UK Politics: Has Humza set back independence?
The Analysis
A big sigh of relief echoed through Holyrood and Westminster this afternoon with the announcement that Humza Yousaf had narrowly won the SNP leadership contest. Relief in his own party because his main rival Kate Forbes would have sent many MSPs, activists and MPs into orbit with her socially conservative views – as well as her more fiscally conservative approach. Forbes also threatened the partnership deal between her party and the Greens, while continuity candidate Yousaf did not. And there was relief among the SNP’s opponents because Forbes appeared to be more popular with Scottish voters than Yousaf, who has not flourished as a government minister.
In fact, Douglas Ross and Anas Sarwar’s teams can take a few weeks off writing tough questions for Yousaf’s first few appearances at First Minister’s Questions; Forbes has already written a good chunk of them herself, including this one: ‘When you were transport minister the trains were never on time, when you were justice minister the police were strained to breaking point and now as health minister we’ve got record high waiting times. What makes you think you can do a better job as first minister?’ Michael Simmons has analysed Yousaf’s performance thus far – and highlights the ten yardsticks to judge his success by – in this post. The Labour line is that Scotland now has a ‘second-rate first minister’ and that this new leader has no mandate. As I said in this post before the result, that latter argument would have held better with Forbes as the new FM, as she pitched for a big change in direction for the party. Yousaf has joked that he would have Nicola Sturgeon ‘on speed dial’ and had been careful to maintain her legacy, so surely the mandate from the previous Holyrood elections in May 2021 still stands.
One question doing the rounds on both sides of Scottish politics today is whether Yousaf will maintain Sturgeon’s biggest legacy: failing to deliver independence. He certainly didn’t talk as much about independence in his acceptance speech as he did about social justice: he doesn’t seem to think that the case for another referendum has been made sufficiently, or that voters are particularly interested at the moment. On Coffee House, Iain Macwhirter suggests that ‘Scottish liberation has been indefinitely postponed while the Scottish government gets on with the day job’ – and that the SNP has ‘lost its poise and self-confidence’. There’s a big enough task within the party, let alone when it comes to the performance of the government. The pro-Union moment can relax in the (very cold) Edinburgh sunshine this evening.
The Spectator