The SNP's new leader is Humza Yousaf. He beat Kate Forbes by the notorious margin of 52% to 48% on second preferences.
There is no doubt that Humza Yousaf had the advantage of being the establishment candidate in this election. When the SNP establishment has been all-powerful for the last decade, and maybe rather longer, that was an obstacle to anyone else that was always going to be hard to surmount.
The problem now is that he inherits all the problems the SNP had without the advantage of being able to offer an alternative.
The SNP has never managed to date to make the case that education, health and other public services in Scotland are bad because the devolution settlement is dire. That's because the SNP agreed to the devolution settlement.
Likewise, the SNP has never been able to discredit GERS - the dire Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland statement, which was the whole reason why I got involved in Scottish politics in the first place - because they have always published it when they need not have done so. As a result, they have never been able to argue that another economy is possible.
And, in any case, they never tried to do that. The 2018 Growth Commission report, and all subsequent statements on independence, have been neoliberal to their core. They also placed bankers at the heart of their concern, always denying the absolute need for a Scottish currency from day one of independence if Scotland was not to sink under the yoke of being tied to sterling.
Do I expect any of that to change now?
I can live in hope that it might. But will it? I don't think so. The SNP has got very comfortable running a devolved parliament. I do not see any passion for that to change.
But, I may have misread Humza Yousaf. I have to keep an open mind. It's just that the signs are really not that good. He looks far too much like the continuity candidate to think otherwise at the moment.
But then, so too would Kate Forbes have also looked like that.
The shortage of talent in British political leadership is very obvious right now.
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I have a suspicion that the SNP has just run out of road and is now a spent force
Yousaf I think genuinely will search for common ground; with everyone. He is, I suspect a natural mollifier. He appeared the most uncomfortable of the candidates; rather clumisly attempting personal, political ‘cut and thrust’ with his contestants in debate; it is a curious characteristic for a politician.
The defeat of Kate Forbes is a relief for the opposition parties, and especially for Westminster, where they will be relieved. I suspect she was potentially much closer to soft Unionism opinion in Scotland than some people recognise (including within the SNP); and thus carried a real political threat, at least in theory. Yousaf’s problem is to find a modus operandi that doesn’t turn his purpose into wholesale political anaesthesia. There is a strong strand in Scotland politics (with a long history), that considers politics is best conducted to achieve a general semi-comatose state; as in the best interest of social cohesion and personal happiness.
I agree with your analysis. On Kate Forbes, I’d add that when she took over the economy role we began to see much more realism in the discussion of Scottish government spending. Before that, there was much less focus on the “budget limitations” caused by the current fiscal settlement. It’s almost like the SNP didn’t like to talk about the limitations. I also think that’s why she raised the prospect of an alternative to GERS. Unfortunately that suggestion was scuppered, and now won’t see the light of day.
Aside from economic factors Humza Yousaf accepts that Westminster has a veto over Scotland’s Claim Of Right. That’s a ridiculous position for any SNP leader to hold.
I don’t think Humza will last very long anyway. All the Sturgeon-era chickens are coming home to roost. The SNP look very much like the Labour Party in Scotland did 10 years ago, only interested in their careers. And Scotland walked away from Labour, who had far deeper roots in our society than the SNP.
Also, all the campaigns for independence outwith the SNP are revving up for action! If we can’t achieve independence with the SNP, we’ll achieve it in spite of them.
‘it is worth noting that there are long-term supporters within the party who believe the best thing that could happen to it would be a term out of office; and that Yousaf as first minister might be the best way to achieve it.’
Dani Garavelli
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/27/snp-humza-yousaf-leader-scotland-politics
Yes – another vote for John Warren’s summary but I would say that the motive is under written by uncertainty within the SNP caused by what I saw as a rather robust argument being delivered about a Scottish currency and central bank and getting traction. Too much too soon? Maybe. The responsibilities that came with power eh? Big boy’s stuff.
Having said that, I wonder what it is actually like talking to HMG about it all?
