UKAnalysis

Nicola Sturgeon derides Humza Yousaf’s ‘catastrophic’ handling of Scottish government deal

SNP may be back on top of the polls but it can’t escape the internal squabbles of recent years

Scottish National Party: Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf in 2021. Photograph: Andy Buchanan/PA
Scottish National Party: Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf in 2021. Photograph: Andy Buchanan/PA
Mark Paul's picture
Mark Paul
Fri Jan 31 2025 - 16:47

When Nicola Sturgeon quit as Scotland’s first minister in spring of 2023, her successor Humza Yousaf was portrayed as her handpicked “continuity candidate”.

He lasted barely a year before quitting as leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) after a row with its governing partner, the Scottish Greens.

However close they may have been in the past, barbed comments from Sturgeon that have emerged this week suggest relations between them may be frostier from now on.

Yousaf’s handling of the end of the Bute House Agreement with the Greens, which precipitated his downfall last year, was “catastrophic”, Sturgeon said. She also accused him of failing to “reset” the SNP’s leadership that she said she had resigned to make space for and had expected would happen.

READ MORE

Meanwhile, as cracks emerge between its two previous leaders, the current SNP chief and first minister, John Swinney, has confounded his critics by leading the party back into a clear lead over Labour at the top of opinion polls – a prospect that seemed far-fetched when it was hammered in Westminster elections last July.

The veteran Swinney was dismissed by the SNP’s political rivals as a tired old force when he replaced Yousaf last year. Yet he now looks odds-on to emulate serial vote winner Sturgeon by leading the SNP back into government at Holyrood elections scheduled in 2026.

Still, the wounds from the party’s recent turbulence still weep.

Sturgeon and Yousaf were both interviewed in October by the Institute for Government (IfG) think tank for a series on devolved government, which was embargoed until this week. She was asked about the Bute House Agreement, which many in the SNP blamed for dragging the party too far to the left on social issues to ground that seemed to favour the Greens.

Sturgeon told the IfG that when the SNP fell just short of a Holyrood majority, she preferred a formal deal with the Greens because it would be cheaper than spending “hundreds of millions” bargaining with it to pass each vote.

[ There are good reasons for Irish people to pay close attention to what’s happening in Scotland ]

Yousaf, in his interview, revealed that he decided to end the agreement because his phone was “burning hot” with complaints from SNP members over the partnership with the Greens, whom he feared would dump his party first. So he decided overnight to walk away from it; the Greens subsequently promised to oppose him in a confidence vote, sparking his resignation.

“I think crashing that agreement was catastrophic and – politics aside – totally the wrong thing to do for stable government,” said Sturgeon, in unusually biting criticism of her “continuity” successor.

She also admitted she had become a “polarising” figure in Scottish politics by the time of her resignation – another former SNP minister, Fergus Ewing, complained to IfG’s interviewers that Sturgeon had become “obsessed” with trans rights, counter to the public mood.

“I think it turns out I was wrong about this, but I convinced myself that if I took myself out somebody else would be able to reset things,” said Sturgeon of her decision to make way for Yosuaf, adding, “Obviously that [reset] didn’t happen and hasn’t happened.” However, she also seemed to concede that a “global phenomenon” against political incumbents played a role in Yousaf’s struggles.

Yousaf, meanwhile, said that, counter to the continuity narrative, Sturgeon had actually “kept her distance” from him after he became first minister: “I didn’t feel like I had Nicola to hand [for advice].”

Meanwhile, as the party dreams of victory again, the long shadow of Operation Branchform – the police investigation into SNP financing that threw the party into turmoil after Sturgeon quit – still hangs over it.

Her husband Peter Murrell, from whom she recently separated, has been charged with embezzlement. Sturgeon was also arrested but maintains her innocence, as a police file has been left sitting with Scottish prosecutors since last August.