On Thursday morning, Humza Yousaf dissolved a power-sharing agreement with the Greens as Scotland’s first minister sought to restore his authority ahead of this year’s general election.
In the afternoon, his attempt to reshape the leadership through a very public break with his coalition partners was met with a vote of no confidence that could bring down his government little more than a year after he came to power.
Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross branded Yousaf “weak” as he called for the no-confidence motion. His Labor colleague Anas Sarwar backed the call and said Scots deserved an election. And in the evening, his abandoned partners in the Green Party also declared that they would vote against him.
The no-confidence motion, expected to be tabled next week, is the toughest test for Yousaf, whose difficult first year in office was filled with ministerial scandals and clashes with author JK Rowling over a controversial hate crimes law.
“We are entering a crucial phase for the nationalist movement in Scotland,” said Iain Gibson, a government affairs adviser. “The first minister has set his leadership in this new direction and despite the immediate challenges, it is truly the first time he has been able to suppress his authority. If he survives the no-confidence vote, his position will be stronger.”
Opinion polls have predicted that he will struggle with weak personal ratings and that Labor will face winning back many seats in the middle if voters punish the 17-year-old SNP government in the general election.
Holyrood politics have also been overshadowed by the ongoing police investigation into the SNP’s finances; Last week embezzlement charges were brought against Peter Murrell, the husband of Nicola Sturgeon, Yousaf’s predecessor.
Growing political disagreements with the Greens over climate change and gender identity have plunged the government into the current crisis, which ended the so-called Bute House agreement that has given the government a working majority in parliament since 2021.
Yousaf has come under increasing pressure since the Greens said they would offer members a vote on the future of the power-sharing deal after the government abandoned emissions reduction targets last week.
The Greens criticized the move as a betrayal of future generations and said Yousaf had caved to pressure from his party’s right wing. Lorna Slater, co-leader, said progressive politics in Scotland was under threat and urged SNP members who care about the climate, trans rights and independence to consider switching to her party.
According to an insider, the Green Party was “raging”. “Leaders have done their best to persuade members to support the Bute House agreement and in this way we will be rewarded,” they said.
Despite the short-term threat to his leadership, SNP officials said Yousaf’s decision had already created a more united spirit within the party and allowed him to outline more moderate policies to broaden his appeal to voters ahead of general elections expected this year.
He was due to begin laying these out on Friday at a planned appearance at Strathclyde University in Glasgow.
The coalition was already heading for an existential crisis over Green co-leader Patrick Harvie’s failure to accept the Cass review, which questioned some of the medical practices surrounding gender identity services for children.
Next month’s expected vote by Greens members on the fate of the Bute House deal – after the government abandoned emissions reduction targets – accelerated the inevitable divorce, the SNP figures added.
SNP backbenchers, who rebelled against the government earlier this week, welcomed Yousaf’s new direction. Fergus Ewing MSP described the Greens as “extremists” who promoted “nonsense policies” such as gender reform and “heat pump fantasies” that had alienated large sections of the population.
Kate Forbes, Yousaf’s main challenger for the SNP leadership last year, said she would support him in the no-confidence motion and insisted he could win.
To do this, the first minister would have to mobilize all 63 SNP MPs and the support of one of 65 opposition MPs to prevent a joint vote against him. In the event of a tie, the Chair is expected to vote for status quo.
MPs and advisers have identified Ash Regan, a former SNP MP who defected to former first minister Alex Salmond’s Alba party last year, as a potential savior of Yousaf.
If he loses the vote, the SNP would have 28 days to find a new leader who could win the trust of Parliament. Otherwise there would be new elections.
Yousaf said that while emotions were “raw,” he hoped to work with other parties, including the Greens, on issues of common interest, such as a parliamentary vote next week on establishing protest-free safe zones around abortion clinics.
But the anger had spread beyond the Greens to SNP parliamentarians, with some contacting the Greens to express their displeasure at the move, according to a person briefed on the discussions.
Graham Campbell, an SNP councilor in Glasgow, said scrapping the deal was a “democratic travesty” that gave victory and hopes to an “overly vocal minority of SNP fossil fuel right-wingers” and “ultra-left Greens”. on independence undermined.
“Unionists will crow for the end of a united left-wing, progressive Indy project,” he said in one post on X