So, in Yousaf Scotland gets it’s own political theatre after England has had the Johnson hearing. Meaningless really, but very well orchestrated all the same. Events on the surface; the same old same old beneath.
Time passes.
Woe progress and all hail management.
The real lesson is a reminder. The SNP and Scotland are actually much the same; the talk is the talk, but the progress is always slow, cautious, crab-like and sideways.
As an S.N.P member, and maybe I missed it in Humza’s acceptance speech, did he at any point mention Independence? This isn’t the complaint of a sore loser, I didn’t vote for him, but without Independence, every other matter is secondary. If I am allowed to use the phrase,” Tunnel Vision”, an Independent Scotland is my sole aim.
I quite realise that for others that is too simplistic, and we must present well thought out policies, especially in relation to a Scottish currency.
Hopefully the S.N.P have taken note of the lesson taught to us in 2017, when, canvassing on the doorstep, we were told never to mention Independence, and as result we lost votes, and seats, at Westminster. I hope, but frankly I’m not too hopeful.
I think you heard correctly
Not his priority
Being first minister will do very nicely
I have fairly recently moved to Scotland, I work as an advanced nurse practitioner in primary care. I’m not a member of the SNP, but agree, anything else is secondary to independance. We need it to save the health service & everything else! I like the fact that we have a muslim as FM, but I fear he will be lack lustre on indedendance. Independance is still bigger that the SNP. I try to keep upto date with opinion & advice from Salvo & others.
There has always been a tribal schism between Lowland and Highland and a mismanagement of the land, rivers and sea. If Scotland is to become a viable independent nation all these have to be addressed.
As in the rest of the islands, history lessons have been a tool of racial and religious propaganda rather than historical fact. In terms of religion at times as barbaric as in German history. The ruthless destruction of the Gaelic way of life in the Highlands after Culloden has had a lasting social effect with a diaspora as great as that of ancient Israel. Obesity tops the European league – none of these issues are even mentioned by any of the political parties why, because they are indeed deep seated red hot potatoes that no one in politics wants to get involved with.
With the discovery of vast oil and gas deposits at the beginning of the 70s a wonderful opportunity was lost to bankroll an independent and wealthy Scotland just like Norway. The best country in Europe to develop alternative energy is Scotland though wind and tidal and the industries to support this development. The
feudal nature of control of so much of the Highlands must be destroyed and is an essential part of the modernisation of Scotland but is the will to create a genuinely new party there?
Well Richard I think you got most of this analysis wrong. Where I do agree with you is on GERS – if there’s a failing it is perhaps the Scottish Govt’s continuing reliance on pro-market economic advisors to make economic forecasts.
One of the things recent times have shown us (Liz Truss/ Kwasi Kwarteng anyone?) is that many of the staunchest advocates of naked neoliberal capitalism really don’t understand how their system works. Taking advice from such economists would obviously be unwise.
I suppose being an elected Glasgow councillor, Chair of an SNP affiliate (the SNP BAME Network) and member of the NEC since 2019 – in your mind I might count as part of this ‘SNP establishment’ whom folks keep going on about – those that backed Humza. It’s a first for me as a lifelong pan-African socialist to be considered one of the ‘establishment’ but I’ll take it!
Judge Humza by what he does in the past and now. He has always been a passionate Indy advocate and active campaigner and backed Equalities 100% while Kate Forbes’s reactionary social views (not her religion) were totally incompatible with the centre left progressive values of most members and voters. Those are values upon which the SNP has won so many elections. That is why she lost.
I embrace the ‘continuity’ of keeping on winning elections because that is the basis upon which we have the opportunity to grasp our independence. I don’t see any pathway to Indy without the SNP winning pro-Indy majorities in elections.
However what’s really interesting is the unanimously agreed (by NEC) opening up to SNP membership of the discussions around Indy tactics and strategy. During the contest Humza questioned whether plebiscite elections would work stating the need to campaign for Indy without waiting on process issues – but to win a much more decisive majority support for Indy. We do that precisely by offering an alternative economic approach to the Westminster orthodoxy.
