Tears flow, but former SNP golden boy brought it all on himself
Bute House, midday. Doe-eyed Humza Yousaf blubbed his way through his resignation, looking shattered after a weekend of being shouted at by Nicola Sturgeon (costing him a fortune in reversed calls).
Yes, he had broken the coalition; yes, he’d led the SNP to disaster. But, he said, if he’d learnt one thing in this job, it’s how admired Scotland is across the world. “If only every person in Scotland could be afforded the opportunity to be First Minister for just one day.”
It’s a beautiful dream, and if the SNP goes on like this, it might come true. They’re getting through leaders faster than the Tories get through, well, leaders – and once they’ve exhausted all 63 MSPs, they’ll start appointing the First Minister by postcode lottery (like jury duty, citizens will be pretending they’re mad or a vicar to get out of it).
Scientists at the University of Jiang Zemin in Surrey have come up with a measurement of time in office called the Truss: 44 days. They thus calculate that Yousaf is worth nine Trusses, but only one third of a Boris. Of course, everyone aspires to be a complete Nicola – who, if the current investigation goes badly, is looking at four and a half years.
Ah, the SNP. Truly they are the Peronists of Scotland. They all talk in that odd staccato way – “I have ALWAYS been GUIDED by my VALUES” – and land on the wrong bits of each word. Humza was the golden boy of the “snPEE”, but the shine faded with his looks.
The beard was a mistake; shady and shifty. His collars never quite fit. Once a veritable Disney prince, he came to resemble a defendant after a night in the cells – the crime would be petty, something to do with skips – and bereft of an escape route to independence, could only play identity politics.
‘Toll on physical and mental health’
To his last breath, Yousaf will insist that Britain is bigoted and Scotland wants out. But if the Union is that bad why, as he acknowledged at Bute, are the leaders of Wales, London and Westminster all people of colour? With the other “firsts” taken, Yousaf’s administration appeared desperate to invent its own. Scotland: the first country to ban cars and marry cats. Scotland: the first country to be run exclusively by idiots.
The tears began to flow. This job, he said: “It takes its toll on your physical and mental health.” One wanted to hug him, to say: “There, there: it’s not as if you were in charge of Nato. You were First Minister of Scotland. That’s about as taxing as running a medium-sized leisure centre. You don’t see Sadiq Khan crying, do you? Or Ian Paisley?”
A gruff television pundit, one of those old-fashioned Scots who doesn’t cry because Calvin was against it, described the fall of Yousaf as a “self-immolation”. Holyrood hinges on consensus. Forgetting this, Yousaf angered and alienated the Greens, a group of political innocents so strange and harmless, it’s as if woodland folk had stumbled into politics. He brought all this on himself.
We cut, of course, to Alex Salmond standing beneath an Alba umbrella, grinning from ear to ear. Out of government but back in power, the true King of Scotland.
