The new first minister has to be ruthless towards those who presided over the SNP’s current crisis if he is to win back trust
Almost seven years ago, David Cameron raised liberal hackles when he hummed a happy tune after resigning as prime minister and leaving other politicians – and the country – to clean up his Brexit mess. At that time, Nicola Sturgeon was riding high on the moral high ground, pitting her vision of an independent Scotland within the EU against Cameron’s cynical squandering of the UK’s membership. Today, the moral high ground has crumbled under her feet, and her own cynicism is unmistakable. Like Cameron, Sturgeon left her post with a breezy goodbye. But her successor, unlike Theresa May, who knew she would have to deliver on the leave vote, was not privy to the carnage trailing in Sturgeon’s wake.
Succeeding her was never going to be easy, but Humza Yousaf’s haunted expression suggests he had no idea of the toxicity of the chalice being offered him by those who purported to be friends. What kind of a party allows a leadership election to be held without telling those competing that its membership numbers are in freefall, its finances are a mess, its auditors have quit and the investigation into a “missing” £600,000 is about to turn its spotlight on to its former chief executive Peter Murrell and former treasurer Colin Beattie? Oh, and that there has been a £110,000 camper van bought by the party sitting on a driveway for two years.
Dani Garavelli is a freelance journalist and columnist for the Herald
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