No confidence vote piles pressure on SNP
LABOUR and the Tories will back a vote of no confidence in the SNP Government today in bid to force an early election.
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar announced his intention to press ahead with the vote to unseat the SNP.
He said he was ‘desperate’ for a chance to end the 17-year rule of the Nationalists.
Scottish Conservative chairman Craig Hoy said his party would support the vote.
It follows days of uncertainty around the future of the SNP and who will contest a leadership election. The Liberal Democrats are also expected to vote against the government, but the motion is unlikely to pass after the Greens said they would not vote against their former coalition partners.
Mr Sarwar called the SNP a ‘dysfunctional, chaotic, divided political party’.
In a meeting of Holyrood’s parliamentary bureau yesterday, the Labour motion against the Government was confirmed for this afternoon. Arguing the SNP administration was ‘incompetent’ and could not be saved by a new leader, Mr Sarwar said: ‘We will not be withdrawing the motion.’
Mr Hoy said: ‘The Scottish Conservative motion of no confidence which led to Humza Yousaf’s resignation was just stage one. Our next priority is to remove the divisive, failing, independence-obsessed SNP from power. That’s why we are backing the motion of no confidence in the SNP government.’
He added: ‘We will use any election, including this year’s general election, as a chance to beat the SNP in the swathes of seats where it’s a straight fight between the Scottish Conservatives and them.’
Greens MSP Gillian Mackay said the confidence vote was a tool to ‘embarrass’ Mr Yousaf further, and accused Labour of ‘parliamentary game-playing’.