Fergus Ewing: How Kate Forbes can save the SNP

Following Humza Yousaf’s resignation as First Minister, a fresh leadership contest could soon be on the cards. His would-be successors face an uphill task: after 17 years in government, the SNP looks discredited and divided in the face of a resurgent Labour party. In a dizzyingly short space of time, Yousaf’s party has been reduced from being the hegemonic force at Holyrood to a shadow of its former self. Can the slide be reversed?

Veteran nationalist Fergus Ewing is one of those who thinks it can. The outspoken Highlander, and one of Holyrood’s very first MSPs, backed Yousaf’s fateful decision to end co-operation with the Greens but disagrees with how his leader went about it. ‘The way he did it was wrong and the timing was wrong,’ he argues. Ewing maintains that the First Minister should have ‘asserted his authority’ and immediately torn up the Bute House Agreement when he first took over from Nicola Sturgeon thirteen months ago.