With Humza Yousaf’s resignation, the SNP knows it has run out of road

Editorial: It feels very much like Scotland, never mind the Scottish National Party, needs fresh leadership – and a change of government, as well as first minister

Humza Yousaf announces his resignation as first minister of Scoland on Monday at Bute House in Edinburgh (Andrew Milligan/PA Wire)

As in Westminster, so now at Holyrood, the whiff of political decay in the governing party has become the stench of putrefying decay. This is not hyperbole. On both sides of the border are governments that were once seemingly invincible, but now, assailed by a lethal mix of incompetence, complacency and sleaze, are stumbling towards defeat – if not oblivion.

In the event, the end came quickly as well as early for Humza Yousaf, the first minister of Scotland who has been in office for only a little over a year. When he was elected, narrowly and controversially, by the SNP membership, he was the “continuity Sturgeon” candidate.

The intention was that he would steady the operation, leave the wrangling about money behind, and re-energise what was already a jaded SNP administration – in power in one form or another since 2007 and the dominant force in Scottish politics since 2015.