HUMZA Yousaf’s second day as First Minister got off to a tricky start.

After Kate Forbes quit the Scottish Government last night in response to being offered a demotion, her ally, the trade minister Ivan McKee, followed suit.

"I have just been to see the First Minister. He offered me a smaller job. It was similar to what it was now but with less responsibility,” he told The Herald’s Kathleen Nutt.

Others in government say he was offered exactly the same job but quit in a huff because he wanted a promotion to the cabinet.

Ms Forbes, who ran Mr Yousaf unexpectedly close in the SNP leadership, had been Finance Secretary, so almost any move would have been regarded as a downgrade for her.

She might have stayed if she had been allowed to stay where she was, but baulked at being asked to move a long way sideways to Rural Affairs.

With Mr Yousaf needing to unite his party after such a divisive leadership contest, and 24,000 party members backing Ms Forbes, the First Minister would have been wiser to go the extra yard to keep Ms Forbes inside the fold.

It makes his claim to be the unifier the party needs ring instantly hollow.

His supporters say he was trying to do Ms Forbes a favour with a less onerous brief given her seven-month-old daughter. It would let her achieve a better “work life balance”.

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Besides, there were few places they could put her, one source told Unspun.

Social Justice was out because of her opposition to the gender recognition reform legislation currently vetoed by Westminster, while health was out because of abortion buffer zones.

Staying at finance was also a non-starter, because the First Minister needed someone who was absolutely in tune with his own plans for government, and that wasn’t her.

Political history is littered with sob stories of Prime Ministers and their Chancellors falling out, and Mr Yousaf didn’t want to head down the same route.

So it was not entirely surprising that Mr Yousaf later chose Shona Robison, who he singled out for thanks in his acceptance speech on Monday, for the role.

However her past record of failure as health secretary will be seized upon by her opponents at Holyrood, where a joke is already doing the rounds that the worst health secretary of devolution has made the second worst his deputy.

Interestingly, Ms Robison’s brief is lighter than that of many previous cabinet secretaries as it is not coupled with the economy brief, where the focus is on economic growth.

Instead that has been peeled off and handed to Mr Gray, who is the cabinet secretary for Wellbeing Economy, Fair Work and Energy, the latter previously coming under Net Zero.

Mr McKee’s exit, whatever the reason, is awkward. Although he didn’t have the profile of Ms Forbes (a trained accountant) he did have a background directly connected to his brief.

A self-made millionaire, the former businessman was a good fit for trade, and was one of the few current SNP MSPs with a background in commerce.

His departure will add to disquiet among business groups that the Scottish Government doesn’t truly understand what...

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