Bonus Edition: Yousaf's First Day
Bonus Edition: Yousaf's First Day
A roundup of the hottest takes and best analysis of the new SNP Leader's narrow win.
Given the big day yesterday, I thought it would be useful to send another bonus edition summarising the day’s media coverage and analysis. I hope you find it useful. If you do, please share it.
All the commentators rightly remark on the historic nature of a Muslim and a person of colour shortly assuming the office of First Minister. Ayesha Hazarika, for example, writes in the i Newspaper:
“Why does his skin colour even matter? It matters because it tells a story about how Scotland has changed from when I was growing up. I am as proud and interested in Yousaf’s back story as I am in Sadiq Khan’s or Rishi Sunak’s. There is great endeavour in the journey of immigrant families who came to this country with a suitcase, a couple of quid and little English, who suffered discrimination but worked hard and who have seen their children rise.”
Beyond that consensus, this morning’s analysis won’t make happy reading for the new SNP leader. Today’s Time’s cartoon sums it up nicely:
A Razor-Thin Win
Phillip Simm of BBC Scotland outlined the questions he believes Yousaf’s margin of victory prompts:
“It is inescapable that Mr Yousaf's margin of victory was razor-thin. A big, big chunk of the SNP voted for candidates promising change. So the question now will be the extent to which the "continuity candidate" seeks to differentiate himself from his predecessor's agenda. Will he forge on with all of her policies, or seek to carve out more of an identity for himself? And given he only just won over half of his own party, will he be able to replicate Ms Sturgeon's popularity with the broader electorate when the next election rolls around?”
Chris Deerin in the New Statesman notes that:
“only 26,000 out of a possible 72,000 backed him – and, most importantly, an electorate that has been unconvinced by his performance so far. Low expectations will either be met or confounded, and the nationalists will sink or swim along with their new leader. He is unlikely to receive much of a honeymoon, or be given the benefit of the doubt for too long.”
Alex Massie sees the result as a “humiliation” for the queue of SNP establishment figures who threw their collective weight behind Yousaf’s campaign, only for him to narrowly escape defeat. As well as the sense of a victory that feels like a defeat, Massie identifies:
“ the nagging sense he is someone else’s creation. Yousaf’s suggestion that he would keep Sturgeon “on speed dial” might have been an attempt to reassure SNP voters of his closeness to the outgoing first minister but it sends another signal too: he is a first minister thrown into the deep end before he has shown any ability to swim. He needs armbands.”
A Disunited Party
Libby Brooks in The Guardian writes about how the mood in the SNP establishment was largely one of relief but that:
“others made plain their consternation that such a sizeable chunk of their fellow members were willing to set aside Forbes’ personal opposition to equal marriage and abortion, for example, in order to vote for her “reset” platform. Two-fifths of SNP members on first preferences were convinced by a candidate who was highly critical of Nicola Sturgeon’s record, challenging the outgoing first minister’s model of progressive taxation and the speed of transition away from oil and gas exploration.
Paul Hutcheon of The Record writes about the bitterness between Yousaf his rival who now represents almost half his party:
“An essential part of restoring internal SNP unity would be Forbes accepting a senior position in his Government. Relations between the pair are poor - Yousaf allies refer to her as “equivo-kate” over perceived evasions on abortion and buffer zones - and bitterness remains. Bringing her into his big tent would be an achievement and buy him time to restore party unity.”
The Herald’s Tom Gordon reckons that yesterday was ‘a slow puncture, not a car crash’ but he too raises the problem for Yousaf of what to do with the candidate who nearly beat him:
“Yousaf now has to find her a suitable role in the party. The obvious option - giving her health when he leaves it - would put her next to ethically divisive issues such as assisted dying, conversion therapy and abortion clinic buffer zones. That could alienate the Greens as well as many of Mr Yousaf’s other colleagues. If he cannot find an elegant solution, his claim to be a unifier will rapidly look overblown.”
Jon Sopel on The Newsagents Podcast isn’t convinced the party can be stitched back together after this contest:
“the party does seem to be very, very split and the contest has been ugly. For the SNP to restore itself to its pomp, in the heyday of Nicola Sturgeon who has been the most formidable politician, North or South of the Border, I think is going to be a really tough ask.”
