Humza Yousaf Resigns

Humza Yousaf announced his resignation as Scotland’s First Minister at noon today. The Telegraph has more.

The SNP leader will quit ahead of a vote of no confidence at Holyrood, expected on Wednesday, that it appeared likely he would lose.

The development comes only four days after he held a press conference at his Bute House official residence to announce he was ending his coalition deal with the Scottish Greens.

Mr. Yousaf will make a statement on his future at Bute House in Edinburgh at noon. …

Lorna Slater, the co-leader of Scottish Greens, said Humza Yousaf had shown “very poor judgement” by scrapping the coalition deal.

Asked if Mr. Yousaf would only have himself to blame if he does lose his job, Ms. Slater told Sky News this morning: “Yes, I think so.

“I think he showed very poor judgement to suddenly collapse a pro-independence majority government when we had worked together really well for two and a half years.”

Read more here.

Turfing out a far Left outfit that refused to accept the impossibility of Scotland’s particularly extreme Net Zero targets or the scientific findings of the Cass Review on transgender medicine for young people was a good decision from an ideological point of view and in terms of appealing to voters. But politically, given the numbers at Holyrood, it was disastrous and made Yousaf’s position untenable.

The Telegraph‘s Gordon Rayner says “Humza Yousaf’s hate crime and trans laws will be his divisive legacy“.

In truth, the public never wanted Mr. Yousaf as First Minister: opinion polls before his election consistently showed that Kate Forbes, his socially conservative rival for the leadership, was far more popular with both SNP supporters and voters as a whole.

But will the SNP now install Forbes as his successor? Of course not. Can’t have a conservative in charge. Particularly if the arrangement relies on the Greens not opposing it.

Instead, John Swinney is being widely touted as leader of a new minority SNP administration: a former Deputy First Minister who backed gender self-ID for 16 year-olds, boasted in 2018 that Scotland would be “the first country in the world” to have an LGBT-inclusive education “embedded” into the school curriculum, and is fanatical about Net Zero.