All is not well in nationalist circles. Veteran SNP MSP Fergus Ewing has now lashed out at the ‘petulant’ response of Humza Yousaf and the SNP leadership to Ash Regan’s defection to Alba. Steerpike can’t blame him — with hapless Humza’s muddled indy strategy confusing, er, just about everyone, they’re all back to fighting like Nats in a sack…
The SNP is ‘having a sort of late adolescence, as I would see it,’ Ewing told Mr S. ‘A sort of troubled, angry patch of door slamming and getting in with the wrong crowd… But the thing about adolescents is they grow up,’ he added, hopefully. For his sake, Mr S fears Ewing’s confidence is misplaced…
Yousaf shrugged off the defection of his Edinburgh Eastern MSP to rival party Alba as ‘no great loss’ — but his comments haven’t gone down well. While one party insider criticised the First Minister as coming across ‘petty and entitled’, rebel backbencher Ewing berated Yousaf’s ‘entirely unfair and ill-founded attack’. He told Mr S:
I was really disappointed that the First Minister said that Ash Regan has got no principles — because Ash Regan gave up her ministerial job because of her beliefs on gender reform… For her to be called unprincipled was just extremely unfair… That wasn’t what [Yousaf] was saying in the SNP conference, that the SNP’s a big family.
Regan tells The Spectator that she only made up her mind to defect to Alba ‘last Thursday’, admitting that the ‘last straw’ for her was the independence strategy adopted at the party’s autumn conference. She has received a ‘mixed bag’ of reactions from her constituents but has slammed her former party for pursuing a ‘failed strategy’, summarising simply: ‘It’s not credible.’ Ouch.
While rumours abound about which SNP politician will leave next, Ewing confirmed to Steerpike that he is not defecting to Alba. He did admit that his lawyer has now submitted his appeal of his suspension from the party, a punishment given to him after he voted for no confidence in government minister and Green co-leader Lorna Slater. Ewing maintains that Slater’s ‘career as a minister should have come to a crashing halt over the deposit return [scheme]’. No love lost there then.
This is the same Green co-leader who, on Sunday, admitted that independence isn’t a ‘red line’ to the Greens doing a future deal with Labour. ‘Does this not cause concern to people in the SNP?’ Ewing asked incredulously. Turning to the SNP-Green coalition, he went on:
I’ve absolutely no doubt in my mind that scrapping this deal is a basic, essential prerequisite of making any progress. The only reason not to do so is that it it increases the possibility that we may face an election. But the SNP are not supposed to be afraid of elections…
Maybe not in the past, but Mr S is doubtful the Nats can use their electoral success card for much longer. If they weren’t polling dismally enough already, their ongoing civil war will only make matters worse…
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