There are two iron laws of elections that the SNP are in severe danger of becoming all too familiar with. The first is that parties with highly unpopular leaders don't win elections. The second is that seriously divided parties don't win elections. It takes quite some talent to lumber yourself with the first problem on the Monday and then the second problem on the Tuesday. The Bible tells us that the Lord rested after six days, but the way things are going we'd better all hope the SNP stop doing things after only two.
The constructive dismissal of Kate Forbes after she's just won 48% of the vote is the sort of thing you can only get away with if you're in an exceptionally strong position as a leader - for example if you're immensely popular with the public, and if therefore it doesn't matter if people on your own side start squealing because you know the voters will always back you. Humza is not in that sort of enviable position - he's on unusually weak ground with both his own party and the public, and in fact he needed Kate Forbes far more than she needed him, because co-opting her as a deputy or close ally would have offset some of his own unpopularity. She was almost inspiringly gracious in defeat yesterday - people both inside and outside the SNP will have looked at the way she conducted herself, and thought "gosh, what a genuinely lovely and kind person she is". Throwing that back in her face within 24 hours is going to have consequences, the most immediate of which is that people can now see with absolute clarity what the Humza campaign has been about from the start - not about the best interests of the SNP or of the independence cause, but about safeguarding the power and privileges of a faction within the SNP, and at absolutely any price.
It's the rough equivalent of Tony Blair doing on Day 1 what he didn't dare to do even after ten years - sacking Gordon Brown as Chancellor. It will create fault-lines, and fault-lines create earthquakes. Exactly how it will play out is impossible to tell, but there is one consolation - the more Humza overplays his hand, the quicker the crisis will come and the quicker he may be deposed, thus getting the SNP out of the hole they've just dug for themselves. So perhaps this kind of hubris from him should be positively encouraged.
Kate Forbes gets 48% of the vote and Shona Robison becomes Deputy First Minister. Is this a kind of bunker mentality? A narrow victory means "we are the masters still"? That's fine in a one-party state, but in this country the public eventually get their say.
— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) March 28, 2023
Very well put James. The SNP membership numbers released last week will soon be hopelessly inaccurate.
ReplyDeleteThe numbers will show a massive increase due to Yousaf being elected😂😂😂😂 - SNP are not just Britnats they are lying toerags.
DeleteI will continue to vote SNP as the only party which can feasibly win independence but I'm not so sure I'll do this as a member of the party. My money could go to far better use elsewhere within the independence movement. I didn't vote for Yousaf and his treatment of KF today reminds me why I didn't. A very small minded man , totally lacking in talent or political nous. I now seriously fear that at nearly 67 years of age I will never see an independent Scotland.
ReplyDeleteTotally agree, so much for the big tent and drawing on all the talent of the party, he's already trying to sideline his potential critics and consolidate power with his own inner circle ala Sturgeon. I don't say that lightly as generally I was quite supportive of Sturgeon up until the 'post' pandemic era where she had clearly run out of steam and ideas.
DeleteThis guy will not deliver anything other than a labour puppet holyrood administration. Maybe they'll change the name back to Scottish executive so we know our place. It's a sad day, if he had seen Kate and her support as a strength rather than a threat we may have actually come out with a strong collaborative government programme that delivered for all the members and appealed to the wider country to deliver Independence, but no let's just piss it all away. Well done Humza, well done
WTAF!
ReplyDeleteSo it would seem that Yousaf is both vindictive and playing the race card right from the start.
What a slap in the face to probably the best finance secretary the SNP has ever had.
Supplied and delivered the Scottish budget within 2 hours of Derek Mackay resigning, now offered a job as chief litter picker for the countryside. She was absolutely correct to tell him to shove it to where the sun don't shine This shows the calibre of Yousaf, that and in his acceptance speech claiming he didn't feel welcome in Scotland. What? He was born here, grew up here, had Muslim pals and Christian pals at school. Scotland is one of the most welcoming countries in the world and on day one of being FM plays the race card.
Which he has previous of with the nursery school, which he then withdrew from.
Today Yousaf has just lost about 90% of the people of Scotland because he has demonstrated in no uncertain terms that this is all about power to him.
If ALBA can field enough candidates for the next GE I suspect tens of thousands more will be voting for them, because to be honest, today, the SNP died.
I think he'll find he has just lost the majority of the people of Scotland.
I know that in the wake of the Humza leadership victory and his treatment of Kate Forbes lots of folk are seriously considering giving up their membership. I would say hold fast. If the Humza leadership implodes as I suspect it will we are going to need votes to defeat the next candidate the leadership serves up to the party. They only won this time because 30,000 had already decided to leave because they were so disaffected. Had they not done so Humza would not be calling the shots today.
DeleteAnonymous at 8.24pm you make the big assumption that this leadership election and future elections will be fair and honest.
