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’. Scottish Labour’s leader Anas Sarwar attacked the Tories, saying the country was in the grip of a ‘cost-of-living crisis created in Downing Street’. He argued that ‘we need a first minister for all of Scotland, not a first minister for half of it’ and attacked Yousaf’s continuity candidacy and ‘broken political party’. All three brought up the health service and its performance as one of the key challenges that the new FM faces.
Yousaf spoke last. He repeated his line yesterday that this is the ‘privilege of my life’. His first few remarks were personal: he said it was significant that a majority of MSPs were led by people of colour ‘and no one bats an eyelid’. He then paid tribute to Nicola Sturgeon, saying she had built an ‘international profile’ for her role.
Yousaf described his performance in government as being ‘tested in what people will agree have been some of the toughest roles we have got’. This is quite different framing from the ‘failing upwards’ line of his opponents. While MSPs voted, Yousaf waved at his children in the public gallery.
Sitting five rows back was his main rival for the job, Kate Forbes, who spent much of the session smiling and chattering briefly to colleagues who popped by to commiserate with her. Yousaf then walked round to her to embrace her and the pair held a conversation so animated it almost appeared choreographed. It was also very carefully positioned right in the line of the press photographers in the gallery above.
When Yousaf faces his first stint at First Minister’s Questions on Thursday, Forbes’s presence will likely loom even bigger: her attacks on her government colleague during the contest make the perfect quotes now for the SNP’s opponents.
Comments