Has the SNP's Clown Car Run Out of Road?

Holyrood was supposed to symbolise a new future for Scotland. With Humza Yousaf's resignation it has instead become a warning of what happens when an independence movement is utterly corrupted.

There has been a heartwarming outbreak of performative empathy for poor Humza Yousaf, who has resigned as Scotland’s First Minister. Inshallah.

Here’s Pete Wishart, an SNP MP who’s almost as poisonous as Yousaf himself, wearing his heart on his twitter sleeve. Bless.

Such convincing sincerity.

Wishart, who was no-one’s idea of dignified during the Independence Referendum, as he spat acid at opponents, said much the same about Nicola Sturgeon when she resigned and Peter Murrell, the party’s CEO, before he was arrested. On corruption charges.

If that was not uplifting enough there was this touching tribute from no one’s idea of an empathetic individual, John Nicolson MP. According to the Waddling Walrus of Perthshire, the First Minister is a fine public servant in the “country’s best traditions”.

I suppose Scotland does have a long tradition of casual misogyny, like that of Yousaf’s, but …is it really a fine one?

There’s probably no point in asking Nicolson. He is to misogyny what those giant muck-spreading machines used by farmers in his constituency are to manure. Too familiar with the material to judge objectively.

It wasn’t just party colleagues that fawned over Yousaf though. The radio journalist Iain Dale described him as “a fundamentally decent person”.

Yes, if fundamentally decent means not bothering to mention on Holocaust Memorial Day…..the Jews.

Pardon me if I don’t join in this orgy of sympathy with Yousaf, who has courageously resigned from a job for which no sensible person thought he was ever qualified.

The reason I refuse to send a sympathy card isn’t that for the rest of his life this living experiment in mental vacancy will be paid over 50% of his salary by way of a pension; meaning he gets at least £50K a year. Maybe he’ll send it to Gaza.

Nor is it his notorious white, white, white speech that criticised the fact almost everyone in senior positions in a country that’s 96.5% white…..was white. Quelle surprise.

It isn’t even his claim just a month ago that critics of his new hate legislation were all far right. No, my skin-creeping loathing of Yousaf comes from the way that for years he has perfectly embodied the empty-headed culture of the Scottish government that above all else prizes press-releases and policy window-display. Over actually doing things.

It’s my contention, and feel free to disagree since it’s still a free country despite Yousaf’s best efforts, that the First Minister wallowed in identitarian politics because he was singularly uninterested in and probably incapable of the painstaking, often dull, but essential job of making a practical difference to the lives of the people who paid his salary.

Identity-based politics allowed Humza and the rest of the SNP leadership to sound off, wave shrouds and endlessly bleat about minorities. God forbid we judged his performance on outcomes for the majority whom, he appears to have failed to notice, are not living it large in Scotland….or expecting £50K a year in a pension for failing upwards.

He was at it again yesterday as he intoned,

… “let us also acknowledge that far too often, in our country, hatred continues to rear its ugly head. In a world where every issue seems to descend into a toxic culture war, it is often the most marginalised in our society who bear the brunt.

… Each and every one of us must resist the temptation of populism at the expense of minorities, particularly in a general election year.”

Is it racism to suggest Humza Yousaf delivering a warning about populism is the….pot calling the kettle black?

Today’s boo hoo drama, all quivering lips and shaky voices, along with its supporting empathy chorus was in marked contrast to the high hopes of 25 years ago. Then the Scottish Parliament was sold to us Scots as more than just a way to run our own affairs better than London ever could. It would dispel, we were told, that insidious ‘Scottish cringe’ so many of us had internalised as citizens of a nation that had long struggled to express itself and adapt to the modern world, burdened as it was with crumbling 19th Century industry and the empty kitsch tartanry of popular culture.

Holyrood, it was promised, would cast the shadows of Harry Lauder, Andy Stewart, the Krankies (cough…) and other outdated visions of Scotland into the dustbin of the past where they belonged as we embraced a new seriousness; a richer cultural intelligence and modernity. Blah di blah di blah.

It would also for good measure serve as an advertisement internationally for our alleged administrative genius and practical nous. Stop laughing at the back.

It’s Tony Blair who often gets the credit- or the blame- for Devolution. Sure, it happened under his watch but the truth is he was never that keen. He was pushed into it by a clutch of capable Scottish Labour colleagues who were, in comparison to Sturgeon, Yousaf or any of the present SNP/Green top brass, positively immersed in Scottish history and culture.

I knew the Rt Hon John Smith MP and he, like Donald Dewar and Gordon Brown, believed passionately in greater powers for Scotland as a way of our nation ‘singing its own distinctive song’. Smith died climbing a Munro, one of the highest mountains in the country. I’m pretty sure Sturgeon, Harvie or Humza would be hard-pressed to name a Munro, never mind be interested in climbing one.

For Holyrood’s founding generation the smooth-running hum of our civic assembly was intended to signal to the world at large we could be trusted as a magnet for foreign investment. The fact the new Holyrood building promptly spiralled in cost from £40M to an incredible £414M was dismissed as an aberration. No one could have guessed that overspend was a harbinger of things to come.