All is not well in nationalist circles. Veteran SNP MSP Fergus Ewing has now lashed out at the ‘petulant’ response of Humza Yousaf and the SNP leadership to Ash Regan’s defection to Alba. Steerpike can’t blame him — with hapless Humza’s muddled indy strategy confusing, er, just about everyone, they’re all back to fighting like Nats in a sack…
The SNP is ‘having a sort of late adolescence, as I would see it,’ Ewing told Mr S. ‘A sort of troubled, angry patch of door slamming and getting in with the wrong crowd… But the thing about adolescents is they grow up,’ he added, hopefully. For his sake, Mr S fears Ewing’s confidence is misplaced…
Yousaf shrugged off the defection of his Edinburgh Eastern MSP to rival party Alba as ‘no great loss’ — but his comments haven’t gone down well. While one party insider criticised the First Minister as coming across ‘petty and entitled’, rebel backbencher Ewing berated Yousaf’s ‘entirely unfair and ill-founded attack’.
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