The SNP’s purity test

It seems as if Kate Forbes is about to achieve the remarkable distinction of losing an election as a result of a policy which she has not advanced and has no intention of enacting. It wasn’t she who raised the issue of gay marriage this week, but those who interviewed her after she announced her intention to stand in the Scottish National party leadership contest. Would she disavow the views of her church on sex, marriage and abortion? She would not. Her supporters peeled away.

Just like the old Test Act, where Scots in public life had to swear they held no Catholic beliefs, a new test is emerging for would-be party leaders. Anyone religious is expected to distance themselves from ‘problematic’ doctrine: this isn’t about what they would do, but what they think. Those from traditional Christian, Muslim or Jewish backgrounds risk effectively being barred from leadership if they follow their family’s faith. This means exclusion in the name of diversity – a new glass ceiling.

Forbes failing the purity test leaves the field clear for Humza Yousaf. Yousaf is an observant Muslim but he has passed the secular inquisition by making clear that he dis-agrees with Islamic teaching on gay marriage. His record is worse than any health secretary ever to sit in Edinburgh: more than a third of A&E patients weren’t seen within the four-hour target in December, despite A&Es being quieter than in the same month pre-pandemic. Waiting lists for hospital treatment are at record highs too, but strangely little interest is being shown in the fact that the Scottish health service is imploding on his watch.

Yousaf also presided over the collapse in NHS Scotland’s emergency service in 2021, when ambulances were taking an average of more than six hours to arrive.