Humza Yousaf and why he can't deal with the crises besetting him

Not all politicians are equipped to navigate stormy political waters. A lesser politician would have been broken by the Falklands War or squandered Sir Tony’s and Ms Sturgeon’s inheritances.

Gordon Brown’s time as Prime Minister was effectively ended by the 2008 financial crisis. He handled the immediate crisis effectively as a policymaker but failed to grasp and shape the political fallout. It was not a crisis of his own making and was one he was not politically equipped for.

John Major’s premiership melted away following Black Wednesday. Within a month, John Smith’s Labour was ahead in the polls by double-digits, and Major’s position only worsened, beset by scandals.

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Today, Sir Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak represent the two sides of this coin. Sir Keir, like Mrs Thatcher, Sir Tony, and Ms Sturgeon, deserves credit for putting his party in a position to benefit from events, but the Labour Party’s lead is rooted in the successive scandals and crises that Mr Sunak inherited from Cameron, May, Johnson, and Truss.

Like Mr Sunak, Humza Yousaf inherited a multitude of crises and rumbling scandals that are beyond his direct control. Unlike Mr Sunak, he does not yet consistently trail his principal opponents.

But if we judge Mr Yousaf on whether, after eight months as First Minister, he has demonstrated the political skills needed to successfully navigate the choppy waters he and his party find themselves in, the report card is not positive.

Firstly, he has failed to move his party to a tenable position on the constitution. Mr Yousaf’s amended motion to the SNP conference last month commits his government to open independence negotiations with Westminster if they win a majority of the seats in Scotland at the next Westminster election, even if they lose seats compared to 2019.

Suppose the UK Government ignores this “mandate”, which it inevitably will whether it is Mr Sunak or Sir Keir in residence in Downing Street. In that case, Mr Yousaf and the SNP will treat the 2026 Scottish Parliament elections as a de facto referendum, again claiming a mandate to begin independence negotiations if a majority of pro-independence MSPs are elected.

Again, this will be ignored by the UK Government, after which the SNP will have nowhere to go. Bernard Ponsonby called this the strategy of ever-diminishing mandates. He was being generous. This is no strategy at all and does nothing to resolve the crisis over independence Mr Yousaf inherited from his predecessor, merely storing it up for later.

Secondly, he has struggled to clear the decks of his predecessor’s less popular policies. The political crisis over gender recognition reform is set to reignite repeatedly: when Lady Haldane publishes her opinion, when (presumably) her judgement is appealed to the Inner House, and then to the Supreme Court.

He has failed to reconcile tensions with rebels in his party. Ferguson Marine continues to regularly throw up new scandals while failing to deliver ferries. And let’s not forget the ongoing investigation into the SNP’s finances, which could flare up at any time without warning.

His leadership remains beset by scandals and crises he has inherited, and he has failed to make progress in resolving these.

Into this cauldron, add Michael Matheson’s iPad. I am sure you’re sick of hearing about it, as am I. But if a single event demonstrates Mr Yousaf’s inability to deal with the situation he is facing as First Minister, it is this unedifying pantomime.

To err is human, of course. Mr Matheson’s sin is not the outrageous roaming charges bill or his initial refusal to pay it himself. It is that he lied to the public about it. At the latest, he knew on November 9th that the bill was racked up by his family’s personal use of the iPad’s Wi-Fi hotspot. On November 13th he told The Scotsman’s Alistair Grant that the iPad had only been used for official business.

There is no way to interpret that as anything other than lying to the press and the public. Now Mr Matheson faces an investigation by the Scottish Parliament’s corporate body into the usage of Parliamentary property.

All of this was avoidable. Everyone paying attention to this story could see where it was going when the bill became public knowledge. That Mr Yousaf seems not to have does not suggest particularly keen political instincts, and if he did, his actions since scream political ineptitude.

Having failed to sack Mr Matheson or ask him to resign, Mr Yousaf has opened himself up to allegations that he sanctions his ministers lying to the public. He has become tarred by an avoidable scandal that could have been quickly neutralised had he shown a modicum of ruthlessness.

The First Minister is not without admirable qualities. His conduct in the wake of Hamas’ atrocities on October 7th and amid the Israel-Hamas war that has raged since has been exemplary. He demonstrated considerable empathy and moral fibre and should be commended for that.

And he is one of those rare politicians who becomes more popular the more the public sees them – his net approval rating in Redfield and Wilton’s polling has steadily improved since becoming First Minister.

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But this is not enough. If he became SNP leader in opposition with fewer of the crises and scandals he inherited, he may have been well-equipped to see his party back into power. But he is poorly equipped to keep them there in these circumstances. Perhaps nobody would have been.

The SNP continue to enjoy structural advantages in Scottish politics. Still, events make and break political careers and without the skills needed to navigate the events that beset him, look likely to break Humza Yousaf’s.