I can also tell you that absolutely no one in our Scottish Govt – especially not Humza – nor in either Holyrood or Westminster SNP groups is ‘comfortable’ with devolution. All three candidates rightly said that competent government is essential to building the confidence of a majority of Scots for us to go on to do things as an independent nation.
But the longer you spend in elected office (whether in SGovt for 16 years or in a Council for 6 years as I’ve done) the more you realise just how much Westminster rule stifles Scotland – especially in the fight to tackle poverty in our cities or renewable energy & climate change.
Not least because being attached to the sinking Brexit-land ship forces us to spend hundreds of millions mitigating against Tory attacks instead of investing to innovate and create a more equal society. The experience of office only increases your understanding of the necessity for having nothing less than the full powers of an independent nation. Especially on tax revenue and spending – that’s why I am an avid follower of your work on this blog.
I think it’s more accurate to say that Humza’s victory result was proof of the mainstream progressive centre-left majority of SNP members pulling behind the only viable candidate. He alone offered a centre-left majoritarian alternative vision of community wealth-building a WellBeing economy, abolition of poverty, and public ownership stake in renewables – all designed to attract a former majority for Independence.
His victory also guarantees that thousands of LGBTQ+ members and their allies won’t resign en masse because the progressive vision (rejecting ‘gender critical’ transphobia) has been preserved. A recent Believe in Scotland survey showed beyond doubt that when that progressive vision of Indy is clearly centre left – a clearer Indy majority can be won. That’s definitely not a neoliberal vision.
A Kate Forbes victory would have taken us down further the current neoliberal cul-de-sac of dependence on UK economic models and would have opened us up to more accurate charges of Tartan Toryism.
During the leadership debates both Humza rejected the outmoded logic behind the Sustainable Growth Commission (SCG was outdated even when it was published and in was any case had already been rejected as outdated even by Nicola Sturgeon).
SNP Socialists were among those back in 2018 and 2019 along with Commonweal who led the charge to reject SCG thinking on currency. You’ll remember SNP Special Conferences explicitly ruled out having the UK£ as Scotland’s currency for anything other than a short transition period. It is and has been SNP policy to establish a Scottish currency within 2 years of Independence.
One of the few things the SCG report got right were outlining the necessary processes involved in order to create an independent currency (creating a clearing system, a central bank lender of last resort, joining international banking systems like SWIFT) all of which can’t be done on day one of Indy – and certainly not without an accurate assessment of all economic assets and liabilities in our £200bn pa economy – which is where preparing an accurate alternative to GERS prior to Indy would help enormously.
For me and for most of my colleagues – independence is a democratic revolution that breaks with the imperialist UK state and ditches its economic model to create an alternative that opens up the possibility of a more socialist society. Without that decisive break from UK financial capitalist domination and the City of London there would not be real independence.
A centre left party is not neoliberal
And if it was serious about independence it would bother about, understand and support the case for an immediate Scottish currency
Yousaf did not even mention independence in his speech yesterday
Sure he’s to the left of Forbes but that leaves him centre at best as far as I can see
But as fur the rest, I see nothing to suggest I am wrong and I think you are painting a hopelessly optimistic view
The snp is going to be rumbled
And for the record, snp policy on currency from 2019 is that of the SCG, which wrote it. Politely, your argument is total Teasdale. A little truth would help
I think Graham’s reference to the “SCG” is a typo – it seems clear to me that he is referring to the “SGC” – the Sustainable Growth Commission, not the Scottish Currency Group (SCG). It is a very easy typo to make
I think you are right
As a member of the NEC, you might care to inform us mere members why there was the need to have an emergency meeting to amend the laid down rules for election of the Leader in Standing Orders. You might also care to tell us how the NEC meeting was arranged, by whom and if it followed the rules for its meetings as laid down in Standing Orders. My understanding is that the meeting was inquorate and had to hastily achieve quoracy to agree the revised rules already prepared by the inquorate group. Maybe you could give us an honest view on that NEC get together?
