Humza Yousaf’s leadership hangs by a thread as he approaches a confidence vote this week, with the Scottish Greens remaining unequivocal that he no longer has their support after he axed their power-sharing agreement.
Scottish government sources have admitted they are not assuming the Greens will shift position after Yousaf precipitated a spiralling crisis in his government on Thursday morning. The first minister blindsided colleagues by ripping up the Bute House agreement, brokered by Nicola Sturgeon after the 2021 Holyrood election, which cemented a progressive pro-independence majority in the Scottish parliament.
Denouncing Yousaf’s actions as “a spectacular breach of trust”, the Scottish Green co-leader Lorna Slater told BBC Scotland’s Sunday Show: “We will vote in support of a vote of no confidence against Humza Yousaf and I cannot imagine anything at this point that would change that position.”
On Friday Yousaf said he would not resign as first minister and vowed to win the vote, brought by the Scottish Conservatives and likely to be debated on Wednesday or Thursday – although he would not rule out an early Holyrood election.
Slater told the BBC: “This was a spectacular breach of trust, from on Tuesday saying the Bute House agreement was worth its weight in gold to stopping it unilaterally on Thursday.”
Asked whether the Scottish Green MSPs would consider abstaining if Yousaf went to them “on bended knee”, Slater dismissed that option too. “The Bute House agreement was based on mutual trust and respect,” she said. “Humza Yousaf himself has broken that and he needs to face the consequences.”
Slater would not be drawn on how the party would vote in a second no confidence vote against the entire Scottish government, brought by Scottish Labour, which would require the first minister and his ministers to resign if successful.
Elsewhere on Sunday morning, senior Scottish National party figures attempted to calm the row, with the party’s former Westminster leader Ian Blackford using an appearance on BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg show to apologise to the Greens for the way the dissolution was handled and urging them to support the first minister.
Michelle Thomson, the MSP who ran the SNP leadership campaign for Kate Forbes, who lost narrowly to Yousaf last March and has been critical of many of the Green-influenced policies, expressed regret at the manner in which the partnership ended.
While acknowledging it would be “difficult” if Yousaf lost the confidence vote, which, according to Holyrood rules, is non-binding, she told BBC Radio Scotland that “everybody in the SNP is rooting strongly for [Yousaf] and I am confident he is doing everything he can to bring others onside”.
Sources close to the first minister said he would continue to reach out to the Greens, as he was doing with all parties, but admitted they were not assuming the Greens would change their minds by the time of the vote.
With the SNP two votes short of a majority at Holyrood, this leaves Yousaf dependent on the vote of the former SNP minister Ash Regan, who defected to Alex Salmond’s Alba party last October in protest at the SNP’s stance on gender recognition reform and lack of progress on independence.
This led the Scottish Conservative leader, Douglas Ross, to declare Yousaf’s premiership “finished”.
Ross told the Sunday Show: “Even if he survives on a tied vote with the presiding officer voting for the status quo, that is not holding the confidence of the entire Scottish parliament.”
Speaking to Kuenssberg, Salmond appeared to pull back from Sunday newspaper reports that he was demanding an electoral pact between Alba and the SNP, after Scottish government sources rejected it overnight as a “fantasy”.
Salmond said Regan, his only MSP, was in a “highly influential position” and would be meeting Yousaf in the coming days to discuss “how we can re-emphasise independence as the priority of the Scottish government … how we can move away from the identity agenda that has taken up so much bandwidth … and also how we can return to the people’s agenda of education, health, housing, and above all jobs and industry.”
