Douglas Ross is the Leader of the Scottish Conservative Party, the MP for Moray, and an MSP for the Highlands and Islands region.
Forcing Humza Yousaf’s resignation as First Minister is a major achievement by the Scottish Conservatives. It reinforces the fact that we’re not only the largest opposition party in Holyrood, but the only strong and effective one.
Though they backed our motion of no confidence in him, both Labour and the Liberal Democrats have enthusiastically lined up to back many of the SNP-Green government’s worst measures, including the disastrous gender self-id bill and Hate Crime Act, not to mention their higher taxes.
Yousaf’s scalp is only the beginning of a much more wide-ranging battle. But, having achieved our initial objective, I was able to withdraw the Scottish Conservatives’ motion.
Even those in the SNP, which has (or at least had) an iron-grip culture of conformity with the party leader, found it hard to maintain that the words “Humza Yousaf” and “leadership” belonged in the same postcode, let alone sentence.
That’s why almost everyone outside what, since Nicola Sturgeon’s time in office, has more closely resembled a cult than a political party, immediately backed our motion when I proposed it last week in the wake of him enraging the Greens by pulling the plug on his coalition deal with them.
The First Minister’s action may, at surface level, appear to have been a show of strength, and goodness knows the ejection of the Greens from government was long overdue).
But in reality it was done from a position of weakness. Yousaf, who inexplicably described the pact as “worth its weight in gold”, only acted when the Greens threatened to pull the plug on the coalition themselves.
After miscalculating the Greens’ resultant fury, his only hope of holding on would have been with the solitary vote of Ash Regan, who makes up the entirety of the discredited Alex Salmond’s Alba Party at Holyrood. Even then, he would still have needed the presiding officer to follow the convention of upholding the status quo when there’s a tied vote.
So, though he’s nominally still in post while the SNP picks his successor, Yousaf was finished by last Thursday evening, and anyone who could count knew it.
Much of the speculation and commentary before and after his acceptance that the game was up centred on the First Minister’s own apparent inability to count. (To be fair, his career gives plenty of examples of policies that suggest he never bothered to do the sums.) Or the “misjudgement” he made on Thursday morning by ditching the Greens and the toxic Bute House Agreement.
But, while his personal deficiencies certainly contributed to his downfall, it underestimates the dogged and persistent work by the Scottish Conservatives in exposing his government’s failures and holding him to account.
Time and time again, it is only the Conservatives who stood against profoundly damaging SNP-Green policies, while members of the other parties voted alongside them.
Chaos has been the hallmark of Yousaf’s parliamentary career. As first minister, he lurched from crisis to crisis, just as he had done as a minister. He was a disaster in charge of transport, justice and then health, before he failed his way into the top job by promising to be the “continuity candidate” for Sturgeon’s legacy.
That legacy, let’s not forget, was mired in scandal and founded on a programme that has caused profound damage to Scotland’s economy and essential services. That made us the highest-taxed part of the UK, at the same time as public services were falling to pieces.
And while essential frontline services were being neglected, the SNP paraded a series of grandiose flagship policies so ill-conceived and divisive that they were disintegrating all the way through Yousaf’s time in office.
That was the legacy he inherited – and pledged to continue. Even Jim Sillars, a former deputy leader of the SNP, described it as “less than mediocre”.
Sadly for Yousaf (but, more importantly, for Scotland) he couldn’t even manage “less than mediocre”. He was incompetent.
The implementation of his policies was invariably botched. But it was the policies themselves that were the real problem – and whoever the SNP choose to replace him, that reality won’t change.
The next first minister may prove less obviously incompetent, but he or she will still be pushing the separatist agenda above all other considerations. In fact, someone less hapless than Yousaf could potentially inflict even more damage.
Whoever gets the job will still ignore Scotland’s real priorities: the NHS, schools, jobs, and services. They will also still depend on the support of the extremist Greens, who may well be calling the shots on who gets picked, and will certainly still be attempting to steer the direction of travel for the Nats, even though their own electoral support is minuscule.
In many seats up and down the country, it’s a straight choice between the Conservatives and the SNP.
We are making substantial gains, as we did just last week in the Arbroath West by-election – a thumping win in a previous Nat stronghold. It was our fourth council by-election victory over the SNP during Yousaf’s year in charge.
I genuinely believe – and the polling and recent results bear this out – that in a forthcoming general election the Scottish Conservatives have the opportunity to add to our tally of seats.
We do not yet know whether we’ll also be facing a Holyrood election at any point in the near future, but be in no doubt that we are ready and eager to face that challenge, too.
We had a responsibility, as the principal opposition party, to see off Yousaf, whose disastrous tenure was inflicting enormous damage. Scotland is better off as a result.
But the country will not be able to repair the legacy of the party that chose him as its leader until we have driven the SNP from office. And in a slew of seats across Scotland, it is only the Scottish Conservatives that can deliver that result.
The post Douglas Ross: We have fought hard to see off Yousaf – but will not rest until the SNP is driven from office appeared first on Conservative Home.
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Author: Douglas Ross MP
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