It’s time my party started listening to the concerns of ordinary Scots
HUMZA Yousaf’s fall was inevitable. He never understood he was on a road to disaster, paved by him choosing to be the continuity candidate and continuity First minister, boasting of being on speed dial to Nicola.
The Sturgeon legacy – mess, mediocrity and handcuffed to the gender-obsessed Greens – and him sticking to it, was always going to end in tears because it ignored what really matters to people in their day-to-day lives.
While Humza and his Green partners, or masters as some saw it, were convulsed over what they believed is a Scotland drowning in a sea of hatred, they were cutting £200million from the house building budget, creating a financial and job crisis in our colleges, and making it harder for young Scots, as opposed to foreign students, to get into university.
Despair has been our permanent condition. There seemed no way out of a political madhouse where a Highlander was prohibited from burning wood in his stove in order to save the planet, as though that minuscule contribution was comparable to the 1,400 coal-fired power stations in use in China, India and elsewhere.
It is fitting that it was in this climate dream world the beginning of the end appeared.
Nicola Sturgeon’s bombast about leading the world in cutting emissions was always beyond credibility, but it turned out to be a matter of blind faith for the Greens. And they, believing they are God’s gift to Scotland, and indispensable to the SNP, decided to ask their members – a sliver of the population – whether to continue to grace the Scottish Government with their presence.
No majority party could accept that. So, Humza did something right in principle in sacking Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater, but got it all wrong in doing so.
Instead of a clear statement that he was not going to be dictated to by the Greens, who had misjudged their importance, and were therefore out, he gave no coherent reasons, and later started to apologise to them about being ‘hurt’.
Hurt! Holyrood isn’t nursery school. It is where realpolitik is exercised, or should be exercised.
Nothing more illustrated the inadequacy of Humza as a major politician than his inability to be brutally decisive.
The Tory then Labour votes of no confidence were aimed at a First minister they knew instinctively was now fatally wounded; one whom the public had no confidence in; and one whom even the backbenchers and SNP members knew was hopeless.
It was from within this latter group that the message to go finally came. What now? This moment of crisis can be turned into one of opportunity for the SNP as a party and government.
What is needed is a new leader not burdened by the Sturgeon legacy. One who the people believe will wipe that slate clean, begin to govern with competence and address their priorities – reversing the decline in education, concentrating on knowledge rather than pronouns; extracting our universities from their dangerous reliance on foreign student income; admitting that the NHS needs reform and doing it; setting a business agenda that will bring growth; trebling the house building completions.
But, I hear some of my fellow SNP members say, what about advancing independence? And won’t we be in a minority government?
The fact is that the abysmal incompetence shown by the Sturgeon/Yousaf governments has damaged the idea of Scottish independence.
If the new party leader concentrates on getting the nation back on a better footing by governing better, that will do more than all the marches to restore belief in the viability of ourselves as a sovereign nation. For the new leader all of Scotland’s people should matter, whether for independence or Unionist.
As for being a minority govern
‘No way out of a political madhouse’ ‘Crisis can be turned into an opportunity’
ment it is much easier than it seems. There is no reason to salve those hurt feelings of Harvie and Slater in order to govern.
The SNP is just short of a majority. There are four opposition parties, and a skilfully constructed budget, and major legislative action, can pick one of them off with something they either support, or dare not vote down.
A housing Bill that Labour can amend? Quite.
measures to help the small business community, and the Conservatives can abstain.
Special assistance for the Islands and the Liberal Democrats can be invited to contribute their ideas.
It is called politics: the art of the possible.
That kind of politics calls for a new type of leader. One who has the intellectual equipment required, has depth to character, with the kind of mind that can take account of other opinions from other political parties when they have value, and one whom the public respects even when they disagree, because they know this leader is authentic.
I have just described Kate Forbes. She can save the day. I doubt anyone else can.