Humza Yousaf: the SNP’s accidental first minister who was doomed to fail

Every tragicomedy needs a fall guy and it was Humza Yousaf’s misfortune to be that fellow. Worse still, he did not know it. Yousaf was elected leader of the SNP without enthusiasm and his departure is not accompanied by any great measure of regret. No one is wasting time lamenting what might have been.

It is undoubtedly true that Yousaf has played his cards ineptly, but they were not good cards to begin with. Though it accelerated on his watch, the SNP’s slide in the opinion polls began in the later months of Nicola Sturgeon’s time in office. Many of the problems that over-matched Yousaf were bequeathed to him by his predecessor. He has failed, but it is not obvious any of his erstwhile rivals would have succeeded either.

Still, as Sturgeon’s chosen successor, Yousaf had little option but to run as, in his own words, the “continuity candidate”. It was his misfortune to take the helm of a vessel already taking on water. Sturgeon’s resignation was prompted by two realisations: first, she had run out of room to manoeuvre on the constitutional question that defined her political life. Secondly, the police investigation into the SNP’s financial affairs was drawing ever closer to home. In a literal sense, she quit before the cops came knocking on her door.

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Operation Branchform has cast a shadow from which no escape has been possible. The House of Sturgeon was suffering from subsidence and the SNP’s £100,000 camper van, stashed at Peter Murrell’s mother’s house, became a symbol of decline that was simultaneously preposterous and laughable. Something, somewhere, was going very wrong.

Even without that distraction, however, Yousaf would have struggled. His rise through the SNP ranks was fuelled by charm more than any obvious political aptitude. Nothing had prepared him for adversity or the full glare of press and public scrutiny. He was a child of the SNP’s long summer suddenly required to lead the party through a winter campaign.

If voters sensed this vaguely, their suspicions were confirmed by Yousaf’s appearance before the UK Covid inquiry. Here was evidence of a first minister plainly out of his depth in his previous role as health secretary. WhatsApp messages revealed a health secretary longer on “banter” than substance.

Seriousness is something more easily recognised than defined, but voters appreciated that Yousaf lacked the heft or gravitas they had come to associate with their first ministers. Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon — like Donald Dewar before them — might provoke fierce opposition, but few people ever doubted their seriousness of purpose. Yousaf, by contrast, will be recalled as the SNP’s Henry McLeish: an accidental first minister.

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Yet he was also hobbled by Sturgeon’s decision to bring the Greens into government. The coalition was created to entrench a pro-independence majority at Holyrood but it also flattered Sturgeon’s view of herself as a mould-breaking champion of “progressive” politics. She would lead a government that was both greener and more moral than anything available elsewhere in the British Isles.

Almost every calamity that has since befallen the SNP may be traced back to this. Symbolism trumped delivery. Ambitious climate change targets were published with no regard for the government’s ability to achieve them. Good intentions were substituted for good outcomes. The SNP-Green coalition was on “the right side of history” and that was all that mattered.

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Although SNP politicians now blame the Greens for their woes, this was a shared enterprise. Sturgeon proved to be just as much in thrall to gender ideology as her Green coalition partners. There should be “no debate” on this just as there could be no good faith questioning of other government policies such as a disastrously botched deposit-return scheme or proposed bans on alcohol advertising and fishing in large parts of Scotland’s sea waters.

Meanwhile, the NHS and Scotland’s education system were each in palpable decline. One in every six Scots is on an NHS waiting list; the most recent Pisa test scores were the worst ever recorded by Scottish schoolchildren. Yousaf, insisting that all was well in the face of clear evidence to the contrary, never seemed capable of grasping the reality of this. A government that cannot acknowledge shortcomings is a government in no position to remedy them.

The task of reinvigorating the SNP after 16 years in office would have tested any politician charged with doing so, but Yousaf, fatally, failed to even accept the need for this reinvention and refreshment. His cabinet was filled with retreads and third-raters and it seemed telling that he could find no space within it for Kate Forbes.

Events elsewhere reinforced the necessity for change. Sir Keir Starmer has returned the Labour Party to respectability and, by doing so, made Scottish Labour relevant for the first time in more than a decade. If the Conservative Party is clapped out after 14 years in Downing Street, might not the same logic apply to an SNP administration that has been ensconced in Bute House for even longer? To ask the question is to be apprised that the answer is plainly yes.

Successful leadership requires grip and an ability to tell voters — and your own supporters — hard truths. Yousaf lacked the weight and the courage to do either. For months he has pretended that the general election could be a springboard from which a new independence campaign could be launched. Voters know better than that.

If the national question is put to one side, however temporarily, what is there left for the SNP to offer? The answer, as demonstrated by the last 12 months of drift, dither and confusion, is precious little.

Even so, certain ironies persist. Recent polling suggests that only a quarter of Scottish voters approved of the SNP-Green coalition. It is remarkable that ending that arrangement has triggered Yousaf’s downfall. Here again, the issue was less the decision itself than the manner in which the deed was done. As a rueful first minister acknowledged,“I didn’t mean, and didn’t intend, to make them as angry as they clearly are”. Yousaf’s time in Bute House thereby ends in slapstick style. He has fallen because falling was his role.