Loading player
Scotland’s parliament on Tuesday appointed Humza Yousaf as prime minister, a day after he was elected leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP). Yousaf takes the place of Nicola Sturgeon, who in early February announced his resignation as prime minister and at the same time as party leader.
Humza Yousaf is 37 years old and was born in Glasgow to a Pakistani father and Kenyan mother. “My grandparents would never have imagined this fate for me. One of them worked at the Glasgow bus company, the other at the Singer factory (sewing machine factory, ndr)» Yousaf said after his appointment as party leader. He also said that faith – he is a Muslim – “does not prevent one from governing a country”, explaining that he will govern “for all Scots” and following the principles of justice.
Yousaf was born in Glasgow on 7 April 1985 and grew up and educated there, becoming, among other things, president of the university’s Muslim Students’ Association. His father was born in Pakistan and emigrated to Scotland with his family in the 1960s, later working as an accountant. The mother was born in Nairobi, Kenya, and in turn emigrated to Scotland after suffering violent racist attacks in her country, as she belongs to a family of Araim descent, an agricultural population that lives mainly in Punjab, in northwest India.
Yousaf decided to join the SNP in 2005 after hearing then party leader Alex Salmond speak out against the war in Iraq: that speech convinced him that independence was the only way for Scotland to avoid taking part in the conflict.
After working in a call centre, Yousaf became a parliamentary assistant to Bashir Ahmad, the first Muslim person elected to the Scottish Parliament in 2007. Ahmad died of a heart attack two years later and Yousaf went on to work as a parliamentary assistant for Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon looking after also of communication within the party.
Humza Yousaf at Glasgow’s Gurdwara Guru Granth Sahib Sikh Sabha Sikh temple and cultural center, March 19, 2023 (Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)
Elected to the Scottish Parliament in 2011 (where he was sworn in English and Urdu, the national language, alongside English, of Pakistan), he became Justice Minister and then Health Minister the following year, during the COVID-19 pandemic: without demerits, but without even «making sparks», they say the observers. As Minister of Justice, Yousaf wanted and got the approval of the provision called Hate Crime Bill, which also includes episodes of discrimination based, among other things, on gender identity in the law against hate crimes.
Yousaf is considered politically very close to Sturgeon’s positions, especially on the issue of independence. And he anticipated that independence remains his main goal. However, it is not clear what the party’s strategy for obtaining it could be. Last June Sturgeon announced his government’s intention to hold a second referendum on independence after the failed one in 2014. Yousaf himself has repeatedly said he is in favor of a second referendum, despite a blockade decided by the British Supreme Court last November , which makes a new vote very complicated.
Humza Yousaf’s first act as the new leader of the SNP was to send a letter to British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak requesting the activation of the clause set out in Article 30 of the Scotland Act del 1998 – the law by which a Scottish regional government was created – which provides for a temporary transfer of sovereignty from the British to the Scottish parliament. It is the same clause that was activated to allow for the 2014 referendum. Sturgeon had already tried unsuccessfully in 2017 and again in 2019. The UK government has already made it clear that Sunak’s response to Yousaf will be no different from that given to Sturgeon, and Yousaf therefore declared that the pro-independence movement must not remain blocked in the procedures, but concretely reactivate the campaign in favor of independence by trying to win over the undecided or those who have declared that they do not want to vote.
– Read also: The Scottish government wants to hold a second independence referendum
Touted as the candidate for continuity, Yousaf carries the same progressive agenda as his predecessors. He has promised, among other things, that he will defend the bill passed by the Scottish Parliament to make it easier for trans people to change the name and gender on documents and which the British Parliament has vetoed.
In 2020, Yousaf spoke about the need to make high-level public jobs in Scotland more inclusive: “At 99 per cent of meetings I go to, I’m the only non-white person in the room (…) Every chair in every public body it is white”. And he declared that he is “firmly committed to the equality of all”. He also openly supported same-sex marriage.
Yousaf is regarded as a competent and people-pleasing politician, but according to many analysts, he lacks Sturgeon’s charisma and authority within the party. His detractors they say that Yousaf, despite having almost the same ideas as Sturgeon, is not up to the level of the outgoing prime minister.
– Read also: The case of the trans woman convicted of rape under discussion in Scotland
Yousaf inherits a party which still ranks well in the polls and which, for fifteen years, dominated the Scottish political landscape. But it is a party increasingly divided between supporters of a progressive line and supporters of a more conservative position, put forward by Kate Forbes, Yousaf’s main internal opponent. In the vote among party members, Yousaf garnered 52 percent, compared to Forbes’ 48 percent, thus obtaining a narrow victory that will force him to confront the deep divisions of his own political arena.
Ahead of the 2024 election, Yousaf then faces a more difficult electoral challenge than the one the SNP faced last time out. Sturgeon’s resignation has in fact presented a huge opportunity for Labor to gain support, and it is no surprise that their leaders have already made several trips to Scotland in recent weeks.