Humza Yousaf has won the race to become the next leader of the Scottish National party. Yousaf defeated his rival Kate Forbes by 52 per cent to 48 per cent after Ash Regan was eliminated in the first round of voting.
Yousaf has been the SNP establishment’s preferred candidate from the outset; he received the backing of senior party politicians, including Westminster leader Stephen Flynn and outgoing deputy first minister John Swinney. While Yousaf is Sturgeon’s continuity candidate, the former health secretary has a lot of work to do to convince the people of Scotland he is up to the job. The margin of his victory was much narrower than anticipated: his victory over Forbes in both the first and second round of voting was by only a few thousand votes.
The last five weeks have been somewhat disastrous for the SNP. When Sturgeon announced her shock resignation in February, it was widely expected that the party would have a succession plan in place. What has emerged since will no doubt have made the party wish it had.
Forbes received intense scrutiny from the outset about the influence her faith may have on policy decisions, in particular in relation to gay marriage, while Yousaf's views as a Muslim also came under the spotlight latterly. The first fiery TV debate on STV marked a low point in the contest for the SNP, which was rocked by petty infighting and the emergence of factions in a party usually commended for its impressive unification.
Just when the debate appeared to be getting more civil, the membership figure fiasco emerged – in which the SNP’s head of media Murray Foote was found to have released false information to journalists. Foote resigned after releasing a damning statement, and chief executive Peter Murrell, who is married to Sturgeon, quickly followed him out the door. Questions about what exactly led Sturgeon to resign so abruptly in the first place remain unanswered.
Now we look forward to a new era of Scottish politics under Yousaf. Tomorrow, he'll be voted in as Scotland’s First Minister. Within days, he'll face the prospect of his first First Minister’s Questions. But while the schedule for the first week of the new First Minister has been organised in full, the future of the SNP is by no means certain.
Yousaf’s approach to independence is one of gradualism: he believes that spending time persuading 'No' voters to earn a larger pro-independence vote is the best way to proceed. This marks a radical divergence from Sturgeon’s de facto referendum idea. Whether he enjoys more success in this approach than this predecessor remains to be seen.
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