Humza Yousaf gives up

The SNP leader has no plan for independence and no prospect of finding one

Look, even people inclined to grade Humza Yousaf more generously than I am might concede that if the meaning of your biggest address as first minister must be clarified in a series of post-speech huddles with perplexed journalists who, in the end, merely want to be able to report what Scotland’s first minister actually said and meant, then that speech has been a considerable failure.

I think I would put it more strongly than that. Yousaf’s speech to the SNP’s “convention on independence” was possibly the least impressive, most underwhelming, speech of its kind any of us have had the misfortune to hear in years. Parts of it were so bad I began to worry that he wrote it himself. (Readers of a vindictive disposition may read the full text, in all its vapid horror, here.)

You will recall that Nicola Sturgeon ran into trouble when, faute de mieux, she alighted on the proposition that winning more than 50 percent of the votes cast in Scotland at the next general election would constitute a m…