Last month, we (perhaps slightly cheekily) asked the question: “Can such a conservative as Kate Forbes lead the SNP?” The answer, fascinatingly, turned out to be almost.
When that piece was written, Forbes’ campaign seemed on the cusp of ending before it even got started as journalists and activists (as well as, to hear them tell it, her own SNP colleagues and Green coalition partners) discovered that not only were her Christian convictions sincerely held, but that she would not renounce them for the sake of advancing her career.
Given the narrow margin of her eventual defeat (a 52-48 per cent loss in the second round; the cursèd ratio strikes again), this probably did cost Forbes’ the keys to Bute House in the end.
But given that Yousaf was the anointed candidate of the Nationalist hierarchy, and in light of the SNP’s formidable track record for internal discipline, that she fought it as close as she did is nonetheless a remarkable result that needs interrogating.
Part of the answer surely lies in the fact that Forbes is, as an individual politician, more impressive than her victorious rival; not for nothing was she written up for years as the most impressive member of the SNP’s next generation and a likely successor to Sturgeon. Whilst there is precious little in the Scottish Government’s record for any minister to write home about, Yousaf’s record is deeply unimpressive.
But still, 52-48! Despite the huge backlash against her religious convictions. Despite the Scottish Greens threatening to pull out of their coalition. Despite Yousaf being the obvious recipient of Sturgeon’s benediction. And most bafflingly of all despite him, for all his shortcomings, being pretty obviously the best choice, at least if your priority is keeping the SNP in power.
Forbes’ proposal to shift rightwards on economic policy may well have proven better for Scotland (although Conservatives would think that). She may well have been the candidate best-placed to take the fight to Douglas Ross and try and win back the rural seats lost to the Tories over the past few years.
But the foundations of the hegemonic position the SNP secured in the wake of the 2014 referendum are progressive, at least superficially.
The party’s own electoral dominance rests on having routed Labour and captured its former heartlands in heavily-populated central Scotland; its Holyrood majority relies on separatist voters gaming the two-ballot system and electing a clutch of Greens, who have historically been happy to subordinate almost any issue to the cause of independence but not, it turns out, their social liberalism.
Had Forbes won, the Scottish Government would probably have lost its majority at Holyrood almost immediately, and Anas Sarwar would have been handed a huge boon in his efforts to win back left-leaning voters who have defected to the SNP.
So given all that, why did so many rank-and-file Nationalists back her?
We can probably rule out an overlooked wellspring of sympathy with her religious and social convictions; central Scotland is probably one of the few parts of the country where Protestantism lingers as a political force, true, but that section of the electorate is, er, not voting SNP.
Forbes’ genuine strengths as an individual politician, and Yousaf’s weaknesses, likely explain part of it. There may also be a much stronger Tartan Tory element amongst the wider membership than the SNP’s tightly-controlled public image under Sturgeon has led many to believe.
But another likely factor is mounting grassroots impatience with a gradualist strategy which, whilst perfectly sensible as a means of maintaining the SNP as a political force, has palpably failed to move the country closer to independence.
That failure is not just disappointing for the Nationalist leadership, it’s dangerous. The so-called Yes Movement, which was more-or-less rolled into the party after the referendum in 2014, is united by little more than support for independence.
Without the illusion that the next big push is just around the corner, this coalition starts fraying at both ends, losing both those committed to independence at all costs and those for whom it is only the supposed imminence of the struggle which allows them to overlook the Scottish Government’s record on schools, hospitals, ferries, and the rest.
This is why Sturgeon seemed to announce a new referendum campaign every year, even has her party appears to have spent the £600,000 fighting fund raised for it on another things. And each time, it was a little less plausible, which is why by the end the First Minister, a confirmed gradualist, was flirting with the idea of treating the next general election as a de facto referendum.
One thing which has been made very clear over the course of this leadership campaign is the scale of the disaffection. First, the SNP were forced to reveal that they have lost over 30,000 members, despite initially issuing stern denials to the press. Then only 70 per cent of those remaining bothered to cast their ballot, despite the stakes.
Yousaf, Sturgeon’s preferred successor, shares her gradualist instincts, and is the least likely to embark on any course that risks toppling the house of cards she bequeaths him.
But he seems to have no more idea than she how to navigate the Strait of Messina facing the Scottish Government, to resolve the tension between stubbornly immobile public opinion and an increasingly impatient base.
Unless he can find one Yousaf may end up, as did she, facing what amounts to a choice between Scylla and Charybdis, of risking it all in a mad lunge for separation or watching as the foundations of the house that Sturgeon built disintegrate beneath him.
If so, who knows. Forbes’ time may come yet. The separatist eschaton isn’t going to immanentize itself, after all.