I was racking my brains over whether Humza Yousaf could drive, and then remembered he was once pulled over by police. Who discovered he was not insured on a friend’s car.
A bit embarrassing, as he was transport minister at the time.
His feeble excuse, as I recall, was that it slipped his mind due to stress. I hope his attention to detail is better when managing the whole government rather than one department.
I wasn’t trying to dig the dirt on Yousaf when he’s hardly through the Bute House door, by the way; it’s out there already.
As he was the approved Nicola Sturgeon “continuity candidate” among SNP bigwigs, I was entitled to embark on a journey to seek out similarities between them. And that included checking if he could drive, as Sturgeon couldn’t.
It would have been an extraordinary coincidence if he didn’t drive either. That was the point of me checking, I suppose.
I was a little surprised when it came to light that the former first minister was learning to drive at 52. Apparently, she had been put off previously by the dreaded thought of failing her test.
An interesting character trait, eh? A lack of confidence flickering somewhere deep inside.
Some researchers say driving is good for the mind. The repetitive nature of the driving process allows you to drift off – often in solitude – and become more contemplative. A chance to see the light through a fog of confusion, to find solutions more easily.
I wonder if the course of political history would have been different if Sturgeon was a driver? All those transferable skills – the daily experience of giving way, trying to avoid head-on collisions and learning to reverse competently – might have helped her become less “polarising” for the Scottish public, as she described herself. And she might have prevented her career from ending like a car crash.
Continuity candidate managed to polarise his own party
It’s just about a week now since we discovered Humza Yousaf had won the leadership race. He stepped forward proudly to make history as Scotland’s youngest – and first ethnic minority – leader in Bute House. A great achievement, indeed; churlish not to wish him all the best – even though most of us fear the worst.
He has a huge mountain to climb to repair the SNP’s tattered reputation, but already appears to be walking in the same combative footsteps as Sturgeon.
Yousaf set off with a spring in his step and a slap in the face for Kate Forbes; posturing in Sturgeon’s armour, wielding her cudgels for gender recognition reform and a futile instant referendum demand, which forced her out in the first place.
Odd behaviour for a leader in a starting position grossly weaker than his predecessor, who swept in on a tidal wave of popularity before frittering it away.
Listening to Yousaf bashers, the FM reminds us of useless football managers and coaches moving seamlessly between top jobs, despite failing at all of them.
Sturgeon was right to finally confess that her brand of political Marmite was bad for the country. Yousaf has taken things to a new level.
As the generally accepted chosen one to carry on in her image, the continuity candidate managed to polarise his own party as well. To say he was elected with less than resounding support was a massive understatement.
Is Yousaf really the one in control?
A new leader must show maximum strength through an unassailable level of support, so there are no lingering, or festering, doubts going forward. A wafer-thin margin of 4% over Forbes showed weakness: a burden to carry. But it was actually worse than that, in truth.
Let’s not forget that he lost in the first-choice leadership vote, in the sense that more than half the SNP membership voted for the non-continuity, “fresh change” candidates, Forbes and Ash Regan. Even though Forbes mopped up most second-choice votes from Regan supporters, Yousaf got enough of them to crawl over the line.
It’s seriously unconvincing; one wonders how many early-bird Yousaf voters would have chosen differently had the poll opened after the Peter Murrell scandal broke.
Even Liz Truss had a more convincing victory over Rishi Sunak than this. But the former chancellor of the exchequer snatched it back after Truss imploded.
You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out that another ex-finance secretary called Forbes might step back into the picture if Yousaf messes up.
Only another leadership campaign might fully reset the SNP. Yousaf hasn’t got long to save the Titanic: he wants to “continue SNP good governance” (in reality, a miserable record over almost a decade), with a general election hurtling towards him.
There’s something else bothering me. I see Humza’s hands clinging desperately to the steering wheel, but who’s that sitting behind?
Don’t tell me: it’s Sturgeon. She’s still pulling strings as his backseat driver.
David Knight is the long-serving former deputy editor of The Press and Journal
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