Pak origin Scotland's 1st Minister Humza Yousaf quits his post after government collapses without allies as he terminates coalition with Greens angering the SNP - Greens to bring no confidence motion shortly

Pakistani origin Humza Yousaf quits as Scotland’s 1^st minister after his government collapses amids

Mr. Yousaf, the leader of the Scottish National Party, announced that he was stepping down, days after the collapse of his coalition government over a funding scam

By Ashe N AyerTop of Form

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Scotland’s first minister, Humza Yousaf, quit his post Monday after serving for over a year as leader of the pro-independence Scottish National Party. His resignation followed a fresh setback to the Scottish National Party, engulfed in a slow-burning crisis over a funding scandal that erupted after a popular leader, Nicola Sturgeon, stepped down last year.

Mr. Yousaf’s departure looked  imminent after he ended a powr sharing agreement with his coalition partner, the Scottish Green Party. The two parties had clashed over climate goals and trans-gender  rights, but his abrupt decision to end the alliance angered the Greens leaving him as the head of a minority government sans allies.

His detractors pressed for two motions of no confidence, scheduled for later this week.

Mr. Yousaf, who was Scotland’s first Muslim leader, announced his plan to quit in a speech on Monday at Bute House in Edinburgh, the official residence of the Scottish first minister.

“I have concluded that repairing our relationships across the political divide can only be done with someone else at the helm,” Mr. Yousaf said in a short and at times emotional statement. He admitted that he had “clearly underestimated the level of hurt and upset” that his abrupt decision to end the coalition had caused, and said he would continue as first minister — the head of the Scottish government — until his successor was elected.

Yusaf’s resignation brings with it a new twist in a dramatic change in fortune for the S.N.P., which has dominated the country’s politics for more than a decade and which campaigns for Scottish independence from the United Kingdom.

Scotland’s Coalition Government: Scotland’s first minister, Humza Yousaf, abruptly ended a coalition agreement between his Scottish National Party and the Scottish Green Party, creating a new set of challenges for an embattled leader whose party has been engulfed in a funding scandal, the New York Times reported from London.

Peter Thierney Murrel , husband of Nicola Sturgeon is at the centre of the partys funding scandal as the Chief Executive of the Scotland National Party. Both Murrel and his wife Sturgeon , 1st minister of Scotland, have been held.

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The party secured a referendum on that issue in 2014, but 55.3 percent of Scots voted to remain in the United Kingdom, and polls suggest that just over half of voters continue to reject independence.

Ms. Sturgeon, who became first minister after that vote, was seen as an effective communicator and a strong, if sometimes divisive, leader of a party that outshone others in Scotland.

“Looking at it in the short term, it has been a dramatic fall,” said James Mitchell, professor of public policy at Edinburgh University, “But the tide turned against them and it has been receding for quite some time. They never got out of campaign mode and they never got back to governing mode.”

Mr. Yousaf succeeded Ms. Sturgeon, who announced her departure in February last year, and he was initially seen as a continuity candidate. That became less of an asset when Ms. Sturgeon’s husband, Peter Murrell, was arrested and later charged in connection with the embezzlement of funds while he was the party’s long-serving chief executive. Ms. Sturgeon was also arrested in the same inquiry but has not been charged, the Times reported..

With the funding scandal looming over the S.N.P., Mr. Yousaf struggled to assert himself, and the crisis coincided with the dimming of prospects for a new independence referendum, the party’s main preoccupation.  The S.N.P.’s troubles have been a bonus for Britain’s main opposition Labour Party, which once dominated Scottish politics but saw its support there collapse in the mid 2010s.

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Labour’s recent recovery in Scotland could yield a number of seats in a general election expected later this year, which would significantly ease the path of the party’s leader, Keir Starmer, to 10 Downing Street, the official home of Britain’s prime minister.

The media however feels that the latest blow to the S.N.P. is to a large extent self-inflicted.

The power-sharing agreement with the Greens, struck by Ms. Sturgeon in August 2021, allowed the S.N.P. to retain power after it emerged as the single largest in that year’s election but failed to win an outright majority. In recent weeks the Greens had become unhappy after the Scottish government retreated from its pledge to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 75 percent by 2030.

Tensions also ran high between the parties over a decision by the National Health Service NHS in Scotland to pause the prescription of puberty blockers and other hormone treatments for minors. That followed an independent review of gender services in England by Hilary Cass, a pediatrician.

The Greens had planned to consult their members on whether to stay in the coalition, but last week Mr. Yousaf pre-empted that decision by terminating the agreement himself. He appeared to assume that he could continue to lead a minority government with the tacit support of the Greens, but the peremptory manner in which he ended the deal infuriated the party. And when Scotland’s Conservative Party pressed a no-confidence vote for Mr. Yousaf, the Greens said they would vote against him.

Labour then demanded a vote of confidence in the Scottish government, presenting a second major hurdle for Mr. Yousaf to surmount. Who will take his place is unclear. Kate Forbes was the runner-up in last year’s contest to succeed Ms. Sturgeon but her socially conservative views provoked opposition from the party’s more progressive wing.

John Swinney, a former deputy first minister, is an experienced politician who might stabilize the party’s fortunes, and on Monday he received the endorsement of Jenny Gilruth, the education secretary in the Scottish government, and Stephen Flynn, who leads the S.N.P. lawmakers in London.

Both had been seen as potential challengers, although without a seat in the Scottish Parliament, Mr. Flynn would not have been unable to serve as first minister. But some see Mr. Swinney as a stopgap candidate, and Professor Mitchell, noting that he had stepped down in 2004 after a difficult spell as leader of the S.N.P., said that making Mr. Swinney leader “would be a sign of desperation.”

On Monday Mr. Swinney, who has yet to declare his candidacy, praised Mr. Yousaf as a pioneer, writing on social media that he was the “first person of color to hold office as first minister,” and had offered “principled and empathetic leadership to our country.”

Earlier, in his resignation speech, Mr. Yousaf paid an emotional tribute to his family, thanking them for their support and saying that he had been given opportunities he never expected as a young boy. “People who looked like me, were not in positions of political influence, let alone leading governments when I was younger,” he said. Politics was sometimes a “brutal business.”

Inputs : New York Times – Condensed from Stephen Castle's  article on Crisis Extends Further