Humza Yousaf has resigned as Scotland’s first minister—just three days after saying he intended “absolutely to fight” for his position, and talked of “winning.”
The leader of the hard-left Scottish National Party (SNP) laid the seeds of his own demise last week after he ended the governing coalition deal between his party and the Scottish Greens—an agreement he previously described as “worth its weight in gold.”
Yousaf jumped out of this coalition before the Greens had the chance to vote on ending it themselves. He has now jumped from his position as first minister rather than give Scottish politicians the joy of booting him out of office via a vote of no confidence which was tabled following the government’s (self-inflicted) breakdown.
Former SNP leader and Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond, who is now leader of the pro-independence Alba Party, says that Yousaf, who has been in office for 13 months, will be remembered as “Humza the Brief.”
It is likely that he would much rather be forgotten about altogether, rather than be remembered for the unworkable—yet still unmistakably draconian—Hate Crime and Public Order Act which has dominated both the Scottish and wider UK press in recent weeks.
Had Yousaf decided to fight the votes of confidence this week, it is understood that he would have needed to secure the support of Alba MSP Ash Regan. Salmond, her boss, said that in order for such support to be given, the SNP would have to commit to stepping away from “identity politics” and engage with the “people’s priorities”—such as health, housing, education and industry—instead.
Indeed, journalist Brendan O’Neill wrote in Spiked that Yousaf’s “pompous disdain” for Scots, coupled with his being “beholden to the ideology of woke,” made him “everything that’s wrong with modern politics.”
Joseph Dinnage, the deputy editor of CapX, added that Yousaf’s “lack of judgment, foresight and frankly, grace should go down in politics textbooks as a case study for how not to govern.”
Yousaf told reporters at midday that he had decided to resign “after spending the weekend reflecting on what is best for my party, for the government and for the country I lead.” His opponents will not, however, have been overly pleased to learn that he will remain in office while the SNP carries out a full leadership election.
In a (not-so) final rebuke to his critics, Yousaf celebrated the fact “we now live in a UK that has a British-Hindu prime minister, a Muslim mayor of London, a black Welsh first minister and, for a little while longer, a Scotts-Asian first minister,” which he said proves that multiculturalism has been a success.
