Scotland's First Minister quits
Scotland's First Minister Humza Yousaf announced his resignation on Monday - just over a year after taking office. He was facing a vote of no confidence in the Scottish parliament after his Scottish National Party (SNP) terminated its power sharing deal with the Scottish Greens over a dispute about climate targets. The press blames Yousaf and his SNP for the government's collapse.
Spectacular miscalculation
Humza Yousaf underestimated how the Scottish Greens would react to the termination of the powersharing deal, The Daily Telegraph notes:
“It is remarkable that he did not see this coming. Indeed, the fact that he didn't is a further sign that he was not up to the job - a conclusion that had been reached by many in his party and beyond some months before. ... His problem was that he was very bad at politics. As miscalculations go, his announcement last week of an end to the pact with the Greens was spectacular. His ostensible motivation was to show who was in charge and to take control of Scotland's political agenda, which has been consumed by arguments over gender identity and climate-change targets.”
A disastrous balance sheet
The mistakes of recent years are catching up with the SNP, The Guardian points out:
“Both the causes and consequences of the coalition's rupture go far beyond the response to the climate emergency, immensely important though this is. It had increasingly faced credibility problems in other areas of policy and government too, with a tendency to legislate ambitiously and to consider the implementation problems, and sometimes the public's anxieties, only afterwards. ... The SNP has too often tried to govern as though Scotland is an independent country whose problems are always the UK's fault, rather than focusing on delivering effective and transparent government in areas such as housing, health, education and policing.”