Brutal Politics

Humza Yousaf Resignation Speech

The sixth Scottish First Minister resigned today, just a week short of the twenty-fifth anniversary of its inauguration. Humza Yousaf had only been the First Minister for 13 months following the resignation of Nicola Sturgeon. What will happen next is down to the lottery of Scottish politics. Of the six first ministers, four have achieved office following the resignation (3) or death of the first ministers who had been leaders of the largest party following the Scottish Government elections. It is political parties, not the electorate that will have chosen our first ministers on five out of seven occasions when Humza Yousaf's successor is announced. 

After twenty-five years the Scottish Parliament has lost a great deal of respect following the shenanigans of recent years. Nicola Sturgeon's resignation had a whiff of corruption about it. The progress towards net zero was tardy, there was internal disagreement about her policy on gender recognition and her husband, who had been the SNP chief executive for 13 years, had been alleged to have embezzled SNP funds. These issues diverted attention away from the other factors leading to her resignation- the poor performance of NHS Scotland, declining education standards, ferry contracts that have grossly exceeded cost and completion schedules, mistakes in the care homes during the Covid pandemic and poor economic performance. Alex Salmond had resigned after failing to win the independence referendum in 2014. After allegations of sexual misconduct, he resigned from the SNP but won an appeal against the charges largely because the investigation of the allegations had been compromised by the senior civil servants having had prior knowledge of Salmond's activities. The second first minister, Henry Mcleish,  had also resigned following an expenses scandal over the subletting of his local office building. 

Even compared to the record of Westminster Prime Ministers of recent years, it is not a propitious record. I have some sympathy for Humza Yousaf, he had inherited a government in the doldrums with a dearth of experience in his cabinet following the decision of John Swinney to step down as deputy first minister and other ministers opting to resign. He appeared to have good values and certainly more empathy for his colleagues than his two predecessors who took no prisoners and operated more in a presidential than collegiate manner. This has been one of the reasons that the Scottish Parliament has never achieved the ambition of being a forum for constructive debate and collaboration. 

The new Holyrood building had been designed to encourage less confrontational behaviour and the proportional representation voting system was adopted in the knowledge that it would require partnership agreements between parties to form a government. Increasing the number of MSPs to 129 from the originally proposed 100 added cost and resulted in 56 MSPs elected on regional lists and having no local constituency. to represent. This cohort of MSPs has possibly contributed to the tetchy debates. So has the constant refrain from the SNP-led governments from 2007 that Westminster restricts its ability to make decisions. It adds to the belief that the Scottish Government is a less important government than Westminster. This was reinforced by Alex Salmond's defection to Westminster after he resigned as first minister of Scotland.

Humza Yousaf had served under two first ministers who were autocratic and kept decision-making close with a limited coterie of advisers. It reflected their personalities, they were centralisers and intolerant of being challenged. Humza was despatching a couple of policies that were at variance with reality (net zero) and public opinion (gender recognition). Salmond and Sturgeon had been securing partnership agreements. Humza Yousaf had to defend previous decisions that were not of his making. His decision to terminate the Bute House agreement with the Green Party was probably necessary but adopting the autocratic tendency of his predecessors to deliver the message was a mistake. They would not have ceded their power, they would have found ways of securing support by conceding on some issues before ditching their partners.  Humza was breaking up not making agreements, he was scuppered by the inoperable legacies of his predecessors.