Ash Regan was by far the most left wing candidate, while I would characterise Humza as pretty centrist economically (in so far as he has actually said anything much on the subject). Forbes has played her cards pretty close to her chest, but with a curious mixture of some rather neo-liberal sounding phrases mixed with a focus on poverty (stemming from her childhood in India where I believe her parents went as missionaries). Forbes is certainly not from the Scottish elite and in that sense is the outsider. Yousaf, on the other hand, very much is and is the first private school educated FM. Forbes is also from the Highlands, a Gaelic speaker and from a relatively deprived rural area. Yousaf is from a very affluent West of Scotland background. Regan is more Scottish Borders and with parents who built a successful small business.
Graham is not correct about the April 2019 SNP Conference. It was me (with help from Chris Hanlon and Cameron Archibald, and of course Richard Murphy for reviewing my speech) that got through the Amendment that changed the SNP policy on currency. That was in the teeth of opposition from just about everyone in the SNP who had any official position. George Kerevan proposed an amendment that failed, so maybe that is what Graham means by the Socialist charge. I don’t think Section C of the Growth Commission (currency) got anything much right at all. Unfortunately the SNP just departed leadership never accepted the conference vote.
The only candidate to clearly repudiate the Growth Commission was Ash Regan. The others were at best that it needed a bit of updating. Maybe it will come from Yousaf now, but to this day the Growth Commission has never been disowned by the SNP and indeed lurks very much in the background (under a camouflage net) of the October 2022 white paper on currency.
Thanks Tim
I share your concerns
Contrary to Graham Campbell’s claim, Commonweal did not lead “the charge to reject the Sustainable Growth Commission thinking on currency”. Commonweal certainly understand Tim Rideout’s currency approach, but would defer to him as the developer of the policy’s detailed rationale and implementation.
And, by the way, the Believe in Scotland poll mentioned by Graham found increased support for independence based on adoption of a Wellbeing approach, which is not an especially left-wing/socialist policy. The Scottish Government has been promoting the idea since 2015, as has Kate Forbes since at least 2020 – https://weall.org/scotlands-finance-secretary-on-why-wellbeing-is-at-the-centre-of-measuring-countrys-progress. It’s time we had more progress on the details.
I remember reading Richard Murphy’s arguments on GERS and the Barnett formula, but I can’t remember in detail what they said. Please can you republish, or at least point to where they can be found?
OK, will do
Richard, this is the first time I’ve contributed to your pages but I felt compelled to by the amount of drivel printed on the subject of Humza Yousaf and his leadership. I’m Edinburgh born and bred but even I have to admit that the leadership contest was less than exciting and the talent on show was not inspirational. That didn’t surprise me as, after Kate’s trashing by the right wing media (All of the media then) they’d be careful not to provide sound bite hungry press and tv news more ammunition to fire at the SNP. I’ve met many English people and Scottish readers of The Telegraph who are so poorly informed on Scottish politics and I feels sorry for the poor lambs, led to the slaughter by their own favourite parties and papers.
I think the most accurate comment so far has been from Graham Campbell.
Yes, independence first and foremost, yes to a Scottish currency as soon as is humanly possible, and yes to the well-being economy.
No to GERS and SGC in the strongest possible terms.
And huge support to Humza in achieving all of the above.
If Humza does what you want, great.
Bit Sturgeon got nowhere near that agenda – and he is the continuity candidate and I reall;y cannot see it happening
Yes, if he continues the good work of Nicola Sturgeon but with a greater, more assertive, approach to the clowns in Westminster, and to achieving independence, then I will indeed be satisfied. However, we can’t know how well he’ll perform until he is truly in position. Nobody knows.
Indulge me for a moment; In what way are the SNP “going to be rumbled? And your comment “A little truth would help”, are you suggesting that Colin Campbell is lying?
