What kind of First Minister would Humza Yousaf make?
A Scottish Muslim of Pakistani heritage and an English Hindu of Indian heritage could potentially work together to negotiate the partition of Britain. David McClemont of the Holyrude Ungagged political podcast tweeted if this happens: “I’ll never stop laughing at the historical irony.” (Colonial Britain’s long resistance to democratising India was a major factor in the explosion of 1947.)
It would be iconic as well as ironic for the leader of the Scottish National Party and Scotland’s First Minister to be from an ethnic minority. Yousaf made the Washington Post and other international media when he was sworn in in 2016, taking his oath in Urdu and wearing a kilt in the SNP tartan, teamed with a South Asian jacket. If elected as FM, perhaps he would get a new kilt made in the “Spirit of Pakistan” tartan, incorporating the colours of the Scottish and Pakistani flags. Exports of tartan merch to South Asia could soar.
The investiture of the new First Minister would be widely reported and, by the rule that a picture is worth a thousand words, it would put to bed forever the caricature of the SNP and Scotland’s independence movement in general as backward-looking, ethnic nationalists. That view is still trotted out by some Brit Nats. For example, Tom Gallagher, emeritus professor of politics at Bradford tweeted last week:
“The SNP is a nativist almost universally white party, which depends on appealing to a long ago past with the desire to go back to 1707. Mr Yousaf has a perfect right to lead such movement. But why would he want to? It’s like Frederick Douglass leading the Confederacy.”
In a Substack newsletter entitled “Winter is Coming” starting with a quote from Game of Thrones:
“Oh my sweet summer child, what do you know of fear?”
Labour’s Blair McDougall, who led the Better Together campaign in 2014, predicts the coming collapse of the independence movement. He compares both Yousaf and his main rival Kate Forbes unfavourably to Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon, who he says developed their political prowess over long years of electoral defeats. Yousaf knows nothing of failure, McDougall contends - predicting that this is about to change and that the next FM’s reign will be as short as “those who sat on the iron throne”.
Yousaf, Forbes and many of their colleagues such as Westminster leader Stephen Flynn joined the SNP as it began to become Scotland’s party of government. Yousaf was first elected aged 26, in the 2011 landslide where, due to a fluke of winning fewer past-the-post seats in certain regions, the SNP overcame the barriers of the PR system and won a majority at Holyrood. Having been a government minister since 2012, he has of course experienced difficulty and failure in that capacity. Iain MacWhirter wrote in The Times recently that “he has more baggage than Heathrow”. An article in the Spectator headed “the Many Missteps of Humza Yousaf”, revealed a list of government-related issues such as having to review traveller quarantine policies in Covid.
Yousaf was of course the Justice Secretary who steered the Hate Crime Act through the Scottish Parliament. It was an attempt to codify and modernise existing hate crime laws, but adding transgender as a protected characteristic was controversial. The Labour Party supported the final bill which had lost some of its more concerning aspects. In this week’s Observer, columnist Kenan Malik criticised the Act - in particular the provision that makes private conversations potentially illegal - supporting his comments with a link to an article about the original draft Bill, not the Act. (1)
As Transport Minister, Yousaf laid the groundwork for bringing Scotrail back into public ownership - when peak fares are abolished in April, by my calculations Scottish train fares will cost about a quarter of similar journeys in England.
Currently, Health Minister - a tough brief - Yousaf has had some successes - such as managing to reach agreement with the health unions in Scotland and avert a strike. The NHS is facing huge challenges - but Scotland’s s health workers are now paid better than any others in the UK.
Former advisor to Alex Salmond, Alex Bell, wrote in the Times this week that when Nicola Sturgeon claimed at First Minister’s Questions last week that opposition parties fear Yousaf, it was:
“An idea so silly it exposed the desperation in HQ. Yousaf carries all the threat of a pet hamster”.
A clip of Sturgeon clicking her fingers in the Parliament, apparently to silence him while she wrote something down has also been widely shared. Yousaf assumed a slightly hangdog expression, but paused and waited for her to finish her train of thought, something I thought rather to his credit than otherwise.
Writing in the Spectator, former UKIP MEP Patrick O’Flynn called Yousaf:
“A middle-weight purveyor of boilerplate nationalist soundbites.”
When challenged by Scottish Conservative baboon - sorry leader - Douglas Ross on his record. O’Flynn commented that Yousaf merely:
“Glared at him, exhibiting no sign of being able to come up with an Alex Salmond-style witticism or a Sturgeon-like piledriver response.”
The job of leader of the SNP and First Minister will be a tough one. The wing of the independence movement that broke away in the aftermath of the Alex Salmond trial is looking for weaknesses to exploit - not to mention the Unionist parties.
Blair MacDougall’s assessment is overblown - the Labour Party’s pitch to Scotland that long periods of Conservative rule are a price worth paying to remain in the Union hasn’t changed in 50 years. (“Put the cobwebs back on, Douglas” someone tweeted in response to Douglas Alexander’s launch of his bid to beat the SNP-to-Alba defector Kenny MacAskill for a Westminster seat). But the SNP is into their fourth consecutive administration - and they may need to trim their sails to the changing headwinds of UK politics. The Scottish Labour Party is waiting to ride the waves of possible success in England.
There may be stormy weather ahead. Is Scotland’s likely next FM just a sweet, summer-born hamster with too much baggage, as his critics claim? Or is he an experienced manager and potential leader with plenty of fuel in the tank? Comparatively untried on the big stage, Humza may grow into the job. He is a member of the generation that will, if they stick to their current views, in time deliver a massive demographic shift towards independence. No offence (that’s what my kids say when they are about to say something offensive) but many of Humza’s critics could be described, in comparison, as yesterday’s men.
This piece was edited on Feb 28 to take out a suggestion that Malik didn’t realise the Act had been significantly altered from the initial draft - see his comment below. I also changed the intro slightly.
Jackie, Kenan Malik here. Thanks for the link to my Observer article. But, no, I wasn’t “ignorant” of the fact that sections of the original Bill – such as that pertaining to intent – were dropped. Which is why the only issue I actually mention in my article was that it “potentially criminalises private conversations”.