With Humza Yousaf’s resignation, the SNP knows it has run out of road

Editorial: It feels very much like Scotland, never mind the Scottish National Party, needs fresh leadership – and a change of government, as well as first minister

Humza Yousaf announces his resignation as first minister of Scoland on Monday at Bute House in Edinburgh (Andrew Milligan/PA Wire)

As in Westminster, so now at Holyrood, the whiff of political decay in the governing party has become the stench of putrefying decay. This is not hyperbole. On both sides of the border are governments that were once seemingly invincible, but now, assailed by a lethal mix of incompetence, complacency and sleaze, are stumbling towards defeat – if not oblivion.

In the event, the end came quickly as well as early for Humza Yousaf, the first minister of Scotland who has been in office for only a little over a year. When he was elected, narrowly and controversially, by the SNP membership, he was the “continuity Sturgeon” candidate.

The intention was that he would steady the operation, leave the wrangling about money behind, and re-energise what was already a jaded SNP administration – in power in one form or another since 2007 and the dominant force in Scottish politics since 2015.

Fair to say, things have not quite gone according to plan. All the old problems faced or, indeed, created by the SNP-Green administration have remained or intensified.

Scottish public services remain in at least as parlous a state as the rest of the UK; the expensive new ferries to the isles remain stubbornly absent; and an ambitious scheme to recycle drinks containers hasn’t gifted a single discarded Irn-Bru can with a new lease of life.

It was certainly not Mr Yousaf’s fault that Nicola Sturgeon, her husband Peter Murrell, the ex-SNP chief executive, and others bequeathed him such a miserable inheritance. Mr Murrell has been charged with embezzlement of SNP funds, and other proceedings may yet get under way. Not even his worst enemies have accused Mr Yousaf of having anything to do with this; but he has made some grievous mistakes of his own.

He pushed through a gender reform bill that, whatever its merits, caused bitter divisions (not least in his own party) and fell foul of the devolution settlement – so hasn’t even been implemented for all the trouble it caused him. Much the same may be said of the latest legislation against hate crimes: impeccable motivation marred by poor drafting and backed by an inadequate consensus.

In his emotional and sometimes touching resignation statement – his personal achievement as a Scottish Asian is not in doubt – he claimed that independence is “frustratingly close”. That may be so, but he has done little to formulate a strategy to achieve it, and the splits in the independence movement on their foundational cause remain as bitter as ever.

Indeed, Mr Yousaf’s election as SNP leader led to the defection of a rival, Ash Regan to Alex Salmond’s Alba Party; recently Ms Regan and Mr Salmond found themselves in a position to make demands on Mr Yousaf to which he says he could not concede.

To be fair to the departing leader, Mr Salmon’s more aggressive and confrontational route to independence is even less convincing than Mr Yousaf’s caution in the face of more or less evenly split Scottish public opinion.

As Mr Yousaf also noted in his valedictory address, the Scottish electoral system was designed to create coalition governments (and to try and deprive the SNP of ever winning an overall majority and a “mandate” for independence).

He spoke of how political parties should cooperate and work together. Yet, even though he was the focus of broad dissatisfaction and his eventual departure was inevitable, Mr Yousaf’s brutal break with the Scottish Greens was the proximate cause of his downfall.

If he had not chosen to unilaterally tear up the Bute House coalition agreement as an act of strength, he would certainly have been first minister for the foreseeable future.

His unnecessary pre-emptive and reportedly rude behaviour towards the Scottish Greens merely drew attention to his weakness, as did his rather pathetic attempt to make amends after they pledged to bring him down in a vote of confidence. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Mr Yousaf just isn’t all that good at politics.

So, now the SNP and the Scottish parliament have to find a party leader and a new first minister, respectively, in conditions that are unprecedented and confusing. The question that now arises is what happens if the SNP chooses a leader or interim leader and that person is unacceptable to the Scottish parliament.

Will all the opposition parties be prepared to accept a caretaker leader; or will they force an extraordinary, ie early, Scottish general election? It is a growing crisis, against a backdrop of senior SNP figures facing serious legal proceedings.

It feels very much like Scotland, never mind the SNP, needs fresh leadership – and a change of government, as well as first minister. That may end up as another Labour-Liberal Democrat arrangement, as was the case in the first decade of devolution, but change seems inevitable.

The SNP has run out of road – and they know it. As with the Tories down in London, there seems no good reason to postpone the inevitable and prolong the agony.

By the end of this year, in other words, there will most likely be Labour or Labour-led administrations at Westminster, in Scotland, in Wales, and in the great majority of the directly elected mayoralties and councils across the land.

It will be a radically changed political landscape – and one where, fairly or not, the SNP and the Conservatives will need to rebuild, both for their own sakes and for the sake of a healthy democracy, in what may be a highly unexpected pattern of Labour hegemony.