Huztae be a way back from this

Note: This was intended to be my column for the latest issue of iScot, but it didn't make the cut due to constraints of space.  So here it is for your delectation and delight.  Bear in mind it was written several weeks ago, and a few aspects of it have since been overtaken by events (for example the "Schrodinger's De Facto" plan announced at the special conference).

So how was it for you?  It was certainly a very different experience from a typical election or referendum in which you'd have a chance to gradually come to terms with the results as they come in bit by bit.  There wasn't even a wave of rumours to act as a cushion, because the secrecy of the outcome was successfully guarded.  All we had was a minute or two to draw conclusions from the candidates' body language, and by goodness that hit me like a sledgehammer.  

Instantly noticeable was that Ash Regan had a face like thunder, which left no room for doubt that the result was poorer for her than she hoped for or expected.  But did that dismay only relate to her own vote tally, or did it also extend to the Forbes v Yousaf result?  After all, Kate Forbes herself was wearing a beaming smile, so maybe there was still a chance that Humza Yousaf had been beaten after the redistribution of Regan's votes?  But no, wait, Forbes is the sort of person who would smile much more easily as a mark of graciousness, and would be more likely to look very serious if she had just been told that she was about to assume a heavy responsibility.  And Yousaf himself was looking far too happy and relaxed to support the notion that what he had assumed to be his by right had been snatched from him.  The moment I became almost certain he had won was when a close-up from the TV camera caught him shutting his eyes for a couple of seconds with a subtle smile, as if he was inwardly saying "OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG!" and savouring what he regarded as the supreme moment of his life.

For me, those couple of minutes were a highly condensed repeat of the emotions of the awful night in September 2014 when the realisation slowly dawned that Scotland had voted against becoming an independent country.  Most people I know share the view that Yousaf's victory was a calamity at least on a par with the 2014 referendum result, or perhaps even worse than that, because the SNP electing a leader committed to indefinitely abandoning all plans to try to win independence is a scenario that leaves all of us in the Yes movement completely snookered.

But I have to recognise that there are people out there who felt, or at least claimed to feel, the complete opposite when Yousaf was declared the winner, and who said there was an intense sense of relief that the SNP had narrowly turned its back on what they alleged to be the "bigotry" represented by Kate Forbes.  I must say I have very little time for the claims that it would have been somehow intolerable for some of our fellow citizens to live in a Scotland led by Forbes.  She had made abundantly clear that she would uphold the law as it stood on abortion and equal marriage, and common sense should have been enough to tell anyone that it would have been politically impossible for her to go back on her word, given the views of the people she would have been relying upon to sustain her in office.  I can only assume that the supposedly intense stress reported by some when they contemplated a Forbes premiership was an affectation.  Or, where it was genuine, people were falling victim to bogus fears whipped up by those with a very cynical agenda.

Either way, it's telling that the people punching the air when Yousaf won were thinking about identity politics issues when they did it, rather than about independence.  Tacitly, there seems to be an acceptance even among some Yousaf supporters that his victory pushes independence further away rather than brings it closer.  It's not that these people don't care about independence - at least some of them do.  But the mood music from them has been along the lines of "well, maybe this won't be quite as bad as we fear", which is a pretty clear indication that they know they've settled for a downgrade in their independence leader, whether for reasons of careerism, or factionalism, or non-independence-related hobby horses.

For my own part, the despair I felt in the days after the result was announced has dissipated to some extent, and that's largely because of the helpful clarity of the situation we now find ourselves in.  Under Nicola Sturgeon, there was always a disorientating ambiguity - she had a stated plan for independence, but it was hard to read whether she had any real intention of ever implementing it, given how the details kept changing and the timetable kept being pushed forever back and back.  An additional complicating factor was Ms Sturgeon's immense talent as a communicator, which meant that if an independence vote did come about, it was likely that she was the ideal person to have in place to lead the Yes campaign.  The simplistic claims of certain bloggers (and politicians) that independence hinged upon Ms Sturgeon being removed from office thus never rang true.

By comparison, the situation with Yousaf is extremely straightforward.  He has no plan for independence ("I'll magically get Yes support to 60% and the barriers will then magically melt away" is not a plan) and he would be completely the wrong front-man even if he did.  What the SNP have just done is not far off the equivalent of the Tories choosing Iain Duncan Smith as their leader in 2001, because they ignored polls showing that Yousaf was the least popular of the credible candidates, and significantly less popular than Labour's Anas Sarwar and Keir Starmer.  Not only, then, is Yousaf's departure a prerequisite for winning independence, it's also a prerequisite that can very plausibly be expected to happen, because there must be a high probability that the SNP are heading for electoral defeat under their unpopular new leader, a setback likely to trigger a new leadership contest.

It's important to stress that it's entirely coincidental that Humza is both bad for independence and unpopular with the public. It would be nice (in a sense) to think that any SNP leader who abandoned plans to win independence would automatically get their comeuppance by losing voters' support, but it doesn't work like that, and it's actually not too hard to imagine a charismatic SNP leader getting away with embracing devolutionism.  But Humza is not that person, because voters don't rate his ministerial track record and probably dislike his personal style too.  Just by chance, then, there's a strong possibility that he's unpopular enough that another change at the top could very swiftly get the independence campaign back on track.

But the snag is that it's impossible to wish for the sequence of events most likely to bring that about.  The SNP losing its majority among Scottish seats at Westminster would be a heavy price to pay for bringing Humza down, and indeed it might be a blow his successor would never recover from. The UK Government and unionist commentators would almost certainly start arguing that independence must be off the table until the SNP get their Westminster majority back, which at the very least would take several years, and might never happen.

It would be much better if Yousaf could be brought down before he leads the SNP to defeat at the general election.  But that would require the SNP to suffer some massive pre-election shock, and the only places I can see that shock coming from are poor opinion poll results, or a very heavy defeat at the likely by-election in Rutherglen.  Would either of those be sufficient to dislodge Yousaf?  Frankly, I'm not convinced they would.  But our hopes of independence may rest on me being proved wrong about that.

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