasted about during the campaign. Alternatively, if Forbes was a spectacular success, Yousaf could’ve claimed credit for wisely putting the interest of the country above personal rivalry.
With her nose in the budgetary books, Forbes would also have been kept well away from the so-called ‘progressive’ issues that Humza holds dear, like the Gender Recognition Reform (GRR) Bill, abortion buffer zones and hate crime. He could have declared his team a cabinet of all the talents. Instead, we got a settling of the scores. The kind of student union factionalism that has been all too familiar in the lower ranks of the SNP over the years and which we thought Nicola Sturgeon had stamped out.
Then again, maybe Nicola agreed with this act of retribution. She was clearly no fan of Kate and probably blamed her for some of the turmoil over the GRR Bill, even though she was on maternity leave when it passed. Perhaps it’s a Queen Bee thing. Sturgeon didn’t want Forbes anywhere near her legacy, couldn’t trust Humza not to be brow-beaten into weakening his resolve to pursue the legal fight against the UK government’s Section 35 block on the gender bill.
For this is what Kate Forbes defenestration boils down to: Humza Yousaf couldn’t cope with a strong woman in his cabinet. He could not put Forbes in a job where she might have outshone him. That is why he offered her the humiliating post of rural affairs secretary knowing that she would tell him ‘where to stick it’, as Forbes’s allies have described her response.
He has displayed his weakness. Yousaf has also shown himself in hock to the Greens who didn’t want Forbes anywhere near any cabinet in which they deigned to serve. The Green minister, Patrick Harvie, even called her “homophobic” on BBC radio for her views on gay marriage — a charge that a sensible First Minister would have ordered him to retract. This accusation could equally be laid at Yousaf’s door since he dodged the 2014 same sex marriage vote after it was condemned by Bashir Maan and the Glasgow Mosque.
Yousaf has revealed that he truly is the ‘continuity candidate’. Like Nicola Sturgeon, he seems to regard the Greens and the LGBT activists as his praetorian guard. They help in the nascent civil war against the nationalist ‘dark side’: the ‘tartan Tory’ 48 per cent of the SNP membership that would happily say goodbye to gender legislation and think that growing the economy might just help persuade sceptical Scots that independence is a viable option.
The Greens seem to have conducted a reverse takeover of the SNP. They have inordinate influence over government for a party with no constituency seats in Holyrood and less than 10 per cent of the regional vote. They dismiss as ‘social conservatives’ anyone who disagrees with their de-growth economics and their dogma that trans women are women. This even though many of those who criticise the GRR Bill are left-wing lesbians and others who just think the party has lost its way. In reality, the Forbesites, as we must now call the 48 per cent, are the radicals. They want to move on from vacuous virtue signalling, and start tackling poverty by boosting the economy and growing tax revenues.
As Kate Forbes settles down next to Nicola Sturgeon on the Holyrood backbenches today she has cause to be well satisfied. From a standing start she won nearly half the SNP votes even though the party machine and the payroll vote of ministers and elected members were ranged against her. Her honesty and clarity of thought shone through the hustings fog. She can now sit back and enjoy the show as Humza Yousaf does his best to emulate Liz Truss. Forbes is now the leader in waiting.
Comments