The End of a Very Small Song
The SNP have dumped their Green coalition partners. But this will not solve Humza Yousaf's problems.
The SNP have sacked the Greens, collapsing the coalition which has governed Scotland since August 2021. Here are a few thoughts on why this has happened and what it might portend for the future of Scottish - and, indeed, British - politics.
I am actually on holiday this week but the collapse of the coalition between the Scottish National Party and the Greens is the kind of development which merits some commentary even in a week dominated by other, frankly more attractive, distractions.
The first thing to note about this termination is that it is very funny. According to Lorna Slater, one half of the Green leadership, “This is an act of political cowardice by the SNP, who are selling out future generations to appease the most reactionary forces in the country.” Jings!
But, actually, it’s worse than that. According to Slater, “the most reactionary and backwards-looking forces within the first minister’s party have forced him to do the opposite of what he himself had said was in Scotland’s best interests.”
"By contrast we as co-leaders of the Scottish Greens were prepared to put our own political careers on the line with our members, to defend our achievements in government, despite enduring all that SNP backbenchers and others threw against us.
“What a pity he didn’t have the fortitude or the bravery to do the same. If they can’t stand up to members of their own party, how can anyone expect them to stand up to the UK Government at Westminster and defend the interests of Scotland?” Crivvens!
And Slater was not finished there: “I appeal to those SNP members who do care about climate, trans rights, independence and our country to consider if they are in the right party for their values, or if their home should be with us as we prepare to step up our defence of the planet in opposition.”
“Finally, to all those who will feel hurt and betrayed today, know this: our resolve is absolute, we will not abandon you as the SNP have, we will fight for your future with every breath we take.” Ochone, ochone!
Truly, you would need a heart of stone not to laugh at this triumphant display of self-aggrandising bathos. The Green view, as articulated by Slater, is that Humza Yousaf and the SNP have “betrayed the electorate” as well as the future and, for good measure, the planet.
To which most voters in Scotland - the electorate in question - will say: “And not before time”.
Nevertheless and to give the Greens some credit, they at least understood that in a coalition arrangement the smaller party enjoys the whip hand so long as - and this is important - they remember not to overplay it. The junior partner can scuttle the government whenever it chooses to do so but this is a threat which cannot be made too frequently or on matters where public opinion is overwhelmingly against the government’s policies.
This is where, amusingly once again, the Greens made their bloomer. In the past month two issues have caused much gnashing of teeth in Green circles - which, it should be said, are very small circles - and the Greens are on the wrong side of opinion on each of them.
First, there is the embarrassing but sensible abandonment of climate change targets that were entirely unachievable. The Scottish government’s proposal to reduce carbon emissions by 75 percent by 2030 was made for public relations reasons, not because it was ever actually plausible. It sounded good and that was enough. Scotland, look you, had “world-leading” targets and this being the case, what did it matter that the target had no chance of being met? Feel and admire the ambition; ignore reality and delivery. As such, it was a perfect example of how the SNP has come to value the appearance of style over anything so tedious as actual substance. Praise us for our good intentions and please ignore our results. This is a kind of humbug of ancient presbyterian lineage and consequently very, very, Scottish.
The second issue was the government’s reaction to the Cass Review into the treatment of gender-questioning children by NHS England. For years, Scottish government ministers have pretended that Scottish children are magically different from English ones and that what happens in England need have no implications for Scotland. Cass exploded that nonsense. The Scottish NHS followed the same principles as the now discredited approach taken in England.
Yet the Greens, laughably, declined to accept Cass’s recommendations. Their LGBT youth wing accused Cass of “social murder” - note, please, who is really fighting a hysterical “culture war” here - and as Slater’s emphasis on “trans rights” today makes clear, the question of “gender-affirming” care became a crisis issue for the coalition. Still, it is good to be reminded that you are a “reactionary” if you think it might be unwise to put children onto a medical pathway of unproven utility and from which there is, typically, no exit.
Bearing all this in mind, the Greens planned to ballot their members next month to determine whether the party should remain in government. The future of Yousaf’s administration would be decided by a few thousand people who, even by the standards of political party memberships, are entirely unrepresentative of the public at large. Cranks and weirdos, frankly.
This, is turned out, was a blackmail attempt too far. The Greens overplayed their hand and their bluff has been called. The importance of Cass to this should not, I think, be under-estimated.
There are plenty of nationalists who think this should have happened some time ago. They note that many of the issues which have caused the Scottish government no end of bother since 2021 are plastered with Green fingerprints. There is the botched deposit return scheme, there is the postponed proposal to close ten percent of Scottish seas to all human activity, there is the recent suggestion wood-burning stoves should be banned from new houses (and, in time, from all homes), and there is, of course, the Green enthusiasm for gender recognition reforms and associated trans issues.
All of this is both true and not the whole truth. To understand why, it is necessary to return to the coalition’s beginning.
The Scottish parliament has 129 members. One of these, obviously, must sit as the presiding officer (speaker). 65 votes, then, are required for a majority. At the last election, in May 2021, the SNP - then led by Nicola Sturgeon, if you can remember her - won 64 seats. Bringing the eight Green MSPs into government would both ease parliamentary management and, symbolically but significantly, entrench a pro-independence government and by doing so give greater moral, though not legal, weight to the Scottish government’s thirst for a second referendum on independence.
