A friend of mine in Ohio wrote to me today (29th April 2024). He’d seen the news of the resignation of Scotland’s First Minister Humza Yousaf, and asked for my take. This was my reply.
Hi Don – well spotted! I’m quite surprised US TV shows such an interest. And thank you for showing such an interest yourself. It’s taken me most of the day to work on this, but I’ll do my best: you can always stop reading when you get bored. 🙂
In truth, Scottish politics isn’t so much a mess as mish-mash of mini-messes. The first thing to bear in mind is that we elect our MSPs (Members of the Scottish Parliament) by a version of Proportional Representation, which means that it’s all but impossible for one political party to gain outright power. That was always the intention, in fact, to force governing parties to work with others to get things done – rather like Congress used to be in the good old days. Despite that, the SNP has had by far the largest number of seats in the Parliament since 2007. To begin with, they ruled as a minority government, which worked OK, but then in 2011 the SNP did what no one thought was possible: won an outright majority of seats.
I honestly think that was the last thing the SNP really wanted, because their party activists now insisted that Scotland should actually try to become independent. So Westminster agreed to a referendum, and the people of Scotland voted against independence by a 55/45 majority. (In truth, I think the pro-independence campaign was poorly ogranised and under-prepared; there were too many unanswered ‘what if/what about’ questions.) That was the end of Alex Salmond, the SNP’s hugely dominant leader, who resigned the very next day, to be succeeded by Nicola Sturgeon. You might have heard of her.
But the result deeply split the nationalist movement, many of whom, especially younger voters, felt cheated and betrayed. That division remains deep within the SNP today. Many in the party want to push on for independence no matter what, whereas others see little point until they’re in a position to win. So the leader has to pay lip-service to demanding a chance to have a second referendum to keep the ultra-nationationists happy, but at the same time there’s no way they can have one. The power to hold a referendum doesn’t actually lie with the Scottish Parliament, it belongs to Westminster. The Conservative Government – dominated by English MPs – simply says no. So you have the infuriating situation where English politicians deliberately obstruct what the elected Scottish politicians want. That’s purely political, but it’s a trick the Conservatives in London have learned to use very effectively in recent years. More to come on that.
All this has been exacerbated by Brexit. Every part (all 32 local areas!) of Scotland voted to remain in the EU, but we feel dragged out. If it’s been a disaster for the UK generally, it’s been much worse here in Scotland. We really need these European migrant workers, especially in our fruit-picking and hospitality sectors. The Southern US states will know all about that one. However, the Tories have worked out that, although there’s certainly an element of anti-English feeling in Scotland (sometimes I think that’s all that unites us as a nation), there are more anti-Scottish “kick the Scots” votes in England, simply because the population of England is nine times that of Scotland. That Scotland-England divide might be getting worse. The next UK General Election will surely be won by Labour, but the Scottish Labour Party (which is the only real alternative to the SNP) has begun to disagree with the UK party openly on some issues.
OK, so now the SNP has also had a series of recent problems, some of which have been of their own making. First of all, there’s been an issue with the party finances. The independence activists I referred to earlier raised £600,000 to run the independence campaign that the London Conservatives stymied. They only have the one account, and the money was paid into it. It looks like some of that money was used for other SNP things. The problem is that the CEO of the SNP was actually Nicola Sturgeon’s husband. He’s now been charged with embezzlement, and she was arrested by the police too. That case is ongoing, but I’m sure it’ll come to court for Sturgeon’s husband. It seems that the law on embezzlement says that even if you mean well and/or pay the money back into the right place, it’s still illegal. So Humza Yousaf has had that going on while he’s been leader.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, Yousaf’s brother-in-law was working as a doctor in a hospital in Gaza when the Israelis attacked after 7th October. His wife’s parents were actually visiting, and became trapped there for weeks. It took ages to negotiate their release, all while the Conservatives in London were actively supporting the Israeli actions. Believe it or not, he seems to have another brother-in-law who’s a bad lot, in with some drugs gang. He was arrested recently for being around when someone was murdered. All while Yousaf was First Minister. You have to feel for the guy.
The SNP nearly has a majority – 63 out of 129 MSPs – and has been relying on the Green Party’s 8 MSPs to govern with a reliable day-to-day majority. The Greens’ two joint leaders have been Cabinet Ministers, too. These 8 MSPs have done well in terms of influencing government. They’ve pushed ambitious climate change targets, a radical deposit-return recycling scheme and some reforms of transgender issues. (This last is actually a mental health issue and healthcare professionals have been pushing for it for a decade. You can have the details on that as well if you’re interested – it’s not quite as it seems.) Unfortunately, none of these have actually happened. The climate change targets have just been abandoned because we were going to miss them; the other things have been spiked by Westminster. (It’s important also to know that in 25 years, these are the first two matters that Westminster has blocked Scottish Parliament legislation.)
So the Greens were fed up that their agenda wasn’t working, and they blamed the SNP. The SNP has been fed up with the Greens moaning while in government. The Greens were almost certainly going to pull out, but they got a shock when Yousaf called them in and got his punch in first. So they predictably took the huff (really throwing toys out of the pram), and Yousuf has therefore had to resign.
So what happens next? Yousaf’s resignation means that the SNP government will survive because the Greens will simply abstain instead of voting against them in any motion of no confidence. What matters is the SNP choose as the next leader, and therefore First Minister. At the moment there are two main candidates. The first is a very experienced politician called John Swinney, who actually led the party in Scotland before, around 20 years ago when Alex Salmond was an MP in Westminster. he’s seen as a safe pair of hands, but boring. The other candidate is Kate Forbes, who’s very socially and economically conservative. She supports low taxes, but is also opposed to gay marriage (we’ve had that for a long time here; it’s not an issue to be gay at all) and that transgender legislation the Greens were particularly keen on. She’s young, talented, ambitious – but incredibly divisive.
There are five parties in the Scottish Parliament. Probably the most able leader is the Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, who was a dentist. There’s a small Liberal Democrat Party group who tend to do well in rural areas but nowhere else, and there’s the Scottish Conservatives. The most amusing is probably the Conservative leader. In his spare time, he’s a top football (soccer to you) official: he’s a Linesman/Assistant Referee – one of those guys that run up and down at the side of the pitch with flags. He does lots of big games, invariably receiving abuse from fans, as you might imagine. Privately, I take my hat off to him: it’s pretty brave, and it’s an interesting way to spend your time off. I think I mentioned once before that Nicola Sturgeon is a serious reader who is not only interviewed herself, but also interviews other authors at book festivals.
So there you go. Of course, in politics, the one thing you can be sure of is that you can’t be sure of anything. Tomorrow might bring some other nonsense.
Tales from the Heart of the City 