Is Humza Yousaf’s ‘pro-growth’ stance convincing?

It may not have a title quite as resplendent as The King’s speech, but today represents the marquee day in the Scottish Parliament’s calendar. The Programme for Government (PfG), like its regal counterpart at Westminster, is the annual opportunity for Scotand’s First Minister to tell us what his or her vision is and what he or she intends to do with it. Much like The King’s speech, the PfG also gives the government a couple of days of wall-to-wall media coverage, so from the perspective of the political strategist and communicator, it is one of the top two or three moments of the Scottish political calendar.

This PfG was the Humza Yousaf edition. Yousaf is still new enough in the job that this was his first gig, and he was slated to use it in two main ways. Firstly, with the noise of the police investigation currently slightly reduced, we expected him to use it as his first chance to fully emerge from the political and ideological shadow of his predecessor and define himself.