SNP – The Story So Far

Humza Yousaf, forced to deal with his indie opponents. Photo: Jeff J Mitchell

After weeks of people driven by gloom and discontent, reinventing themselves from misanthrope and malcontent to positive, progressive one-person independent candidates, is it not remarkable how we can feel slaves to bleak political days that eclipse hope, and the very next day chance unlocks a golden opportunity to seize the liberty we desire and will rekindle joy?

It’s true, by dumping the accident prone political amateurs, the Green Party, unelected ministers invited into government by the disreputable Nicola Sturgeon to stop Alex Salmond’s access, the second time she made the manoeuvre, Humza Yousaf has turned Salmond’s MSP – Ash Regan – into the most powerful politician in our Parliament. She has been given a casting vote.

It did not take her long to put her demands to Yousaf. Here is what she said: “I have written to Humza Yousaf this morning requesting a reset, and a return to competent government, where we prioritise independence and protect the dignity, safety and rights of women and children. I remain open to any discussion where we progress the priorities of the people of Scotland.“ Her letter is reproduced at the foot of this article.

From now on the fallout begins: Yousaf heads a minority government, and Regan has got the nincompoop over a barrel, if you’ll excuse the expression. She’s already written to him with demands for our independence if he wants her vote to stay as first wobbly minister. (Because of his clumsiness and naivety, this site gave him two years as first minister, this is still year one of his tenure.) For our international readers, how did all this come about?

Bleak House

Humza Yousaf could be forced to quit as Scotland’s first minister after the Scottish Greens announced they would back a motion of no confidence against him at Holyrood. The Scottish National party’s former coalition partners declared they would vote next week against the man who had “betrayed” them, hours after he unilaterally ended their power-sharing deal.

Yousaf stunned allies and opponents on Thursday morning by announcing he was suddenly axing the arrangement with the Greens signed by Nicola Sturgeon in 2021, hailed then as a new era in consensus politics buty actually a cheap ploy to hold back the rise of the ALBA party, a party dedicated to achieving Scotland’s liberty from England’s colonial rule. He called in Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater – the Scottish Greens’ co-leaders and junior ministers in his government – early in the morning to tell them to collect their P45, (sacked) and the agreement was flushed down the toilet. He was pre-empting their later meeting to decide to stay in government or leave, only leaving was in their hands. But the public have seen the Greens as far too accident prone.

The move – quickly denounced by a grief-stricken and confused Harvie and Slater as “cowardly” and “weak” – followed mounting anger within the SNP about a host of electorally unpopular policies that Yousaf’s internal critics believe have been forced on the party by the Bute House coalition agreement. Yousaf’s decision was swiftly rubber-stamped by an emergency cabinet meeting, with Harvie and Slater absent, at 8.30am, activating the Greens to announce they would support a Tory no confidence motion scheduled for next week. This proved the long suspected view of outsiders that the Green party were as much in love with Scotland’s freedom from London rule as a basking seal views sharing an ice float with a polar bear.

Humble Yousaf – what next?

That brings Yousaf, who only became first minister in April 2023, to the point of falling off a cliff edge, forcing him into a series of deals with his internal critics, seven of whom rebelled in a parliamentary vote earlier this week, to the delight of the sNP humiliated garndee of the party, Fergus Ewing. Yousaf as now to face his nationalist rivals in the ALBA party set up by Yousaf’s fiercest critic, the former SNP first minister Alex Salmond, and Ash Regan, still an MSP and now an ALBA member.

The SNP is two votes short of a majority at Holyrood. Yousaf now has to rally every vote from his deeply split party and secure the backing of a former SNP minister, Ash Regan, who defected to ALBA last October in protest at the SNP’s stance on gender reform and its soft-pedalling on independence. If the result is tied, which is highly unlikely, Holyrood’s presiding officer, Alison Johnstone, a former Green MSP, will have to make a casting vote in favour of Yousaf, under a protocol that presiding officers vote for the status quo.

Holyrood officials made clear that as the vote is not binding, under the Scottish parliament’s rules it would be up to the first minister to decide how to respond. However, losing a vote of no confidence so close to a general election in which the SNP might lose seats to colonial Labour’s bid to recapture Scotland and its wealth could make his position aeriously hanging on a shoogly peg. Indeed, his position has been untenable for many months, championing as he has, the old discredited policies of Nicola Sturgeon, she now in deep trouble, her husband, Peter Murrell, charged in the bizarrely protracted Police Scotland Branchform investigation into internal SNP fraud with further arrests and charges under consideration by COPFS, Scotland’s chief law office.

Who lit the squib?

The catalyst for the crisis had been Yousaf’s government’s decision to abandon its “world-leading” target to cut Scotland’s carbon emissions by 75% by 2030, an over-reaching target that ought to have been restarined to a probable attainement of 50%. The move provoked an open rebellion by Scottish Green party members. But the Greens have mudded the independence waters by chasing trans ideology and lately the Hate Crime Bill as their personal legacy, much to the resentment of the electorate who looked to them for sensible environmental policies, and instead were given an unhealthy obsession with child regendering.

In a weak finishing a disastrous week, Yousaf said: “We will of course have to be very wise and careful around the battles that we choose to fight, and we will be absolutely and entirely focused on the people of Scotland’s priorities”. Aye, but not without disciplinary help.

“How everything has changed,” said Mr Happy. “Now isn’t that a good thing?“

NOTES

No Auto election: Contrary to assertions, a vote of no confidence in the Scottish government does not activate an election automatically. A vote of no confidence in the government requires the first minister to tender his resignation – Scotland Act 1998, s 45 (2) and then will follow an election. How can this be? Because unionists wrote the rule book thinking they were protecting their colonial parties if ever in trouble.

Ash Regan’a letter to Humza Yousaf

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