Does Government Chaos in Scotland Foreshadow the Future for Westminster?
That’s the question of the hour, our Brexit Diarist reports.
Rishi Sunak may take some comfort he’s not King Charles’s only premier who’s run afoul of popular sentiment. Scotland’s first minister, Humza Yousaf, resigned Monday in a political storm that has shaken the devolved legislative assembly.
“After spending the weekend reflecting on what is best for my party, the government, and the country I lead,” the head of the Scottish National Party announced, “I have concluded that repairing our relationship across the political divide can only be done with someone else at the helm.”
The relationship in question is with the Scottish Green Party. The SNP had been in a coalition since the 2021 election. Then-leader Nicola Sturgeon led her government to minority status and, to remain in power, joined with the Greens.
Called the “Bute House Agreement,” the two parties forged a working relationship on issues such as independence, climate and gender policy. Yet the SNP Government’s slow progress on these three issues soured the relationship, particularly on the last two.
In Mid-April, the Holyrood announced it would be revising goals for greenhouse gas emissions downward. “The target of a 75 percent reduction in emissions by 2030 was out of reach,” the BBC reports official statements. Instead, the government would “act to chart a course to achieve its target of net zero emissions by 2045 at a pace and scale which was feasible, fair and just.”
Adding insult to injury, the Greens disputed the Government’s decision to “pause the prescription of puberty blockers” in transgender cases, pending further studies on their safety.
The coalition partner responded by threatening to support, along with the Labor Party, Conservative leader Douglas Ross’s motion for a vote of confidence in the SNP Government, scheduled for Thursday.
Arranged against the Scots Nats’ 63 MSPs were 64 opposition votes from the Conservatives, Labour, Greens, and Liberal Democrats. Mr. Yousaf’s fate was all down to one Alba party member to decide.
It didn’t help that when Ash Regan defected to Alba last October — the rival pro-independence party set up by former SNP leader, Alex Salmond — Mr. Yousaf said it was “no great loss.”
Ms. Regan set out conditions to keep the Yousaf administration on life support. Ultimately, at the weekend the first minister decided the continued pursuit of power was futile and he resigned.
“I have therefore informed the SNP’s national secretary of my intention to stand down as party leader,” he confirmed, “and ask that she commences a contest for my replacement as soon as possible.”
Two leading candidates to replace Mr. Yousaf are his MSP colleague Kate Forbes and SNP leader at Westminster, Stephen Flynn.
Ms. Forbes, a close challenger to Mr. Yousaf for leader in 2023, is a controversial figure in her own right for leftists. A member of the Calvinistic Free Church of Scotland, she holds, according to the Daily Express, traditional views on abortion, premarital sex, same-sex marriage, and trans rights.
Ms. Forbes would be an odd choice to lead the Scots Nats. Nor is she likely to endear the Greens to re-enter a coalition. Her religious views aren’t a natural fit for two key pieces of Holyrood legislation, the 2019 Gender Recognition Act and this year’s Scottish Hate Crime Act.
Both bills pit modern social mores against traditional values with respect to gender, sexual orientation, and marital status.
Nicola Sturgeon sought to push the envelope with legislation on lowering the age for gender identification and surgery, more controversially allowing for the possibility of gender self-identification. Westminster eventually vetoed these measures, courtesy of its oversight functions in the devolved region.
Ms. Sturgeon ultimately resigned office in March 2023, with her aborted decision to jail trans-women in female correctional facilities. That, and amid allegations of her husband’s embezzlement of party funds which continue to haunt the couple.
Mr. Yousaf himself is no stranger to controversy. Along with Ms. Sturgeon, he baited Westminster with anti-Brexit and pro-woke views, and joined her in a lengthy tit-for-tat with feminist J.K. Rowling over the female rights for “biological women.”
At news of Mr. Yousaf’s recent travails, Ms. Rowling took to social media. “Karma’s a b****,” the Harry Potter author tweeted.
Yet grief for the Scottish Nationals does not spell relief for the Conservatives. In Holyrood, polling surveys award SNP’s failing support to Labor. And whether they hold their own in Westminster will be cold comfort for the Tories.
Before the Conservative Government went into free-fall, pundits believed that SNP votes would prop up a Labour minority administration. That becomes a moot point, now that various electoral estimates give Sir Keir Starmer as many as 500 seats in the House of Commons.
On that score alone, the sundering of the SNP may give opponents of Scottish independence some solace . . . in the short term. It remains to be seen whether support for secession ebbs under a Labour Government, or if its pro-EU stance further emboldens Scotch nationalism instead.
Either way, it demonstrates the vicissitudes of politics. Scotland may be an outlier of the chaos to come when Labor governs the United Kingdom.
No one has yet devised a sure-fire way to safeguard societal norms from the sway of wayward politicians and bureaucrats. For the Brexiteer anxious about the future, that is the question of the hour.
