Humza Yousaf resigns: Failure to ditch Scottish Greens from the start was root cause of First Minister's downfall – John McLellan

Time and again, Humza Yousaf seemed unable to recognise the havoc the Greens were causing until it was too late

It might not have been as brief as Liz Truss’s stay in Number 10, but who in March last year could have predicted that Humza Yousaf would only better Henry McLeish’s Bute House residency by just 20 days? The man described only last weekend as a “prince” in the Herald newspaper has been deposed, a First Minister who struggled to shrug off the tag “Useless” and instead ended up redefining “hapless”. By the end, he really couldn’t buy a slice of luck, the only highlight of his tenure being under the tragic circumstances of the brutal massacre in Israel and the war against Hamas in Gaza which followed.

In fairness, his predecessor left him an astoundingly bad hand, but at every turn he made matters worse. He failed to distance himself from Nicola Sturgeon when the police tent went up in her front garden, stood by his man Michael Matheson when his outrageous attempt to evade full responsibility for an £11,000 roaming charges bill on his parliamentary iPad was exposed, and failed to end the corrosive Bute House Agreement with the Greens until it was far too late to salvage any credit.

The charge sheet goes on. Not acting to abandon the deposit return scheme as it descended into chaos, allowing the UK Government to call a halt before more damage was done. Failing to see the growing threat to thousands of homeowners from the proposed Heat in Buildings legislation to force them to rip out gas boilers. Delaying acknowledgement of the devastating findings of the Cass review of gender-identity services, an exacting examination by an acknowledged expert, because it wasn’t carried out in Scotland. Being forced to halt the imposition of highly protected marine areas on fishing communities as protests mounted.

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Claiming to be a “progressive” left-winger and then announcing a council tax freeze out of the blue which benefitted middle and upper earners. Insisting he was a friend of the business community while making the tax regime even less competitive, and in the face of growing housing shortage, denying government interference in the markets with rent controls had anything to do with investors looking elsewhere. The chaotic implementation of the Hate Crime Act, despite three years to get it right and for which the responsibility was entirely his.

And of course, all the while still insisting independence was just round the corner when even supporters knew it wasn’t, and no way of making it look like there was. All that, and more, in a year and twenty days.

Looming SNP rebellion

All smiles as Humza Yousaf holds his first Cabinet meeting at Bute House on March 31 last year (Picture: Russell Cheyne-Pool/Getty Images)

Worse, there was no end in sight. Leading legal figures − and some SNP MSPs – are ready to go to war over the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform Bill, with the plan to abolish the not-proven verdict and introduce a pilot scheme for juryless rape trials which would almost certainly face human rights legal challenges. Rural communities were gearing up to fight the expansion of national parks (a campaign in which I’ve become involved) which threatened to introduce a layer of bureaucracy at a cost of £13m a year per park.

It could, and should have been very different, When Ms Sturgeon quit, she did so because, she said, she recognised she had become divisive. Mr Yousaf bought into that but, as the continuity Sturgeon candidate who stuck to the plan his predecessor bequeathed him, he made the fatal error of not recognising it was not so much the personality which was divisive but the policies, and a change of face would make little difference.

Missed chance to appear decisive

Key to that was the Bute House Agreement with the Greens, which allowed a party commanding five per cent of the vote to shape the Scottish Government’s programme. Time and again, Mr Yousaf failed to recognise the havoc the Greens were creating until it was too late, and in the process made his leadership rival Kate Forbes look like a visionary when she was only stating what sensible people knew was the stark staring obvious.

He made a hero of Fergus Ewing, the closest thing the SNP has to royalty, by suspending him for having the guts to stand up against the toxic Green influence. Had he been less effusive about the Green deal in the leadership contest and then ripped it up as soon as he’d won, then he might have looked decisive, bold and genuinely interested in finding broader consensus. But for the sake of a few votes and a seemingly easy passage for SNP legislation, he didn’t and now he’s history.

As recently as two weeks ago, there was still a chance something could be salvaged when his government abandoned its 2030 target of a 75 per cent reduction in carbon emissions. That was the moment to accept the Bute House Agreement was finished, to thank the Greens for their partnership, and to acknowledge the emissions decision was not in keeping with the partnership’s aims and so the two needed to find their own paths in the last two years of the parliament.

But no, the pretence that all was well was maintained and from then on events spiralled even more out of his control. The Greens’ grassroots threatened to vote down the deal which risked an embarrassing rejection, but in a process which would have hung over him for weeks. Then at last week’s press conference when he announced the plug had been finally pulled, he blithely claimed with his trademark screwed-up wink that they and “Green colleagues” could still be friends. No-one believed a word of it, and when, like the lugubrious bloodhound in Disney’s Aristocats , he insisted that “Ah’m the leader”, it was clear the last trace of authority had evaporated.

Still determined to soldier on, there was both the ignominy of a begging letter to the opposition party leaders, including the jilted Greens, and embarrassing public horse trading with Alex Salmond and his Holyrood Alba Party proxy Ash Regan. The humiliation was complete.