MANY readers might think the departure last week of Humza Yousaf, the First Minister of Scotland and leader of the Scottish National Party, is of no consequence to them.
Please think again. What has happened in Scotland has many lessons for the present, and any future, government.
The consequences of the debacle in Scotland also have implications for the outcome of our forthcoming General Election across the UK.
Readers will remember that Nicola Sturgeon, the former belligerent leader of the SNP, seemed to be riding high in the opinion polls and was extremely smug about how she’d come through the pandemic without the controversies that bedevilled Boris Johnson.
That was until her and her husband, Peter Murrell, were investigated by the police.
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Murrell has now been charged with alleged offences relating to missing cash from the SNP campaign account, for which, as chief executive of that party, he was responsible.
A very messy leadership contest followed Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation from the SNP.
Not least because a range of controversial policies had emerged from the SNP’s coalition with the Scottish Green Party, as well as a clear neglect of bread-and-butter issues such as delivering decent healthcare, quality of education, and housing renewal and building.
This is where lessons for UK politicians start to emerge.
From inside the split within the SNP itself, as well as across Scotland, revealed what can only be described as “identity issues”.
In short, the decision of the Scottish government to introduce legislation to allow individuals, from the age of 16, to “self-define” their gender.
In other words, to change their gender not by going through what is an undoubtedly a difficult and medically challenging process, but simply to say: “I’m now a woman, or a man”.
Problems with this stance didn’t take long to emerge.
A man accused of rape decided to self-identify as a woman and therefore to present as trans.
When he was placed in a woman’s prison, an understandable storm erupted.
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The Scottish government had to start backpedalling extremely fast and accept that someone who had been accused or found guilty of sexual offences should not be put in a position where others might be at substantial risk.
So, lesson number one is this: Be very careful indeed if you get sucked into identity politics, particularly when you’re pushed about by a small minority of extremely vocal campaigners, whose base in the wider community, or even willingness to compromise, is negligible.
Lesson number two: When you get involved with what is sometimes described as the “culture wars”, you divert attention, time and resources from the real task of delivering public services and running a competent government.
Here, there are lessons for all political parties.
Lesson number three (which the present UK Government is also experiencing) is that internal divisions are a political death wish in parties aspiring to government.
In the UK Conservative Party, we now have National Conservatives, New Conservatives, Popular Conservatives, and old-style One Nation Tories.
We have seen, over the last few days following mayoral and local elections in England, what happens when a political party starts to disintegrate.
Hence the relevance of what is happening in Scotland to our General Election.
As the SNP anoint their new leader, John Swinney, in the Edinburgh parliament at Holyrood, the full-scale failure to deliver to the Scottish people is beginning to register in a way that hasn’t been true for very many years.
Labour revival
The beneficiaries should be the Labour Party in Scotland.
The significance of this is self-evident.
The more seats Labour can retrieve in Scotland, the more likely Keir Starmer will have an overall majority in the forthcoming general election.
In 2019, Labour returned just one seat to Westminster from Scotland.
By-elections have improved the situation, but no one, five years ago, could have envisaged the idea of a Labour revival on the scale which is now possible.
What appeared to be a major obstacle to the Labour Party returning to office after 14 years has now taken an unexpected turn, with consequences way beyond the Scottish border.
Much has been written already about the lessons to be drawn from last Thursday’s elections in England.
But much can be gleaned from the gradual disintegration of the Scottish National Party; and the destructive and overbearing influence of the Scottish Greens, whose style of fringe politics and disconnect from the reality of the lives of the majority has cost the once triumphant Scottish National Party very dear.
