Lucy Dunn Lucy Dunn

Is Humza Yousaf backing down against Westminster?

Credit: Alamy

The final debate of the SNP leadership contest, which took place last night, came after a weekend of upheaval for the party. The SNP chief executive Peter Murrell resigned on Saturday. His resignation followed that of Murray Foote, the SNP’s head of communications, who accused the party of telling him to make false statements to the press. And Ash Regan’s campaign team called for the contest to be restarted after revelations about falling membership numbers (and their cover-up) surfaced nearly a week into voting opening.

Viewers (or listeners) were understandably unsure how last night’s debate on Times Radio would proceed, given that the very integrity of the Scottish National party, and some of the candidates’ campaigns, has been under intense scrutiny. 

The leadership contenders seemed far less like bitter political opponents and it felt, during the last five minutes anyway, like the future of the SNP may not be in too much danger after all

But despite the upheavals, the candidates appeared more unified than they have since the broadcast debates started. Humza Yousaf and Kate Forbes performed well, while Ash Regan seemed visibly less relaxed than her competitors. This was, in many ways, a debate that more comprehensively explored solutions to everyday problems faced by the Scottish population, with less of an initial focus on ‘culture war’ issues. As a result, the candidates appeared to be taken more seriously than in other debates – and thankfully there were no questions about giant thermometers in George Square.

It was on Section 35 that things got interesting. Yousaf has, for the entirety of the contest, been clear that he would take the UK government to court over the Section 35 order that was issued to block Scotland’s gender bill. But last night, something changed. Host Aasmah Mir asked Yousaf ‘if the Scottish government’s legal advice says “you cannot win”, will you continue to pursue [the court case]?’ Yousaf responded by saying that if his government received ‘unequivocal’ advice that they would not win the case against the UK government, ‘we’d do the responsible thing and wouldn’t take that to court’.

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