Bring on the popcorn for the SNP Looney Tunes show

Whew! That was a narrow squeak – not just for Humza Yousaf, but for the security of the Union. The Aberdeen Press and Journal lived up to its legend of having reported the sinking of the Titanic with the headline “Aberdeen man lost at sea”, by announcing the outcome of the SNP leadership election in the terms “Highlander Kate Forbes narrowly beaten…”

In fact, that headline said it all. In an election confined to the hardcore SNP membership, after 30,000 members had walked away on Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf’s watch, Yousaf could only scrape a 52 per cent margin over Forbes’ 48 per cent to become the spiritual leader of 72,169 separatist numpties.

Any honest Unionist will admit they were worried in the lead-up to the result. Polling outside the stockade of the SNP cult showed Kate Forbes enjoying extraordinary popularity among the general public. Her aggressive normality, contrasting with the woad-streaked Bravehearts and gender-bending looney-tunes that otherwise populate her party, gave her a dangerous (for the Union) electoral appeal.

The underlying reality, of course, is that Forbes, along with all of her colleagues, is a failed minister, notably in the crisis over the canard that English taxpayers would subsidise Scots’ pensions post-independence. Her eminence, in a party and parliament of pygmies, is simply a vindication of the old adage that, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed woman is queen. And though, in every other respect, she would probably be a shoo-in for selection after five minutes’ deliberation as a Tory parliamentary candidate, the huge flaw is her passionate commitment to breaking up the United Kingdom.

So, in the aftermath of this contest, it is justifiable to devote almost as much attention to Forbes as to the victor. There is nothing in Humza Yousaf’s humiliatingly narrow victory margin of four per cent to discourage Forbes and her supporters from entertaining hopes of supplanting him, if he fails as First Minister. That outcome can safely be predicted.

Yousaf failed spectacularly as transport minister, being fined £300 and receiving six penalty points after being caught by the police driving a car he was not insured to drive. He delayed the dualling of the deadly A9 road which has since caused further fatalities. In the words of Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross, “he clapped like a seal when Nicola Sturgeon launched a ferry with painted-on windows”.

That is the SNP world in which Yousaf is at home: sycophancy towards the leader and Potemkin ferries as icons of incompetence. That ferry, “launched in 2017, is still not in service.

Yousaf next brought his wrecking ball to the ministry of justice. On his watch, violent crime rose, as did drug deaths. Most reprehensibly of all, Yousaf bulldozed into law the Hate Crime Bill, which criminalised the utterance of anti-woke opinions even in the privacy of Scots’ own homes. Yet this is the man who claimed in his victory speech: “We want to return to the European Union and play our part in building a continent that is based on human rights…”

How does he imagine his totalitarian gagging and criminalising, with the threat of a prison sentence, citizens in their own homes would fare in the European Court of Justice? It breaches one of the fundamental precepts of EU law. Not that Yousaf is ever likely to face that dilemma.

In his acceptance speech he also made huge – and unaffordable – promises to improve Scottish healthcare, despite the fact he has brought the Scottish NHS to its knees as Health Secretary. The state of Scottish hospitals, with patients waiting years for surgery, discredits his bombast: “Si monumentum requiris…”

Yousaf has resiled from his original stance of promising to challenge the Westminster block on the Gender Bill; but the Greens, on whom he depends for his Holyrood majority, can be relied on to hold his feet to the fire whenever they want to press for legislation enabling people who self-identify as giraffes to marry their pet Labrador.

As for Anas Sarwar and his Labour party claiming they see an opportunity to dislodge the SNP, Scottish Labour was even more committed to the irresponsible Gender Recognition Bill than the SNP, which at least produced nine rebels. The public is aware that the woke insanity is a cross-party infection at Holyrood, where it commands an embedded majority. That will cause problems for both Yousaf and his opponents.

The election of Humza Yousaf is bad news for Scots in their everyday lives, but good news for the Union. The SNP, after the collapse of the monolithic Sturgeon regime, is in a parlous condition. By rejecting the one candidate who could, albeit cosmetically, have brought at least a climate of change and concomitant voter appeal, the hardline core membership has laid the groundwork for an end to SNP rule.

Yousaf is intolerant, instinctively authoritarian – as his legislation demonstrates – and a classic example of the Scottish reality that nothing succeeds like failure. Yousaf is a serial failure, now facing the opportunity to fail on a larger stage than ever before. As the demotic catchphrase on social media expresses it, it’s popcorn time.

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