The SNP leadership has turned into open civil war. Alex Salmond has shafted the frontrunner Humza Yousaf who tried to shaft Kate Forbes, who was, in turn, shafted by Nicola Sturgeon. No wonder long-suffering deputy First Minister, John Swinney, has resigned.
Swinney’s departure came on the day Salmond torpedoed Yousaf, Sturgeon’s chosen successor, by claiming he had skipped Holyrood’s landmark gay marriage vote in 2014 due to ‘religious pressure’. Yousaf says his ‘recollection is different’, but his position is now untenable. His account is contradicted by the minister who was in charge of the 2014 equal marriage vote, Alex Neil, and now the then first minister, Salmond. It is all but futile to suggest, as Yousaf did yesterday, that two such authoritative figures were telling untruths for political ends.
Perhaps they are colluding; I don’t know. Alex Neil is indeed backing Forbes’s campaign. Alex Salmond, now leading the breakaway Alba party, is assumed to be supporting the former community safety minister Ash Regan, who certainly appears to be backing much of Salmond’s policy agenda.
However this would be like David Cameron and Jeremy Hunt telling porkies to undermine Rishi Sunak’s campaign to lead the Conservative party in 2022. Conceivable though it may be, it is not very likely. If at all, they would have done it unattributably through third parties, not gone television to stick the knife in.
Why has an obscure issue of who did, and who didn’t, vote on a bill nearly a decade ago assumed such importance? Well, it is a cypher for the real issue dividing the party: Sturgeon’s stalled transgender reforms.
Yousaf condemned Kate Forbes last week for her admission that she would not have voted for gay marriage. Forbes’s ‘extreme’ views were consequently criticised by both press and party. She was accused of not supporting ‘equality’ and being a religious ‘bigot’ who might stymie future equalities legislation.
It wasn’t just Yousaf. Sturgeon also criticised the finance secretary’s lack of ‘socially progressive values’ even though she had appointed her to the second most important job in government when Forbes’s faith was widely known.
Forbes’s candour cost her dear. It is speculated that her own campaign manager, Ivan McKee, walked away over her views on gay marriage. But, if so, McKee was, like everyone else in the SNP, also surely fully aware of them beforehand.
McKee agreed with those who said Forbes was naive to have told the truth. She should have evaded the question; promised that she had changed her mind when she hadn’t. Now we see where dissembling about your religious faith actually leads.
Yousaf, a practising Muslim, is said to have come under pressure from a mosque in Glasgow in 2014. Prominent Muslim leader, at the time, the late Bashir Maan, had said not only that gay marriage was ‘grave sin’ but a threat to civilisation. It was seen, as with transgender self-ID today, as manifestly incompatible with Islam. While Yousaf denies coming under pressure – and claims he missed the vote due to an ‘unavoidable meeting’ – the allegations are hugely damaging. If Yousaf hadn’t grandstanded over Forbes’ views this issue might have been unimportant. It would likely have been a diplomatic absence on Yousaf’s part. But his own dissembling now is surely a lethal blow to his faltering campaign.
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