Humza Yousaf has a reputation for being a bit of a crowd-pleaser and, true to form, everyone seemed inordinately happy at his installation as SNP leader – especially the opposition parties. The Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross purred like an overstuffed tabby cat. Yousaf had just scraped home by 52 to 48 per cent – a less than wholehearted endorsement from the SNP membership after a leadership election in which independence somehow got lost in the hustings. Sir Keir Starmer sounded over the moon too and the sigh of relief from No. 10 could be heard all the way from Murrayfield.
Perhaps Forbes thinks she’s dodged a bullet this time
Kate Forbes as first minister might have been a bit of a handful, not least because she proved to be worryingly popular among Scottish voters according to the opinion polls, and seemed to have the grit to make a credible replacement for Nicola Sturgeon.
Humza Yousaf was by common agreement the weaker candidate. He’d been given a humiliating dressing down by Forbes in the first TV debate. The Finance Secretary had cast him as a three-time ministerial loser who couldn’t make the trains run on time, lost the plot on policing and was so useless as health secretary she promised to sack him the moment she was elected. That clip will be Humza Yousaf’s epitaph.
Actually, for a loser, Kate Forbes seemed to be pretty happy with her lot. There she was, beaming fit to burst at the count with her baby behind her on her husband’s knee. Perhaps she thinks she’s dodged a bullet this time. She certainly found her voice in this campaign and placed a marker as the uncompromising reformer who deprived the ‘continuity candidate’ of a convincing victory – even though he had the backing of the party machine.
The SNP establishment – what’s left of it after the HQ clear out – is clearly pleased that they managed to lever Humza into Bute House. The Scottish Greens were all ready to march out of the coalition if the ‘social conservative’ Kate Forbes had won. She’d had the temerity to call the double rapist, Isla Bryson, who was installed in a women’s prison, ‘a man’. The Gender Recognition Reform Bill and its policy of self-ID was not safe in her hands. Nor was the Green diktat that Scotland’s oil and gas must be ‘kept in the ground’ so that we can keep importing fracked LPG from America.
The Greens claimed to be overjoyed that the champion of ‘progressive values’ was elected SNP leader. However it is not entirely clear that the Green tail will be able to wag the SNP dog quite as vigorously in future. Yousaf has said he will rethink the disaster-prone Green minister Lorna Slater’s Deposit Return Scheme for bottles and cans which has been boycotted by thousands of irate small businesses.
Yousaf’s own £1 billion National Care Service, intended to reduce bed blocking in NHS hospitals, is also in deep trouble. It is opposed by a formidable alliance of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and the public sector unions. So there isn’t going to be a lot of time for celebration in the Yousaf camp despite all the smiling faces.
Indeed the only people who do not sound overjoyed at Humza’s elevation are the dedicated supporters of independence in the Scottish National Party who think the party has lost sight of its purpose and been wasting its repeated democratic mandates. This was the policy that somehow got mislaid on the campaign trail as all the candidates joined the gradualist bandwagon.
There will be no cunning plans like Nicola Sturgeon’s ‘de facto referendum’. No Braveheart promises to break the chains of Westminster rule. Scottish liberation has been indefinitely postponed while the Scottish government gets on with the day job. And there’s plenty of job to be getting on with.
Humza Yousaf leads a party that has lost its poise and self-confidence since Nicola Sturgeon’s shock departure. It is divided on key issues of gender, economic growth, the constitution and even the environment. Much has been said in this campaign that cannot now be unsaid. And, as someone memorably put it: continuity can’t cut it.
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