But it did something else too. For the “Bute House Agreement” - a typically pompous way of putting a minor coalition deal in a minor parliament - flattered Sturgeon’s view of herself as a mould-breaking and “progressive” politician of international stature and renown.
Remember, too, that in November 2021 the COP26 climate conference was held in Glasgow. Though officially - and, indeed, in reality - hosted by the British government, Sturgeon appreciated this was an opportunity for Scotland, or failing that, Nicola Sturgeon, to show international “leadership”. Bringing the Greens into government would boost her environmental credentials and foster the impression that Scotland was fortunate to be led by a politician who would put the planet - thing of your children’s children, please - above anything so grubby as narrow or domestic political advantage. Scottish politics might be small, but Nicola was not.
All of this was guff, of course. In reality, the Green penchant for controlling, scolding, progressivism - which should never be confused with liberalism - melded perfectly with Sturgeon’s own instincts. The government knows best and Nicola knows even better and only reactionaries or culture warriors or other kinds of dismal people would have the brass neck to question anything she and her minions - they were all only minions - might do.
The SNP will doubtless attempt to rewrite much of this history now but the truth is that large sections of Scotland’s largest party are, for instance, just as committed to gender ideology woo-woo as the Greens. This included Sturgeon herself and it remains the case that plenty of SNP ministers remain in thrall to a worldview that increasingly looks like being on the wrong side of history.
The Greens enjoy playing the part of the unco guid but the SNP are no strangers to that role themselves. Swaddled in self-righteousness, the nationalists have been in office for 17 years: long enough to grow arrogant and complacent yet also bitter and resentful.
Here again Sturgeon’s desire to bring the Greens into government enjoyed a certain logic, it allowed for the appearance of a reset and it did give her ministry a certain ideological coherence. The Scottish government would be the voice of a particular kind of largely-Glaswegian smugness: holier than thou, briskly intolerant of alternative views, and firmly of the view that if the people lacked the wisdom or vision to appreciate what was good for them the government would impose it upon them anyway. An eat-your-oat-milk-porridge kind of ministry certain of its own moral probity and powered by its own sanctimonious certainty.
Now the Greens have been handed their jotters, a further question arises: what is the point of Humza Yousaf’s administration? To ask the question is to be apprised of the answer: not very much.
And here, as so often, we beat back against the constitutional question. The coalition compensated for the withering of that dream. OK, you could claim, independence may not be possible in the short-to-medium term future but this remains a government of great ambitions and fierce urgency.
Scuttling a coalition Yousaf recently said was “worth its weight in gold” necessarily sinks that sense of purpose too. An increasingly unpopular purpose - recent polls indicate just one in four voters approved of the coalition - but better, in one sense, than no purpose at all.
Nothing in his career thus far suggests Yousaf has either the heft or nimbleness required to reinvent his government. He may yet surprise us but the point remains that precedent and the weight of evidence is against him. As recently as two days ago he was blathering on about how he hoped the “co-operation agreement” with the Greens “will continue”.
Yousaf’s weakness has consequences beyond Scotland. The question to be answered by the general election later this year is a simple one: how many seats will the SNP lose? That in turn has consequences for the 2026 Holyrood election which is, in many respects, a more significant contest for Scotland.
Until now, the long-term point of the SNP-Green coalition was that it might embed a pro-independence majority at Holyrood. A coalition government asking to be re-elected as a coalition government armed with an explicit mandate to demand a second independence referendum is a very different proposition to a “parliament of minorities” which just happens to have more members in favour of independence than against it.
Well, all that lies with Ninevah and Tyre this morning. 2026 is two years away but the question of whether the next parliament will have a pro-independence or a pro-Union majority has been, roughly, a 50-50 one. I suspect that now changes. The SNP is still likely to be the largest party (and possibly by some considerable distance) but it seems less probable that it will even be able to govern as a minority administration. The odds on Anas Sarwar, Labour’s Scottish leader, becoming first minister, should have shortened this morning.
At which point you can punt the question of independence into the 2030s. That is sufficiently distant as to make subsequent speculation all but pointless. Britain, and the world, will be rather different places then.
That, then, is why a matter which superficially appears to be a subject of mere local difficulty or interest is actually something which may have significant consequences for the United Kingdom as a whole. Few people may look at Humza Yousaf as the fellow likely to lead Scotland to national liberation but I warrant even fewer will do so in the weeks and months to come.
For it must be noted that even the nationalists implicitly recognise this. Last weekend, Yousaf led and spoke at a “Believe in Scotland” - yeah, ok, whatever - rally in Glasgow. We were led to believe this would be a statement-making kind of event of real significance. And so, indeed, it was. For at a generous estimate it was attended by no more than 2,000 people. This game is up, for the time being; this game is a bogey. Dumping the Greens does not materially alter that reality; in a perverse way it reinforces it.
Excellent
Thanks, and enjoy your holiday!
It’ll be interesting to see what happens next to Lorna & Patrick.