DeleteFirst of all, apologies for commenting as anonymous, I pressed send before adding my name, it's always confusing when there are so many anonymous tags.
DeleteI hear what you say and understand your call for holding fast, which I had already set my mind to. Let's see what he has to offer etc. But today, to me at least and probably many thousands throughout Scotland, he lost all credibility with his obvious snub to the best Finance Secretary we've ever had ( Get rid of the threats to your power).
With that snub he has lost for sure the Western Isles and probably most of the highlands with it.
With his claim to not feeling welcome in Scotland although he is 3rd generation, grew up here etc. he has flaunted the race card in the faces of the Scottish public who are renowned for being a friendly and accepting race.
With that action he has alienated the majority of the rest of Scotland.
His first mistake was to hand out a slap in the face to his biggest contender ,who was extremely gracious in defeat.
His second was a slap in the face to the people of Scotland, who are a friendly, welcoming race renowned throughout the world for our hospitality.
He's certainly lost me and probably hundreds of thousands with that attitude.
It's a sad, sad day and a massive deflation to see what has become of the SNP from the heady days of the run up to the referendum to what they have become now.
Maybe he didn't feel welcome in Scotland because if his crappy personality.
DeleteI would encourage people to stay in the party or even rejoin.We need good people.Humza won't last long and every day Kate s popularity with the public grows.
ReplyDeleteHer latest tweet promising to support Humza despite being sacked will only endear her to the public .
A. honest decent politician prepared to put the party and nation above her own ambition
When will the rest if the ministers be announced - who's favourite for Finance?
ReplyDeleteEmma Roddick. (That's a joke, Humza, before you say "great idea".)
DeleteIt will be Somerville for Finance sec so she can give her pal in Raoe Crisis Scotland some more money.
DeleteSlater.
DeletePatriarch Harvie for finance and 90% of budget to Stonewall and LBGT Scotland.
DeleteFinance is Shona Robison. Who made such a mess of Health her buddy Sturgeon sacked her.
DeleteYou can't even contact the guy on Facebook. I thought just as a last ditch attempt to avoid devolution for the next 20 years, if he reached out to Rishi sunak, to negotiate essentially a confederal arrangement for Scotland where Holyrood is equal to Westminster, we have a whole new act of union where we devolve the reserved maters to westminster, but at least they can't then veto or over rule us on what we have not devolved it might be a start. Especially if the SNP said they would stand down all SNP mps at the next uk gen election as a threat, thereby increasing the liklihood of labour majority the tories may agree. Clutching at straws now!
ReplyDeleteWhy would Kate or Ash voters want to stay in the SNP anymore sound like their leaving in droves.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad for Forbes. As Finance Secretary she would have had to pander completely to the triumvirate of Slater, Harvie and Yousaf (in descending order of influence). So the budgets would have gone nowhere - and she would have been tarred with the brush of a failing government. Better if she can step in and rescue Scotland and the hopes of Indy from the delinquent triumvirate in a few months time.
ReplyDeleteNick Chuggins
Is there any way to have a travel document without the writing 'british citizen' on it?
ReplyDeleteWhat happened to that Smitty guy on WOS who claimed to have inside info that Humza had seen the figures, realised it was hopeless, and was considering withdrawing from the race? He was being quoted all over the place as some kind of authority. I assume he'll never be seen again now. One of the weirder ScotPol mini-bubbles
ReplyDeleteWhat a shock to the system. Watching C4 news and up pops that awful person Liz Lloyd - Sturgeon's fixer and all round bully. No idea what Clegg saw in her. As you might expect she was happy to dig the dirt up again on Salmond. What a disgusting human being - wouldn't believe a word she says.
ReplyDeleteHi James.
ReplyDeleteI don't post on here regularly. I saw you post yesterday on Twitter ( i think) you were considering giving up this blog.
Please don't, your blog and many others will be required in coming months and years.
.. bleak times ahead for Yes and Scotland, but persistence and patience is all we need to see though this and get the Yes movement going again...
Yesterday was a brutal blow, but as you've just pointed out, Humza and co are eedjits. Let them dig holes for themselves - but we all need to remain focused, critical, and ready for action so the don't us down with them.
I will be voting Alba from now on, until there us a change in SNP leadership and the Sturrel cabal has gone.
It certainly is strange to see the Alba logo appear all over Kavanagh's blog. Never thought I would see the day when that was allowed. WGD numpties - well some anyway - now realising they have been had by the SNP but bizarrely Sturgeon is still brill - they do not seem to compute that Yousaf is Sturgeon's boy. They never made sense before and the numpties don't now.
ReplyDeleteSo Kate Forbes was supposedly toxic because of the prominence of her religious beliefs and "non-progressive values", but on his first day as First Minister Humza Yousaf is photographed praying in a government property with not a woman in sight? How non-religious and progressive... hypocrites!
ReplyDelete