Scotland's first minister, Humza Yousaf, resigned this Monday after barely a year in office and after losing the support of the Green Party for backtracking on measures to combat the climate crisis. Yousaf announced his decision in a press conference after two days of "reflection" over the weekend. The leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) had succeeded Nicola Sturgeon in March 2023, who retired shortly before an investigation began into misappropriation of the party's finances, which has now affected her husband, Peter Murrell.
Difficult days in Scotland
The Scottish government in which power is shared between Humza Yousaf's Scottish National Party (SNP), which holds 63 seats in the 129-seat parliament, and the much smaller Scottish Greens (7 seats), collapsed last Thursday, after the executive decided to abandon its commitments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as the first minister confirmed. Yousaf called an emergency meeting of his government to address this rupture, which forces the SNP to face the future as a minority government. However, the two co-leaders of the Greens, Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater, left the meeting called by the first minister at his Edinburgh headquarters before it started.
The Scottish Greens then accused the SNP of an "act of political cowardice" after it ended the Bush House Agreement, signed in 2021 by the two parties to govern Scotland. "I have formally notified Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater that I am terminating the Bush House agreement with immediate effect," the first minister told a press conference in Edinburgh. However, it was Yousaf who then decided to spend a few days - for practical purposes, the weekend - to decide on his future, and now he has chosen to resign.
Humza Yousaf, one year as Scottish first minister
After succeeding the charismatic Sturgeon, Yousaf's resignation has made him the protagonist of the shortest mandate since 2001, only holding office for a year, and failing to captivate the electorate since being elected first minister on 29th March 2023, at the age of 39. A native of Glasgow, of a Kenyan mother and a Pakistani father, he became the first non-white and Muslim to take office as Scotland's first minister, making history in Scotland. Previously, he was in charge of the health portfolio under Sturgeon, and his management was heavily criticized by the opposition.
An admirer of the work of his predecessor, Yousaf pledged to continue her social policies that achieved great success for the party, including financial assistance to recent parents to facilitate their return to the labour market.