Earlier this week, we look at how the arrest on Sunday of Nicola Sturgeon in connection with the ongoing fraud investigation into the Scottish National Party’s finances is creating huge problems for her successor, Humza Yousaf.
The First Minister ran for (and only narrowly won) the leadership of his party by presenting himself has her anointed if unofficial dauphin; she also remains extremely popular with the separatist grassroots.
Yet by failing to draw a line between his government and hers, Yousaf is exposing himself to huge danger of Operation Branchform does end up finding criminal conduct at the root of what has happened to over £600,000 in missing donations.
Since Monday, his decision not to suspend Sturgeon has come under fierce criticism – not least because it is so out-of-keeping with how she herself handled such matters when SNP leader. As Douglas Ross put it: “Nicola Sturgeon would have suspended Nicola Sturgeon”.
Michelle Thomson, a Nationalist MSP, has also called for the former first minister to lose the whip, arguing it would be “consistent” with the decision to withdraw it from herself in 2015 following media reports of her property dealings. This sparked another row when Keith Brown, the SNP’s leader depute, said that Thomson had voluntarily resigned the whip, something she categorically denies.
That such arguments are being conducted publicly is yet more evidence that the phalanx-like discipline which Sturgeon and Alex Salmond before her imposed on the party, and which made it such a formidable force in politics if not in government, is breaking down.
Unless Yousaf (or perhaps, in the fullness of time, Kate Forbes) can reverse that slide, it might be that the SNP is on track to revert somewhat to the fractious, fringe force that it was before Salmond first took the leadership. If so, recent results might well be no indication of future electoral performance.
But the lack of precedent also means Yousaf can’t plead standard procedure. The decision to allow Sturgeon to remain part of the Nationalist parliamentary group at Holyrood is his, and his alone.
Far from backing off, however, the First Minister seems to be doubling down. According to the Daily Telegraph, he told a meeting of SNP MSPs that those who didn’t support Sturgeon should quit, warning that they were creating a split which jeopardised independence (and what doesn’t?).
Yousaf himself says he “did not read the riot act”. But whatever the truth, it is significant that there was apparently a “substantial minority” in favour of taking action against Sturgeon. Are these the same dissident MSPs which previously indicated they were going to keep the Forbes flame, and were accused by loyalists of plotting a “shadow government”?
In the end, the group resolved to buy the former first minister some flowers. Decisive action, it was not.