Humza Yousaf is facing a summer of discontent

You could almost hear the groans from Scots hard hit by the cost of living crisis when Humza Yousaf this week announced another ‘summer of independence’. The FM is promising to bring the campaign ‘to every corner of the country’, setting up ‘regional assemblies across Scotland to bring together and harness the energy of our members’. The intention is of course to do precisely the reverse and revive the divisions over the constitution.

We’ve had these summer offensives every couple of years since the 2014 referendum whenever Nicola Sturgeon tried to reboot her campaign for Indyref2. They invariably achieved little except stirring up apathy, as the late Willie Whitelaw might have put it. However, this campaign season might be rather different – and not in a good way – for the FM.

It promises to be a summer of discontent as the wider independence movement turns on the SNP leadership for the appalling state of the party after Sturgeon’s shock resignation in February. Just about everything has gone wrong since then. First, there was the chaotic leadership contest; then came the arrests of the party chief executive Peter Murrell and the party treasurer Colin Beattie. They were released without charge pending further investigation but the police investigation into missing party funds continues. Perhaps wisely, Yousaf is not calling for a fundraising effort as part of his summer campaign. 

Yousaf is still pushing the unpopular Gender Recognition Reform Bill despite the scandal over trans sex offenders being placed in women’s prisons. Retailers are threatening the Scottish government with compensation claims over the disastrous bottle return scheme which could be scrapped as early as next week. Losses mount at state-owned Ferguson Marine where the government is persevering with the building of a ferry that is not value for money.

Yousaf is also expected to announce a new hike in taxation for middle and high earners in the middle of an inflation crisis. And to cap it all, the SNP is facing its first by-election defeat since the 2014 independence referendum. The Rutherglen MP Margaret Ferrier lost her appeal against a 30-day Commons suspension yesterday for breaching lockdown rules during Covid. Everyone expects a recall vote in her constituency, and a by-election. The Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, is confident of his party’s chances. 

The SNP campaign won’t be helped by the meltdown in neighbouring North Lanarkshire party, scene of the latest SNP ‘sex pest’ scandal. The former SNP council leader, Jordan Linden, resigned in July after multiple sexual misconduct claims. Local party members were infuriated when this month several of the SNP councillors who had complained about Linden’s behaviour toward young men were bizarrely suspended by the SNP for ‘bringing the party into disrepute’. Now it has been revealed that those expelled councillors have quit the SNP to set up a new party, called Progressive Change North Lanarkshire. It is currently being registered with the Electoral Commission.

A loss in Rutherglen could be the beginning of the end for Yousaf who is already being criticised in the party for his lack of vision. Everyone thought that the notion of turning the 2024 general election into a ‘de facto referendum’ on independence had died following Sturgeon’s departure – but apparently not, according to independence minister Jamie Hepburn, who told the BBC that no option was off the table as long as it was legal. Others in the SNP, like Pete Wishart MP, are calling for every election to be treated as a de facto referendum – which could qualify as a new definition of madness. 

The summer campaign will launch on 24 June in Dundee with an independence convention to galvanise the party. But this won’t be the convention that Alex Salmond and the former leadership contender Ash Regan have been calling for; their vision is instead of one that would unite all independence-supporting parties and organisations. This convention will be an exclusive SNP members-only event.

On the very same day, Salmond, who now fronts his own party Alba, is expected to address the latest All Under One Banner march in Stirling of non-aligned nationalists. He has called for a new version of the Scottish Constitutional Convention of the 1980s that drove the successful campaign for a Scottish parliament. Salmond’s rehabilitation, following his acquittal three years ago on numerous sex charges, seems to be complete. He has even managed to appear recently on BBC Question Time without a mention of the unpleasantness with Nicola Sturgeon. Yousaf should take care lest his summer of indy turns into a summer of Salmond.