There’s a moment in Bob Woodward’s gripping book Peril, the account of the buildup to and aftermath of the 2020 US presidential election, when Democrat fixer Anita Dunn tells Joe Biden, languishing in his party’s primary race, where his strength as a campaigner lies. Most candidates, Dunn mused, struggle with their message. Biden’s route to power, ultimately successful, lay in the fact that he was the message.
As Humza Yousaf passes the 100-day mark as first minister of Scotland, and new polling out today reveals that half of Scots believe he is doing a bad job, we can reasonably reflect that not only is he not the message, but that he is suffering from succeeding a politician who most definitely was.
Nicola Sturgeon was front and centre of everything the SNP did. Eight national elections in eight years meant she was never truly off the trail. This is true even during the first year of Covid when, despite a diligence to detail that put Boris Johnson to shame, there was always an eye on the May 2021 Holyrood election.
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