TOM HARRIS: This crisis is entirely of Humza's own making. Now he appears… DOOMED
For a while, things were looking good for Humza Yousaf. But then everything went wrong: he became First Minister.
His decision yesterday to end the Bute House Agreement that ensures support for the SNP government by the Scottish Greens may look like just another entertaining episode in the ongoing daytime soap opera we call ‘Holyrood’.
But for Mr Yousaf personally, it has precipitated the single biggest crisis so far as SNP leader.
Suddenly, and without warning, his party is short of a majority in the Scottish parliament.
This is nothing new: of the 17 years of SNP government with which Scotland has been afflicted, in only eight of them did it enjoy a majority.
This colossal political misjudgement is Humza Yousaf’s alone – as will be the electoral consequences for his party
There is little prospect of the administration falling and an early election being held – that would need a two thirds majority vote by MSPs.
But returning to the days before the Bute House Agreement was drawn up, when ministers nervously scanned the chamber to try to anticipate whether this or that policy had enough support to be implemented, is not something most SNP MSPs look forward to.
And beyond the arithmetical challenge at Holyrood, there is the much more fundamental political one for the First Minister: now that he has unilaterally ended the ministerial careers of Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater, the Scottish Greens’ two co-leaders, how can he look Fergus Ewing in the eyes?
The senior parliamentarian and former minister was suspended from the SNP group for daring to do what many of his Nationalist colleagues wanted to do but dared not: vote against Ms Slater in a vote of confidence brought against her by the opposition parties.
For his disloyalty, Mr Ewing was temporarily forced out of his parliamentary party. Yet he remained unrepentant.
What should Mr Yousaf now say to him, other than offer an abject apology and concede that Mr Ewing was right all along and he, the First Minister, was wrong?
The Bute House Agreement was doing neither Scotland nor the SNP any good.
It was right that it should come to an end.
The problem for Mr Yousaf is that he now stands accused of being a political weather vane, insisting one day that the agreement was ‘worth its weight in gold’, only to tear it up just a short time later.
A year ago he was a candidate to replace Nicola Sturgeon as SNP leader and First Minister.
Recognising the devotion that ordinary SNP members still had towards her, Mr Yousaf chose to portray himself as the ‘continuity candidate’.
He made it known that Ms Sturgeon herself, while publicly refusing to endorse any candidate, was known to support him.
And, faced with scepticism from his two opposing candidates about the wisdom of continuing the agreement that bound the SNP to the Scottish Greens, he effectively made its future part of the debate.
This was one of Ms Sturgeon’s most important legacies, and therefore must be preserved.
When the Bute House Agreement was unveiled, it was sold to the public as an act of political courage on Ms Sturgeon’s part, a successful attempt to cobble together a pro-independence majority at Holyrood after Scottish voters had cruelly withheld that honour from the SNP on their own.
Observers might have asked a tailored variation of the Mrs Merton question: what was it about ministerial salaries, private offices of civil servants and an undreamed-of media profile that made the Bute House Agreement so attractive to Mr Harvie and Ms Slater?
But as far as much of the Scottish political scene was concerned, the agreement was nothing less than a stroke of genius by Ms Sturgeon.
So when the agreement became the subject of heated debate during last year’s leadership contest, and when members responded by giving Mr Yousaf 52 per cent of their support, they were also endorsing the continuation of the Bute House Agreement.
And now the First Minister has confounded his own mandate.
Despite his statement decrying the idea that Holyrood is a ‘parliament of enemies’, that is exactly what he has managed to create by this act.
Every piece of legislation – as was always intended to be the case by the founders of devolution – will now be subject to compromise and persuasion, rather than the power of the party whips.
For most Scots, that will be a welcome change; for the Scottish Greens, that is a betrayal, because they will now no longer be able to impose on Scotland the economy-killing policies their political obsessions have led them to support.
And it’s unlikely Mr Yousaf will now be able to lead a more united party as a result of his decision.
There will certainly be those in his party who will loudly welcome his move.
But there are others, including many of his own supporters, who have spent the last three years defending the pact with the Greens, and who have now been left stranded like jellyfish on the beach as the political waters around them receded at Mr Yousaf’s command.
Then there’s the small matter of future electoral arrangements. Mr Yousaf has, at a stroke, and without warning, effectively destroyed the pro-independence alliance that has exploited the Holyrood voting system for years.
SNP and Green supporters alike have been encouraged to vote for the SNP candidate at a constituency level and Green on the second ballot paper that decides which additional members are elected on a proportional basis – the ‘assisted places scheme’, as Donald Dewar once amusingly called it.
That way, the maximum number of pro-independence MSPs were elected.
But if all trust has broken down – and yesterday Patrick Harvie called Mr Yousaf’s action one of ‘political cowardice’, ‘betrayal’ and ‘weakness’ – when the parties themselves have walked away from their own co-operation agreement, how can ordinary voters be expected to continue to respect that informal arrangement?
With Scottish Labour already breathing down the SNP’s necks in the polls, Humza Yousaf’s re-election as First Minister in two years looks increasingly unlikely.
This is a crisis entirely of the First Minister’s own making.
No one forced him to defend so robustly an agreement many in his party opposed.
No one insisted he ally the SNP so closely with a political party so extreme and unpredictable.
But there were many who could have – and did – warn him about the consequences of doing so.
And the decision, belatedly, to heed those warnings was also his.
This colossal political misjudgment is Humza Yousaf’s alone. As will be the electoral consequences for his party.
One year after gaining the highest elected office in the land, Humza Yousaf, instead of enjoying a political honeymoon, has created his own living nightmare. And we’re all living through it.
