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Humza Yousaf announced on Monday that he will step down as leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) and as First Minister of Scotland. He communicated this with a speech held in his residence in Edinburgh, Bute House. Yousaf said, however, that he will remain in office as prime minister until the party appoints a successor.
Yousaf’s resignation is not particularly surprising, given that there had been great agitation in the government for a few days: on Thursday Yousaf had announced the end of the agreement which in 2021 had allowed the formation of a government majority, supported by the Green party. The agreement had been signed by the then Prime Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, and provided for the Greens to be entrusted with two ministries. In recent times, however, relations between the SNP and the Greens had deteriorated, especially after the government decided to cancel plans to reduce CO2 emissions by 75 percent compared to 1990 levels by 2030.
Even following the end of the agreement, Yousaf said he wanted to continue to govern without the Greens, thus leading a minority government. However, the opposition had asked to organize two votes of no confidence, one on Yousaf and one on his government: in the end parliament did not vote, but according to many indiscretions the prime minister would not have obtained confidence or, in any case, he would have found himself in difficulty. The vote of no confidence in Yousaf’s role would not have been binding, but if the government had lost the confidence of parliament it would have been necessary to find a new prime minister, or call new elections.
In parliament the SNP has 63 MPs out of 128: to overcome the vote of confidence it would have had to secure the vote of Ash Regan, the only MP from the Alba Party, a nationalist party born in February 2021 and which Regan had joined last October by leaving the SNP itself. In his speech Yousaf said that he could get the necessary votes, but that he was not willing to “trade my values and principles just to maintain power”.
Yousaf is 39 years old and had been in government since March 2023, when he was elected leader of the SNP in place of Sturgeon, who a few weeks earlier had announced her resignation as prime minister and at the same time as party leader. He was born in Glasgow to a Pakistani father and a Kenyan mother, and was elected to the Scottish Parliament for the first time in 2011: he was Minister of Justice and then of Health, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
It is unclear who might be proposed as his successor within the SNP. Someone indiscretions they speak of John Swinney, who served as deputy prime minister between 2014 and 2023. However, it is not clear whether Swinney is interested to replace Yousaf. In any case, the next Scottish First Minister will take office at a particularly important time, given that general elections will be held in the United Kingdom in early 2025 (and therefore also in Scotland, one of the four nations that make up the country).