Humza Yousaf, the frontrunner to succeed Nicola Sturgeon, formally entered the race this morning. The venue was humble: Clydebank Town Hall. The town once took pride of place in the British shipbuilding industry, but was hit hard by the closure of the yards. Although it has benefited from regeneration in recent decades, deprivation remains a stubborn feature of life there. Clydebank was also home to the Singer sewing machine factory, where Yousaf’s grandfather worked when he brought his family to the UK from Pakistan in the 1960s.
The venue may have been humble but the staging was slick. Standing before a row of signs reading ‘Humza for Scotland’ and ‘I’m with Humza’ – quite the turnaround from the printers given Sturgeon only announced her resignation less than a week ago – the current Scottish health secretary made a US presidential-style pitch. He spoke about the importance of family; his wife and young daughter were in the front row. He talked about being the grandson of an immigrant and what it said about Scotland that he was standing to be First Minister. At the end of his speech, his little girl broke free from mum’s arms and rushed the podium to hug daddy. You’d need to be a hardened cynic not to be moved a wee bit.
If the impression among the members is that Yousaf is Sturgeon 2.0, he will win this contest handily
On policy, he denied being the continuity Sturgeon candidate (‘I’m my own man’) but hit many of the notes Sturgeon would have. He promised to ‘reach across the divides’ and ‘heal divisions’. This was an apparent reference to internal strife in the SNP over the Gender Recognition Reform (GRR) Bill and the row caused by the initial placement in a women’s prison of Adam Graham, who was convicted of two counts of rape but now identifies as a woman called Isla Bryson.
Yousaf reiterated his support for the GRR Bill and intimated that he would challenge in court the UK government’s decision to block the legislation. He called the Section 35 order issued by Secretary of State Alister Jack ‘an assault, an attack on our very democratic institutions’. Asked the question that has dogged Sturgeon for weeks – ‘Is Isla Bryson a man or a woman?’ – he echoed the First Minister in describing him as a ‘deceitful, deceptive individual’ but went one step further in saying he didn’t ‘recognise’ Bryson as a trans woman.
He intends to maintain the SNP’s coalition deal with the Scottish Greens and said his ‘relentless focus’ would be on protecting the most vulnerable in society. He took swipes at both Brexit and the UK government’s immigration policies for denying Scotland access to the workforce it needs, particularly in the social care sector. Scotland, he said, ‘can’t afford’ to stay in the Union. On that point, he was also very Sturgeon-like, piling on the rhetoric but ultimately kicking independence into the long grass. He told the small but enthusiastic audience that focusing on ‘process’ was a trap set by opponents of independence. Instead, he would work to build support for secession across Scotland in a way that was ‘politically impossible to ignore’ at Westminster.
Yousaf has to be considered the favourite. He is reportedly the preferred successor among the leadership clique at the top of the party. For all his claims to be his own man, his campaign slogan ‘Humza for Scotland’ is a none-too-subtle echo of the Sturgeon-era election motto, ‘Stronger for Scotland’. He is young (37), within the SNP’s ideological mainstream (socially progressive and gradualist on the constitution), and has been at Sturgeon’s side for the last five years. The SNP is as much a personality cult as a political party. If the impression among the members is that Yousaf is Sturgeon 2.0, he will win this contest handily. And, since the SNP is a roving personality cult, he would inherit all of that ardour and face minimal internal opposition.
Just before he appeared at the podium, Sturgeon’s finance secretary Kate Forbes announced she too would contest the leadership. I wrote yesterday about why she is the candidate the Scottish Tories fear the most: she is fiscally moderate and socially conservative, a church-going working mum, Cambridge-educated, Gaelic-speaking and an outsider in the Scottish political establishment. Despite the SNP having historically been a small-c conservative party, the membership today is markedly more progressive. So, ironically, the things that make Forbes halfway normal will be presented as evidence that she is some sort of aberration within her party, while Yousaf already has a carefully-crafted public image as an Irn-Bru-swigging, Celtic-supporting, Urdu-speaking Glaswegian.
I wouldn’t’ write off Forbes yet. She’s very talented and can pitch herself as the competency candidate, a stark contrast with Yousaf, who has proved gaffe-prone in every ministerial post he has held. But Forbes, a Bible-believing Christian, will need something close to a miracle to triumph over the establishment candidate in this race.
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