Humza Yousaf is considering whether to resign before losing next week’s crunch confidence vote, it has been reported.
Mr Yousaf’s future as First Minister of Scotland now hangs in the balance, with 64 MSPs from the Tories, Labour, Greens and LibDems pledging to vote against him continuing in office.
With just 63 SNP MSPs, the future of Nicola Sturgeon’s successor now rests on the vote on Alba MSP Ash Reagan, whom Mr Yousaf insulted as “no great loss” when she defected from the SNP last October.
With the vote set to be a knife-edge result, it’s now been claimed that Mr Yousaf is considering whether to jump before he’s pushed from the top job in Scottish politics.
A former ally and supporter of Mr Yousaf has told The Times: “He’s done. Whether it’s today, tomorrow or later than that, he’s done”.
Meanwhile STV has also reported that the SNP chief is “considering his position”
A spokesperson for Mr Yousaf has ruled out that he could resign as soon as today, with the First Minister still set to deliver a speech this lunchtime at Strathclyde University.
Asked whether he will resign if he loses the vote of confidence, the spokesman said they wouldn’t answer “hypothetical” questions.
The SNP mouthpiece also boasted that the now-collapsed SNP-Green coalition deal lasted 19 times longer than Liz Truss’s premiership.
Thankfully for Mr Yousaf, 15 days ago he overtook former Labour First Minister Henry McLeish’s tenure, meaning he will just avoid having to suffer the ignominy of being Scotland’s shortest-serving leader in history.
Mr Yousaf has cancelled at least one planned visit, prompting speculation about his schedule over the coming week.
A source told the Times: “This appears to have been war-gamed without anyone knowing how to count.”
However one senior SNP source predicted that Mr Yousaf will stay and fight for his job.
They warned: “Only one MSP needs to change their mind and he’s going to make every effort to convince at least one MSP to do just that.”
Delighting in the SNP’s implosion, Tory minister Andrew Bowie yesterday pointed out: “So, the future of the Nicola Sturgeon continuity candidate’s entire First Ministership is now dependent on the whim of one member of a Party led by… Alex Salmond.”
Yesterday Alex Salmond said that Ms Regan, who has sent the SNP a list of demands she wants meeting before giving Mr Yousaf her support, is the “most powerful MSP in the Scottish parliament”.
He also criticised his successor-but-one’s “kamikaze instinct”.
Mr Salmond told Times Radio: “If I were Humza Yousaf, I’d get drafting a very favourable answer, otherwise he’s going to be known, I suppose, as ‘Humza the Brief’ with a one-year tenure as first minister and that will be that.
“Humza Yousaf today has managed to insult every opposition party. If you’re going to run a minority government, by definition, you must try and not insult at least one of the opposition parties otherwise they’ll vote you out.
“A much more sensible way to end the agreement, I would have thought, would have been to have told the Greens that the SNP, like the Greens, were going to put it to their membership and then nobody could have complained about that.
“Humza Yousaf has managed to make Ash Regan, an Alba MSP, the most powerful MSP in the Scottish Parliament because she now has the swing vote in the parliament.
He predicted that Ms Regan “will use that power very wisely indeed to progress the cause of independence and to protect the rights of women and to try and find a way to restore confidence within the Scottish Government, which has been so badly lacking recently.”