A Leader Who Needs Armbands
Another theme across commentators is whether the new leader has the ability to rise to the challenges ahead. In the Guardian, John Grace’s sketch took apart the lack of substance in Yousaf’s answers to journalists after his acceptance speech:
“He would succeed because he had a plan. Though he couldn’t say what that plan was. And he wasn’t going to fob people off with easy soundbites, he said in an easy soundbite. And he definitely didn’t think he needed to call a general election to establish a mandate though he did think Sunak ought to have called one when he became leader. He was going to unite the country even though more than half didn’t want independence. It was all a bit underwhelming. He sounded like a leader created by ChatGPT. A victory for Scottish Labour, if not the SNP.
For STV, Bernard Ponsonby writes that the clock is ticking on the new leader’s ability to throw off the ‘Humza Useless’ tag:
“It is, of course, way premature to talk in apocalyptic terms, but party strategists know he does not have a lot of time to establish a rapport and authority with the public. He is the candidate that the opposition parties wanted, make no mistake about that. The Humza Useless jibe is about to be dusted down and thrown at him every day he is in office.”
Even the SNP house newspaper, The National struggled to put together a package of positive vox pops out and about in Glasgow:
Tom Harris, writing in the Telegraph, while sensing trouble ahead, wisely warns against expectations of total collapse around Yousaf, noting that it is often better in politics for expectations to be too low than too high:
“We should not underestimate the value of being underestimated: Yousaf will face his first session of FMQs this Thursday (despite an earlier attempt by SNP business managers to cancel it, which would have given the new first minister a breathing space that would have lasted until after the Easter recess). Whatever his personal weaknesses, Yousaf knows how to deliver a good sound bite; it is more likely than not that at his first outing, spurred on by an almost united party behind him, he’ll emerge largely unscathed.”
More of the Same Won’t Cut It
Yousaf talked during the contest about the need to win independence by answering the big policy questions rather than going on about the boring process questions. Pippa Crerar in The Guardian notes that his first act as Leader yesterday afternoon:
“was to fire off a letter to Rishi Sunak demanding a section 30 order which, if granted, would trigger the mechanism to allow a second Scottish independence referendum to go ahead. His predecessor, Nicola Sturgeon had already tried this in 2017 and again in 2019, but her approach failed when the UK government refused to agree to it. Downing Street has already made it clear that Sunak’s response to Yousaf will be no different. Even some of his allies were left shrugging their shoulders and struggling to explain how the bid was anything other than performative.”
The Times Leading article notes that the new leader lacks the advantages Nicola Sturgeon enjoyed and warns that her old political playbook may not work for her successor:
“Solid support for independence covered the cracks in Sturgeon’s leadership. Even when she failed to deliver on policy she could point to election victories secured with the support of a large minority of Scots whose priority is secession and declare that the people’s verdict was good enough for her. Yousaf does not, however, enjoy the personal support that sustained Nicola Sturgeon. He is an unpopular politician with a track record of failure. His celebrations may be short-lived.”
In a similar vein, Dani Garavelli in The Guardian describes the legacy that Sturgeon has left Yousaf:
“Yousaf will take the helm with little of the goodwill that accompanied Sturgeon’s 2014 anointment. That she was able to unite such an ideologically disparate party was due in part to her popularity and control freak tendencies, and in part to a tacit agreement to “wheesht for indy” – that is, to suppress dissent in the service of the greater cause of independence. With no second referendum on the horizon, and Sturgeon out of the picture, the cork has popped off the bottle and will not be forced back in. Yousaf inherits a party where most of the big figures of the Sturgeon era – John Swinney, Jeane Freeman and chief executive, Peter Murrell – have departed, and one which faces a barrage of internal and external questions over its integrity and transparency.”
John Curtice writes in the i that the party may have chosen the candidate worst placed to renivigroate the independence campaign:
“Trouble is, polling during the leadership contest has shown there is relatively little enthusiasm for Mr Yousaf among those currently opposed to independence. For example, in the final poll of the campaign conducted by Ipsos last week, no less than 62 per cent of those who voted No in 2014 said they had an unfavourable view of Mr Yousaf. In contrast, only 45 per cent said the same of his principal opponent, the Finance Secretary, Kate Forbes. That is bound initially at least to put him at something of a disadvantage in any effort to win round those currently opposed to independence.”
Meanwhile, Professor James Mitchell wonders whether, with no referendum on the horizon, the SNP will finally have the post-mortem they should have had after losing in 2014, and whether, with Sturgeon gone, the new leader will address the many failings of delivery that she papered-over:
“Difficult questions will have to be asked and the SNP’s reputation for competence protected, if not restored. The lesson for the SNP from the Sturgeon years is that it will take more than brilliant communication and formidable debating skills to win independence. It needs the debate that ought to have happened eight years ago, which will now prove more difficult, painful and fractious.”