Iain Macwhirter Iain Macwhirter

Is this the beginning of the end for Humza Yousaf?

Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf announces the end of the SNP deal with the Greens (Getty Images)

Scottish politics may be about to enter the abyss following the disintegration of the Green-SNP coalition. The Scottish Conservatives have tabled a vote of no confidence in First Minister Humza Yousaf and he might very well lose it, now the Greens are out of the government. They only have 63 MSPs since the former community safety minister Ash Regan defected to Alba. Labour and the Liberal Democrats say they are eager for an early election. So Yousaf may have brought the temple down around his ears. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. It has been a day of high drama and high emotion.

When Nicola Sturgeon signed the Bute House power-sharing agreement with the Scottish Green Party in the summer of 2021, she said it would ensure ‘stable government’ and deliver ‘a cast iron parliamentary majority for an independence referendum’. So does the disintegration of the SNP-Green coalition mean unstable government, and that the SNP will no longer have a parliamentary majority for independence? Well, it’s hard to tell.

It may seem perverse that an environmentalist party seems more exercised about puberty blockers than about greenhouse gas emissions

Few would claim that this coalition of chaos has brought stability to Scotland. Humza

Written by
Iain Macwhirter

Iain Macwhirter is a former BBC TV presenter and was political commentator for The Herald between 1999 and 2022. He is an author of Road to Referendum and Disunited Kingdom: How Westminster Won a Referendum but Lost Scotland.

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