The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
What can happen next for Yousaf? for Yousaf?
The collapse of the powersharing deal between the SNP and Scottish Greens has left First Minister Humza Yousaf facing a vote of no confidence at Holyrood.
Another motion of no confidence has been lodged in the government he leads.
What happens next and – perhaps more importantly – what will the outcome be for Scotland’s embattled leader?
We take a look at some of the key questions.
What kind of votes will take place?
Two motions have been lodged, one by Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross and the other by Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar.
Mr Ross’s motion states that Parliament “has no confidence in the first minister, in light of his failures in government”.
If it passes, Mr Yousaf would not be legally bound to resign but would be under massive pressure to quit.
Mr Sarwar’s motion states Parliament “has no confidence in the Scottish Government”.
Unlike Mr Ross’s motion, this would have a direct legal consequence and would compel Mr Yousaf to resign as first minister.
This would then start a 28-day period where Holyrood chooses a new first minister. If a new first minister cannot be agreed on, an extraordinary election for the Scottish Parliament can take place.
How many votes does Mr Yousaf need to win?
He would simply need a majority of MSPs’ votes.
If everyone takes part in the vote – and sometimes MSPs might not be able to because of ill health or other reasons – he would need at least 64 of the 129 MSPs to vote for him.
That is because, as presiding officer, Alison Johnstone traditionally does not vote. She would only vote if there is a tie, and by convention the presiding officer uses their vote to support the status quo – so would back the first minister.
How is the vote likely to go?
The SNP has 63 MSPs, leaving Mr Yousaf one short of the minimum tally he needs to reach.
The Scottish Green Party, Mr Yousaf’s former partners in government, have indicated they will support Mr Ross’s motion but have not confirmed which way they would go on Mr Sarwar’s.
Attention has focused on how Alba Party MSP Ash Regan – who quit the SNP last year – will vote.
When she defected, Mr Yousaf described the move as “no great loss”, but she could now play a key role in determining his future.
What happens if Mr Yousaf loses?
While the result of the ballot on Mr Ross’s motion could not compel the first minister to quit, realistically it would prove almost impossible for him to stay in post if he did not have the confidence of the majority of MSPs. Under Scottish Parliament rules, if a first minister steps down, MSPs have 28 days to elect a replacement.
This means that if Mr Yousaf was to quit, the SNP may seek to have a replacement leader installed – assuming they could win enough support to be voted into the post at Holyrood.
What if he wins?
If he wins the vote of no confidence, the first minister would of course be able to stay on – but if he was to only secure a narrow victory, it could leave his leadership weakened.
What has he said to the other leaders?
On Friday night, Mr Yousaf wrote to the leaders of all Holyrood’s political parties, inviting them to talks at Bute House on how they can work together now the SNP are a minority government.
He hoped to find “common ground” while acknowledging there are “strong feelings” about the upcoming confidence votes.
On Saturday, he told Sky News it would be a “poor choice” for the Greens to back Mr Ross’s motion. When is the vote?
No date has been set but it is likely parliament business managers will meet tomorrow to set a date for the debate and vote. The expectation is a vote could be held at some point this week.
Prior to the week that was, the central topic of gossip in Scottish politics was whether Humza Yousaf would make it to the 2026 Scottish Parliament elections as first minister – now people wonder if he’ll make it through the week.
Just when you thought Holyrood politics was set to take a back seat as all eyes turned to a UK general election, the first minister chooses to break up with his Green partners in the most public and ungracious of ways. Dumped and forced to walk out of the front door before the cameras, no wonder the Greens are hurt and angry.
It’s worth looking back a fortnight, a time which now feels like modern history, to appreciate the Greens’ response to the government’s announcement that it was dropping it’s 2030 interim climate change targets. Clearly a blow to environmentalists, the Greens toed the line. They were obviously disappointed but were prepared to dig in and argued on balance that the climate was still safer with their hands on the lever of powers than without it. They were committed to the Bute House Agreement at a time when no one would have blamed them from walking away. That makes this split all the more extraordinary.
It all reminds me of that classic break-up adage “it’s not you, it’s me”. There’s simply no doubt that Humza Yousaf had a line of people at the door saying he was set to pay an electoral price for his deals with the Greens. Whether that be on gender policies that have alienated women, or his approach to oil and gas which makes his attempts to hold and win in the north-east all the harder.
Across Scotland’s major cities and the M8 corridor, Labour was poised to capitalise on an SNP-Green budget that cuts £200 million on social housing and spends £200m on cycle lanes. All this combined with a council tax freeze –which benefits wealthier households while choking local public services – left the party open to the attack that it had the wrong priorities and no vision. Quite an achievement.
Humza Yousaf is not likely to give up easily. He’s not waited his whole life for this moment to shrug his shoulders and walk off into the sunset. And, to give him his due, he’s never really had a fair run of it – constantly in the shadow of his predecessors, their legacies and their current trials and tribulations. But as too many Scots know, life ain’t fair and thems the shakes.
That fighting spirit was on show in
Dundee on Friday when he chose a housing project to make a major announcement and answer the inevitable questions from journalists which will follow him with every minute that passes between now and the no-confidence vote he faces.
It’s been reported that he cancelled a speech at Strathclyde University to make this announcement in Dundee so it has all the hallmarks of a rushed job.
Perhaps a little more reconnaissance and research might have thrown up one or two issues with the project that the first minister chose as the background for his fightback.
This Hillcrest Housing Association project in collaboration with Dundee City Council was approved in 2017 and has faced many delays, rising costs and controversies over the past seven years.
Pals who walk past the project towards the hallowed ground of Tannadice tell me it’s been going awry from the very beginning. As they’ve watched it go up slowly, they reflect the whole thing is back to front and upside down – the contractors building all the ground floors of the property before returning to stack on the first floors, the failure to stick a solid roof on the properties leading to the insides having to be stripped out and redone. As metaphors go for Humza’s leadership, you’d struggle to find a more uncomfortable one.
And what of the major announcement he made – £80m for housing and homelessness over two years? That broadly means that the £200m cut the SNP Government made to the social housing budget in the full knowledge of the housing crisis Scotland faces is now around the £150m mark – with the rest of the cash being used to reinstate homelessness services. While a welcome shift in the right direction, let’s be clear – this is the SNP reinstating around 25% of the money it cut from its own plans to build just a fraction of the houses Scotland needs.
The pace of developments is currently so fast its hard to make meaningful predictions about what will happen next, but this observer can see one clear pattern emerging. If the biggest criticism of Humza Yousaf ’s leadership is that he has no plan and has been making it up as he goes along, the SNP better hope his challengers have a plan to rebuild their party’s fortunes.
Meaningful predictions about what will happen next are hard to make