SNP could end Yousaf leadership by giving new vote on Greens deal

The last week has seen a growing number of calls from senior figures in the SNP for the party to revisit the Bute House Agreement with the Scottish Greens.

Fergus Ewing, the SNP MSP who is his party's strongest critic of the Holyrood co-operation pact, was the first to advance the case.

Since then former health secretary Alex Neil, now retired from parliament, Highland MSP and former finance secretary Kate Forbes and now MP Joanna Cherry, have stepped up the arguments for a review.

The main criticism from the first three politicians centre around the balance being struck in the agreement between creating jobs and advancing business, with protecting the environment. To various degrees they believe it’s currently favouring the latter at the expense of the former. Ms Cherry’s concerns focus more on equalities issues and the debate over gender recognition reforms.

Ms Forbes has suggested that SNP members could be given a vote at this year's party annual conference in October on whether the deal, which gives the SNP a parliamentary majority to help them push through legislation and protect them from votes of no confidence, should continue. As part of the pact, there is a joint policy platform covering a wide range of areas, including independence, housing, transport, equalities and the environment.

So will a review and conference vote take place? Yes, a draft proposal could be submitted, but to mind getting approved by the SNP’s conference committee and making it onto the final conference agenda is highly unlikely indeed.

First Minister Humza Yousaf is firmly against, as is the SNP Westminster chief Stephen Flynn.

Both Mr Yousaf and Mr Flynn point out that the deal was struck for the duration of the parliament and that 95% of SNP members supported it in a vote.

Of course, those wanting it to be revisited can argue that the agreement was made two years ago – its anniversary is August 20 – and much has happened in the SNP since then, in particular the resignation of Nicola Sturgeon as party leader and first minister who was the main driver behind the power sharing arrangement.

It's also likely that if there was a vote, a much smaller proportion of SNP members would back it.

While no polling is available on how SNP members currently view the arrangement, the result of the SNP leadership contest back in April gives us some indication of what the party's grassroots think about it.

The continuation of the Bute House Agreement was a major dividing line between Mr Yousaf and his rivals Ms Forbes and Ash Regan during the contest.

Mr Yousaf was strongly in favour, and the others much more sceptical (in Ms Regan's case outright hostile) with the indications the deal would be brought to an end if either Ms Forbes or Ms Regan won. The Greens too suggested they would not be happy working with either a FM Forbes or Regan because of their opposition to gender recognition reforms based on self-declaration.

In the end Mr Yousaf narrowly defeated second placed Ms Forbes by 52% to 48% in the second round of voting. Other factors may have been at play in why members voted how they did, but the result suggests almost half of SNP members would have been pretty relaxed back in Spring about their candidate ending the BHA and governing again at Holyrood as a minority administration.

That percentage may well have increased since April following public controversies over parts of the Greens's environmental agenda put into the Bute House Agreement such as the recycling Deposit Return Scheme and the plans for further restrictions on fishing off the Scottish coast, under the introduction of Highly Protected Marine Areas.

Both those policies have now been shelved but only after generating very many bad headlines and poor publicity for the Scottish Government, led of course by the SNP who voters now blame for the blunders.

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These factors point to a scenario which suggests that if there was a vote on the Bute House Agreement at the SNP's conference, there would be little guarantee that members would support the party keeping it.

And why, you may ask, would this be such a big deal to anyone apart from the Greens which would find themselves out of power and their ministers Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater return to the backbenchers?

Most critically a conference vote would be extremely risky for the First Minister.

Mr Yousaf repeatedly staked his bid during the party's leadership contest on sticking with the Bute House Agreement, which he described as "worth its weight in gold".

If SNP members decided to end the pact, it would suggest they weren't convinced by the importance put on it by Mr Yousaf. Inevitably this is a situation which would weaken Mr Yousaf's own position as leader – and perhaps in the end hasten his own demise in the top job.

Far better, I would think, from Mr Yousaf's own point of view, for knotty issues in the agreement to be talked through by SNP and Scottish Greens politicians behind the scenes (as regularly happens), than for an explosive public and potentially tenure-ending debate as Mr Yousaf prepares to deliver his first conference address as SNP leader to his party faithful.

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