Humza Yousaf is now officially the First Minister of Scotland, after Holyrood voted in favour of him taking over from Nicola Sturgeon. Yousaf secured the votes of all his 71 SNP colleagues and Scottish Greens.
The process in Holyrood allows other candidates to nominate themselves for the role too, so the party leaders of the Scottish Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats each put themselves forward and gave short speeches in favour of their candidacy. In practice, this was largely an opportunity for those three MSPs to set out their attack key lines on a new First Minister. All of them declared the SNP as being past it.
Liberal Democrat Alex Cole-Hamilton said there was ‘more water behind this government’ than lay ahead of it. Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross described Yousaf as working ‘part-time’ when he was health secretary and claimed a ‘post-SNP Scotland is now in reach’.
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