Humza Yousaf left looking weak after belatedly ditching Scottish Greens and failing to take political centre-ground – Euan McColm

A year after becoming First Minister, Humza Yousaf has failed to set the agenda on mainstream, election-winning issues

It was, of course, long overdue but Humza Yousaf’s decision to scrap the SNP’s power-sharing deal with the Scottish Greens was the right one. The Bute House Agreement was former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s answer to the vulnerability of minority government. By bringing the Scottish Greens onboard in August 2021, she created a parliamentary majority that would fend off opposition attempts to thwart legislation or bring down ministers through confidence votes.

Almost three years later, the Bute House Agreement had become a drag on the SNP. For some time, there had been growing dissent on the nationalists’ backbenches about the Green influence on the Scottish Government’s agenda. Their anger was understandable. There are Green fingerprints all over a number of failed and unpopular policies.

But while many of Yousaf’s colleagues will still be celebrating his decision, he doesn’t come out of this looking like the dynamic leader he might imagine. The truth is that Yousaf’s hand was forced. An emergency meeting of the Scottish Greens – called to discuss the Bute House Agreement in the aftermath of a Scottish Government U-turn on climate targets – had already thrown the future of the power-sharing deal into question.

‘Worth its weight in gold’?

There was no guarantee Scottish Green members would – as their co-leaders Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater wished – support the continuation of the agreement. The moment the Greens announced that meeting, Yousaf’s leadership was undermined. Rather than trying to regain some authority by abandoning the deal, the First Minister then spent a fortnight explaining why it was so important for the SNP and the Scottish Greens to continue working together.

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Humza Yousaf and Scottish Green co-leader Lorna Slater march side by side during a Believe in Scotland rally in September (Picture: Jane Barlow/PA)

Less than 48 hours before calling Harvie and Slater to the meeting at which he ended the power-sharing deal, Yousaf was doing the media rounds, extolling the benefits of the Bute House Agreement and waxing rhapsodic about the gifts of his Green colleagues. It didn’t take long for Yousaf to decide a deal he’d described as being “worth its weight in gold” had become a block of lead.

The First Minister’s press conference at Bute House, at which he formally announced the end of the agreement, began with what sounded like a resignation speech. A downbeat Yousaf listed what he considered his achievements and spoke of his desire to work with any and all across the parliament in the interests of voters.

Harvie suggests Yousaf's government won't last until Christmas

Greens’ critics not ‘reactionary’

But while the First Minister was performing a reasonable approximation of calm thoughtfulness, his former partners were in no mood for this to be a peaceful divorce. Before Yousaf arrived at the lectern in Bute House, Slater had issued a statement accusing the First Minister of “betraying” the electorate. His decision to end the Bute House Agreement was “an act of political cowardice by the SNP, who are selling out future generations to appease the most reactionary forces in the country”. Your view on that will, I think, depend on your appetite for Liz Truss-style batshittery.

There were no great “reactionary forces” out to do away with the coalition. Rather, the concerns of many SNP politicians about the partnership with the Greens were based on mainstream issues. It was not “reactionary” to, as many SNP members did, criticise Slater for her catastrophic handling of the deposit return scheme, postponed for more than a year after she failed to deliver a workable model.

Nor is it “reactionary” for SNP politicians to have expressed concerns about the Scottish Green party response to the review by experienced paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass of NHS services for gender-questioning children and young people in England. After Cass reported that children had been prescribed so called “puberty blocker” drugs and cross-sex hormones without adequate knowledge of their effects, a number of Greens – including Harvie – used their platforms to cast doubt on the veracity of the work.

‘Not serious government’

There had, said Harvie, been far too many criticisms of the Cass review for him to simply accept it as a valid scientific document. For many SNP politicians, this was a step too far. “We were pathetic on Cass,” says one elected nationalist. “It was all over the national teatime news for days and we just ignored it as if voters weren’t noticing. Meanwhile, you had all these voters actually noticing. It was bad enough it took a week for the announcement that the Scottish NHS was stopping prescribing puberty blockers without Harvie going out there undermining Cass.

"That’s not serious government. We should be thinking about what the parents who put us in power care about, not what’s going to please trans activists.”

Such language would doubtless be considered “reactionary” by the current leadership of the Scottish Greens but it does, I think, encapsulate a widely held view that the SNP has lost its way over the past year. Yousaf appeared to recognise as much in his Bute House statement, describing a “new beginning” for the SNP.

This will have come as a relief to a number of the SNP leader’s senior colleagues who’ve long worried about his failure to set the agenda on centre-ground, election-winning issues. The SNP did not come to power in 2007 on the back of a radical agenda. Rather, then leader Alex Salmond recognised the small-c conservative nature of swathes of the Scottish electorate and tailored his manifesto accordingly.

Yousaf will face pressure from younger SNP members to push forward with legislation around gender but he should listen to older voices, crying out for their party to start looking like it’s running a serious mainstream government. That won’t be easy. Humza Yousaf was right to end the Bute House Agreement which was harming his party, but the way in which he did so – his hand forced by circumstances – makes him look weak rather than decisive.