In the 1990s the most important site of Scottish politics was well away from government.

It was not John Major’s Conservative administration in London that determined the future of Scottish policy: rather, it was the Scottish Constitutional Convention. It was their work which shaped the new devolved politics that was to come, and it was all the more powerful because of its arm-length remove from government.

Now that Humza Yousaf’s new administration has been installed in Edinburgh, a remarkably similar opportunity has opened up in Scottish politics to the one the Scottish Constitutional Convention so successfully exploited thirty years ago – for the future shape and direction of Scottish politics will certainly not be set by the new government.

The question is, though: who will step up? Who will plug the gap that Humza Yousaf has elected to leave so invitingly open?

The gap is obvious to anyone who cares to look and listen. Poll after poll shows that the Scottish people have two main political priorities. The first is the economy. Voters want the cost of living crisis tackled. They want prosperity and a sense of hope to return. They want wages to rise, the effects of inflation to be mitigated, and they crave a return to growth.

📝 Sign up for our Unspun newsletter and enjoy exclusive opinion and analysis from some of Scotland's best political writers and commentators. Click here to sign up 👈

The second priority is public sector reform. Scots know the NHS is crumbling. They know our schools are not what they once were. They know standards are sliding. And they don’t like it. The anger I have heard expressed of late about both hospitals and schools is more impassioned, more vociferous and more widespread than anything I can remember since I moved north of the border twenty years ago.

And these are not Tory voters I am talking about – these are middle class, public sector, left-leaning urbanites. Their votes are up for grabs and they are deeply unimpressed by what the Scottish Government is offering them.

The two priorities are related. Scottish voters don’t button up the back. They know we cannot have reformed, fit-for-purpose public services without the sustained economic growth to pay for it.

Why Humza Yousaf has decided not to dedicate his time in Bute House to delivering on these priorities I have no idea. That he has decided not to do so, however, is clear.

There is no one in his cabinet who has even the faintest idea how to return growth to the Scottish economy. Not the new...

...want to read the full article? Sign up for free to the Unspun newsletter and receive it directly to your inbox every weekday night at 7pm. Click here 👈