Exactly half of MSPs (64 out of 128) want Yousaf to go - and that's as close to checkmate as may make no difference

The impression I formed from listening to interviews with Green MSPs yesterday is that they don't necessarily want to topple the SNP government or to bring about an early election, but they are determined to remove Humza Yousaf as First Minister, if they can.  And whatever you think of the Greens, that's actually an understandable position because he's been thoroughly duplicitous in his dealings with them, pledging an undying commitment to them one day and then unceremoniously dumping them the next day.  They're perfectly entitled to say that if they're going to work with an SNP minority government over the next two years, they need to be able to trust that any ad hoc deals that are formed on policy are worth the paper they're written on, and the trust simply won't be there until a First Minister who has proved himself to be untrustworthy is replaced.

(There is an obvious irony here, though, in that some would argue that the Greens overstepped the mark last year by interfering in the SNP's leadership election to try to get Humza Yousaf installed, and could barely contain their jubilation when they got their way.  That hubris is perhaps the one sense in which they were authors of their own downfall.)

The SNP might be tempted to respond by saying that it is up to themselves to decide who their own leader is.  But if they are, they'd be wise to learn a lesson from relatively recent history, because what the current situation reminds me of most of all is the crisis in the Welsh Assembly in early 2000.

If you recall, Tony Blair was an extremely reluctant devolutionist, and wanted to ensure that he effectively retained the power he was nominally ceding.  He wanted to hand-pick the leaders of Scotland and Wales, and just to drive home the message that London rule was being repackaged rather than ended, he rather absurdly wanted those devolved leaders to simultaneously serve, at least to begin with, as Secretary of State for Scotland and Wales respectively in his own UK Cabinet.

Initially he didn't run into any major difficulties with his picks, because Donald Dewar and Ron Davies were immensely popular and were probably the leaders Scottish Labour and Welsh Labour would have chosen anyway if they had been left to their own devices - although to his great credit Dewar threw a small spanner in the works by refusing to serve as both Scottish Secretary and First Minister at the same time, which he felt would have been incompatible with the principles of devolution.  But then Ron Davies had his "moment of madness" on Clapham Common, and suddenly Blair found himself imposing a new leader on Welsh Labour that they did not want. Two-thirds of Welsh Labour members voted for the charismatic maverick Rhodri Morgan, but due to a blatantly rigged election process that gave a third of votes to MPs and a third to trade unions who didn't have to ballot their members, the Blairite machine politician Alun Michael was very narrowly declared the 'winner'.

The Welsh public were no happier than Welsh Labour members about having Michael imposed on them, and punished Blair by giving Labour an astoundingly poor result in the inaugural Assembly election in 1999.  Having fully expected to win a working majority, Labour ended up forming a minority government with just 28 seats out of 60.  The three opposition parties recognised that Michael was the Achilles heel, and after biding their time for the best part of a year, they followed the tactic Douglas Ross is currently attempting by tabling a motion of no confidence in Michael personally.

On the day the vote was scheduled to be held, Michael made a speech brimming with entitlement in which he declared that he was passing the decision on who leads Welsh Labour back from the Assembly to Welsh Labour itself.  He theatrically handed a resignation letter to the Presiding Officer, expecting that to mean the vote would be cancelled at the last gasp.  But the Presiding Officer was the former Plaid Cymru leader Dafydd Elis-Thomas, who took the view that he couldn't be expected to read letters while in the middle of chairing a session.  So he allowed the vote to go ahead, Michael lost, and then an hour later Michael's resignation was accepted anyway. In the blink of an eye, Rhodri Morgan was unveiled as the new leader. That might be a warning from history to Yousaf not to attempt any procedural tricks, especially with a Presiding Officer in the chair who was elected as a Green MSP.

It's true that it's for the SNP alone to decide their own leader, but it doesn't follow that if there is to be an SNP minority government, the parliament is then obliged to accept that leader as First Minister.  Unless something changes, exactly half of MSPs (64 out of 128, excluding the non-voting Presiding Officer) want Yousaf gone, so even if he survives the vote of no confidence on the Presiding Officer's casting vote, that position doesn't look sustainable for much longer.  The SNP have three basic options: a) change their leader so they can install the new leader as First Minister with the proper confidence of parliament, b) keep Yousaf as their leader but put forward someone else as First Minister (an unorthodox arrangement in a UK context but not uncommon abroad), or c) say that only Yousaf will do, and if he doesn't have the confidence of parliament, there'll have to be an early election to resolve the matter. 

What isn't a credible option is trying to carry on as if the will of parliament doesn't matter - and Alun Michael can tell you how that worked out for him.

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