I am suggesting some truth on the currency issue would hekp
Richard wrote: “…Sturgeon got nowhere near that agenda..” My view on the shortfall of the Sturgeon Gov’t against its manifesto aims (which the mainstream media has been keen to exaggerate) is that the criticism ignores three massive factors which disrupted its governance in recent years.
Firstly, Brexit had a much greater adverse impact on the Scottish economy than elsewhere in the UK. Scotland voted 2 to 1 against leaving the EU, but had no voice in the exit negotiations. My view is that we missed the best opportunity to go all out for independence in the aftermath of Brexit: the electorate were motivated and angry while Westminster was in disarray. The Scottish economy has still to recover from Brexit and, with the passage of time, markets will be lost, possibly for ever.
Secondly, coming on the heels of Brexit, Covid not only dealt a further massive blow to the Scottish economy, but of necessity became the Scottish Gov’t’s highest priority, thereby scuppering most other plans and commitments. At least the Scottish Gov’t was very serious and focussed about its primary responsibility for public health, as is borne out by statistics and the post-Covid handling of the NHS crisis. The No.1 policy of the SNP Gov’t was, is and should remain Independence – it’s the SNP’s raison d’être – but pursuit of it was impossible during Covid and, being realistic, will probably remain impossible until the NHS and the wider economy are back on an even keel.
Thirdly, all the important economic levers are reserved to Westminster and the Scottish Government’s borrowing powers are severely constrained. The Barnett Formula limits the Block Grant payments to a fixed percentage of public spending in England, so the Tories’ obsession with shrinking the state automatically impacts the Scottish Gov’s budgets and priorities. For example an important SNP policy is the right of all residents to free health care, but the provision of free prescriptions means reduced expenditure on other priorities. The outcome is that under current arrangements any Scottish Gov can only tinker with the economy and any substantive changes are outwith its legal competence. Now, with the UK Gov using the Supreme Court to prevent Bills legitimately passed in Holyrood from becoming law, the powers of the Scottish Parliament are being further weakened.
Thanks
My rejoinder is the SNP does not explain the inadequacies of the devolution settlement nearly well enough
Was it just me or did I see Forbes smile at Regan at the press conference and attempt to make eye contact but Regan just sat impassively?
The gap between them on the bench just seemed to get wider.
Humza may have his work cut out.
Humza should read Christine Desan’s ‘Making Money: Coin, Currency and the Coming of Capitalism’ (2015, Oxford University Press), no matter how slowly Scotland gravitates to it eventual future.
The relationship between Regan and Yousaf seemed decidedly frosty
I too saw the Forbes / Regan interaction (Or complete lack of interaction on the part of the latter). I haven’t yet seen any reason to like Ash Regan and would not enjoy dealing with her on any level. I thing got the vote she deserved. Forbes I like, I hope she sits in the cabinet and does good things for Scotland. Again, only time will tell.
I was quote impressed by Regan, for the record
Willing to think, was my opinion
Willing to be unpopular too
The best politicians know they have to be sometimes
I have to agree with Richard on Regan – she caught my attention too with what seemed like a willingness to go where others feared to tread in terms of independence.
But in the end is down to the Scots to do it their way and not for us Englishman to super-impose our own disgruntlement with Westminster onto what Scottish MPs should do or not do.
Can I second both Graham Campbell and John Lawson? The underestimation of Humza Yousaf I find quite exraordinary. He has had to hold down the hottest seat in the Holyrood cabinet (more than once) and has had to deal with the concerted battering of the UK media, endlessly presenting the desperate state of the privatising and collapsing (and deliberately sabotaged) English NHS – which ceased to be a proper “NHS” with the passage of the 2012 act and has just got worse – as a UK wide probelm thus artificially blackguarding the Scottish NHS in the process. The gap in real experience is chasm-like and yet Humza has had almost no means of fighting this floodtide of deliberate misinformation on anything like the scale that has been hurled at him.
