Humza Yousaf sold himself to the SNP membership in his truncated leadership campaign as the continuity candidate and he has at least been true to the spirit of that thought. His message is continuously untrue. Just as his predecessor Nicola Sturgeon misled SNP members that a new referendum was just over the hill – one more heave – so he maintains that tradition. That falsehood.

At the weekend, fewer than the number of lost SNP members that made his new chief executive Murray Foote resign from the party turned up at the First Minister’s rally. Many thousands fewer. Despite the First Minister claiming in advance that the pro-independence march in Edinburgh would be “the biggest our cause has ever seen”, most estimates put the turnout at no more than 4,000. It hardly gives the impression of a movement that thinks it’s on the route to victory.

Yet Humza Yousaf continues with his predecessor’s deceit that independence is just a short journey away. In truth, they are well short of even buying a campervan to go on that expedition. He can describe where he allegedly wants Scotland to get to, but he still cannot explain why he wants to get there or how he will. His referendum chat appears like displacement activity for a man who does not know how to govern.

Little progress has been made by the independence movement in the decade or so since their defeat in the referendum. They still cannot explain what the question is that Scotland faces to which secession from the United Kingdom is the answer. When it comes to basics like what currency we might have, still the nationalists are stumped.

It all leaves us posing the question: what exactly is the purpose of the current SNP administration at Holyrood? If independence isn’t going to be delivered – which even its own members now accept – then what is its purpose? There is no sense of ‘vision’ and once politicians are accused of lacking that, they are gone, because it is so hard to define. You cannot regather it once the allegation of its lacking is made.

Nicola Sturgeon inherited the iron discipline of her predecessor, Alex Salmond. His second term as leader made doubt in the leadership a sin. She managed to continue with that orthodoxy until it began to be seen through and now seems transparent. That discipline is not Humza Yousaf’s inheritance.

He is dressed in the clothes of a failing government. No economic policy to speak of. A failing health service despite the faith and dedication of its staff. A school system which is failing. A university system that only survives on the revenue of overseas students. A drug-death rate still a European record. And Nicola Sturgeon’s attempts to deal with our unhealthy relationship with alcohol were a remarkable failure he feels the need to defend.

It may be a vaguely amusing theme for political sketch writers to observe that Humza Yousaf and Anas Sarwar are two public school boys from the southside of Glasgow, just three years apart in the same school, striving for leadership of Scotland like two adolescents seeking to be house captain, but the truth is these are exam questions neither of them is up to.

We learned yesterday that the latest wheeze from the First Minister is to write to Rishi Sunak demanding tax cuts for businesses. The lack of self-awareness on display is breathtaking.

Humza Yousaf has inherited an administration which has made Scotland the highest-taxed part of the UK. Business rate reliefs available to the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors in England haven’t been delivered in Scotland, despite the Barnett consequentials being available to fund them. SNP ministers rail against “Tory tax cuts” and demand to know how these will be funded. Rather than use the extensive powers they hold to cut tax and promote economic growth – now, apparently, back in fashion – they demand that instead the UK Government cut business taxes. You really couldn’t make it up.

As Kate Forbes so memorably pointed out, our First Minister was a failure at justice, couldn’t make the trains run on time at transport, and failed – truly, madly, deeply failed – at health. And so when times are tough, the tough get going. Or, as in his case, the weak take the easy slip road his predecessor showed him to tell the party faithful that the promised land is just around the corner. And so the answer to everything is now: put out more flags.

But the problem for Humza Yousaf is that the numbers of the faithful are dwindling. The gullible are getting out. The markets are selling Yousafs. What the country needs is fresh ideas and leadership. Instead, our new First Minister seems to be looking backwards.

When we look back at Nicola Sturgeon’s long tenure in office, it is difficult to think of anything she achieved other than being in office. She asked us to judge her on her record in closing the educational attainment gap, for example. By any measure, she failed. But the trick she played on the Scottish public, from her daily Covid briefings onward, was to get through the moment.

The same seems true of her successor. Humza Yousaf seems to have no genuine ambitions for his country having already achieved the one ambition he had for himself – to become First Minister. We deserve better. Flags should no longer be blindfolds to what Scotland is becoming.

Even the independence movement seems to have woken up to the fact that it is going nowhere. That leaves a massive hole at the heart of the SNP administration at Holyrood. Time is running out for them to discover a sense of purpose.

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

SNP has used flags as blindfolds but voters are starting to see through their trickery – Murdo Fraser

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