Rishi Sunak's North Sea oil and gas stance shows that he, not Humza Yousaf, is the leader who's standing up for Scotland – Murdo Fraser

As Prime Minister announces new oil and gas licences and funding for Aberdeenshire carbon capture scheme, Scotland’s First Minister wants people to know the colour of a mythical future passport

If, as the SNP like to frame it, our key national political question is who is standing up for Scotland more, it is worth contemplating the last few days. UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has announced more than 100 new licences to explore the North Sea for oil and gas, assuring energy security for the whole of the UK, and thousands of Scottish jobs as we transition to net zero. The SNP want to stop any new development of the North Sea, costing thousands of Scottish jobs.

Prime Minister Sunak also announced that the Acorn Project in Aberdeenshire will share £20 billion of funding as one of four UK projects exploring carbon capture. That is the future for Scottish jobs, and the planet. Meanwhile Scotland’s First Minister Humza Yousaf has announced the colour of the passport in an independent Scotland. A Scotland that has not seceded from the UK. A Scotland that every poll shows does not want to secede. A Scotland in which every poll shows even those who want to secede do not want a referendum any time soon.

Whatever pulse Mr Yousaf has his finger on, I respectfully suggest it is not Scotland’s. If he is spending his time – and taxpayers’ money – researching what colour a mythical document should be, he is clearly too overwhelmed by his job title to even look out of the window at Bute House. It is proof yet again that the SNP are not defined by what they are for, but by what they wish to be against. They have not got a vision for Scotland but a caricature of the UK they ask us all to rebel against.

The SNP’s ambitious Westminster leader Stephen Flynn could not bring himself to welcome something he has asked for in the investment in carbon capture. Instead, he said he was “scunnered” – you see what he did there with a good Scots word – that it had not come earlier. Perhaps he wanted the announcement before the technology was developed.

It is tempting to say that the SNP have run out of ideas. But, in truth, they have only really had one. They have few ideas to run out of. The Scottish economy has stalled. Our health service is in crisis. Our schools are a parody of what they once were and the education system that made this nation great.

But our First Minister has an idea. Our new passport will be burgundy. It is tempting to suggest that Mr Yousaf is fiddling while Rome burns, but I doubt he could find the right end of a fiddle after his predecessor presided over cuts in funding for music education across the country. But this week demonstrates that the SNP operate in the interests of their own sect rather than the nation. Even when the UK Government acts unambiguously in the Scottish interest they have to find fault. They have to oppose.

Theirs is not the attitude of a grown-up national administration working with their neighbours, as we must do whatever the constitutional arrangements. Theirs is the truculent politics of an adolescent whose sense of identity is incoherent.

Rishi Sunak visits the Shell St Fergus Gas Plant in Peterhead on Monday to announce funding for the Acorn carbon capture project and 100 new licences for oil and gas exploration (Picture: Euan Duff/WPA pool/Getty Images)

The SNP’s view of how we address the climate crisis is not to find a way of adding to a global solution, to add a specifically Scottish contribution, but to find a way of turning the future of the planet into a Scottish problem with England. And that mindset is deeply damaging to Scotland, trumpeted by those who assure themselves that they care for the nation more than anyone else yet do such damage to that which they claim to adore.

Scotland has many problems – many the result of the last 16 years of SNP maladministration. Mr Yousaf is not addressing any of them. In contrast, even though the polls are currently against him, Mr Sunak is using his time in power to do the right thing in the nation’s interest.

Our First Minister appears to be trying to shore up his core support, not within the country but within his increasingly fractious and fractured party. We should not forget that although he was the establishment’s choice to succeed Nicola Sturgeon, in a truncated race Mr Yousaf was run very close, from a standing start, by Kate Forbes. She gracefully pointed out that he had failed in every ministerial post he has held, from justice to transport to health. Failing upwards, the odds on him being a success do not look to have changed any, even though he now has the top job.

The truth is that in the last week our First Minister has done nothing to make Scotland prosper while the UK Prime Minister has acted decisively to ensure we do. Mr Yousaf panders to his own sect, while Labour leader Keir Starmer appears to be in the pocket of the environmental lobby which helps fund him and his tree-hugging predecessor Ed Miliband. Both act in their own interests of party management while Mr Sunak is acting in the national interest.

Far from convincing a nation tired of constitutional disputes that secession from the UK is the answer, our current First Minister appears incapable of proving that the current devolution can work in the interests of ordinary Scots. Instead, he seems more focused on attempting to prove to members within his own party that he is advancing their cause of separation. I doubt even they will believe him.

Despite having the keys to Bute House, and a majority at Holyrood that should allow him to bring about whatever reform he chooses, the truth is Mr Yousaf does not appear up to the job. If Scots are looking for someone to truly stand up for Scotland, they will find that man resides in Downing Street. His name is Rishi Sunak.

Murdo Fraser is a Scottish Conservative MSP for Mid-Scotland and Fife