I’ve just returned, this moment, from a relatively serious Scottish NHS hospital appointment, arranged in 60% of the time originally anticipated, in a strike free, real NHS which is being – yes – managed with remarkable success despite the steady attempts of unionist Tories and supine Labour to either throttle it or make its successful defence near impossible. The guy who has kept it running and defended it so successfully should not be being mocked for “continuity” or anything else. He is enormously passionate about Independence – just listen to his hustings performances and I have – and is equally realistic about how we get there. As Graham Campbell rightly says we – and yes, I am a member,and it is the only party I have ever joined – are set on achieving a democratic revolution and that means we have to win democratically – which takes time and it also takes competence, care and discipline – and loyalty to those who are engaged in governing well enough to gain that public confidence. And let us frankly recognise that both Kate Forbes and Ash Regan failed at least two of those tests very clearly by their behaviour in the leadership election. Forbes’ flounce off to the back benches was also eloquent. A team player would have accepted the rural affairs and island portfolio and made their mark afresh by their quality in office. I am amazed that Richard – or anyone with any poltitical nous or respect for democracy – could be taken in by Regan’s vacuous suggestions and still worse by her attempt to undermine a well-established voting process to which she had volutarily submitted herself. For a few days it seemed that Trumpian notions were not confined to wrecking the good name of Scottish golf.
Let us wait – and wait fairly and without prejudice – to see how Humza Yousaf governs now and also shapes the SNP’s collaborative government of my country. In my experience, what matters most in Scotland is doing things better and making things better – and the resignation of Nicola Sturgeon and a few weeks of inflated anti-SNP hype by the relentlessly negative Unionist mass media, does not wipe out the practical and electoral facts that SNP government and SNP and Green friends goverment has achieved over 16 years. And let us remember that their achievements deserve to be evaluated in the real world, as opposed to some ‘idealised’ one suddenly beloved by Humza’s and the SNP’s detractors – many of them the very people and papers who have helped to destroy anything ‘ideal’ that they could lay their mediating hands on. In that real world, whose bounds are set for us in the so-called ‘U’ K by the hostility and the overmighty power of a FPTP Unionist Establishment of all three so-called ‘main’ parties and their revolving control of the Treasury and their friends, rightly excoriated on this site, in the Bank of England, the CIty of London and the well-healed ranks of the Brexitanian extreme rightwing. These are the very same 16 years in which these forces have have trashed ‘their’ country comprehensively, ruined its people and destroyed the best of their people’s public services. That’s the real comparison which needs to be drawn, and Scottish voters keep on making it.
As the Big Yin would say “That’s a fact – and not a rumour.” – and in this Trump infested world I rather prefer the facts.
We will have to disagree
Sturgeon was neoliberal centre right
So is Humza Yousaf
And I heard nothing good about the currency from him
I did from Ash Regan
It is very hard to take him seriously as a result
And he would appear as contemptuous of the SNP membership as Sturgeon was
I am not expecting much. As a result I may not be disappointed
Well, Richard, disagreement is the stuff of debate and discussion. However, one does not have to assume that one disagreement means that I do not share much of the rest of your view. Yes, I’m afraid that the economics which you champion, and with which I generally agree, have yet to find an SNP government which really ‘gets’ that particular set of messages. However, in fairness the lack of proper economic powers, notably over borrowing, does make it that bit harder to conduct the argument. That, of course, is why the SCG (I do mean them) and you are so right about the future currency – and in those areas Humza, like nearly all the political classes anywhere in these islands, needs to catch up. But let’s remember that, unlike any other party, let alone one of government, the SNP has already started to shift the party’s leadership and policy a bit on this – not far enough by miles, but it has been done and from within the party’s ranks at conference. More remains.
And… I still maintain that what the SNP’s governments along with their alies have done, is huge in the context of the real world in which they have had to operate and that Humza has been a very significant part of that. His first cabinet also looks a well balanced and worthwhile group – indeed a team. But Kanga will always have the last word, – “We’ll see.”
🙂
On a slightly lighter note, it has been suggested that British politics has just become interesting with this new leader.
We now have one man of Indian descent and one of Pakistani descent arguing over the partition of the UK.