Scotland

It’s a red letter day for Nicola Sturgeon: she’s finally achieved something of lasting value. For the former First Minister has managed to pass her driving test at the precocious age of, er, 53. That’s just one year less than the average life expectancy of some of her male constituents under the SNP-run health service. Impressive stuff! Sturgeon praised her driving instructor for his help, writing on Instagram that ‘It was really important to me, as a 53-year-old former FM, not just to have an excellent teacher but someone I could trust and feel comfortable with.’ So clearly not Humza Yousaf then. She added that the experience of passing her test ‘proves that it’s never too late in life to do something new.

Scotland is stuck. This week has only confirmed it. SNP leader Humza Yousaf used his party conference in Aberdeen to announce a council tax freeze. It quickly emerged that he had done so without telling councils and without telling even his own cabinet. As his deputy admitted in an interview, the decision to freeze was agreed between 24 and 48 hours before the speech. Council tax was reportedly chosen because there wasn’t enough time to get expert advice on the impact of freezing other taxes. Councils are furious. Not only weren’t they consulted, but they are already making £300 million in cuts amid a two-year budget shortfall of £1.1 billion.

After the SNP won its first Holyrood election in 2007, foolish council leaders across Scotland rushed to sign up to what then finance secretary John Swinney described as a 'historic concordat'. In return for Swinney pulling back from his threat to centralise education, Scotland’s 32 local authorities agreed to uphold the nationalists’ promise to freeze council tax rates. Lots of councillors swanked about, bragging about this brilliant deal. Look at us, they said, we’ve got a 'historic concordat'. It appears that Yousaf has announced a flagship policy that he is simply unable to cost. And then reality slapped them across their faces. Swinney had stitched them up good and proper. The 'historic concordat' was worth less than the paper it was written on.

Humza Yousaf’s main objective at this week's SNP conference, his first as leader, was to free himself from the constitutional millstone placed round his neck by his predecessor Nicola Sturgeon: the 'de facto' referendum. He has united the party in ditching that phrase, though the phoney plebiscite remains in spirit. The new policy states that if the SNP win a majority of seats at the next election the Scottish government will 'begin immediate negotiations with the UK government to give democratic effect to Scotland becoming an independent country'. The Labour party and the Conservatives will negotiate by empty chair and, if the SNP lose seats next year as expected, will say that the nationalists lost their proxy referendum — however they calculate it.

She’s back! It wouldn’t be a proper SNP jamboree without an appearance from the dear Leader, the self-identifying Chief Mammy of nationalist fervour, Nicola Sturgeon. As hard as she tried to claim her surprise visit to Aberdeen was not overshadowing her successor's first party conference, Mr S wasn’t convinced that even she believed that… With her entrance to the annual conference given a hero’s welcome, Sturgeon was swarmed by adoring activists as she crowed to journalists about her ‘fair amount of electoral success’.

It seems the SNP’s prospects are as gloomy as the Granite City. Day one of the nationalists’ shindig in Aberdeen has already seen a range of, er, unorthodox contributions made on the main stage. It turns out that there are people madder than the SNP politicians: the party’s membership. From furious talk of ‘treason’ to a star turn from an SNP activist who recently launched a leadership bid to topple Humza Yousaf, it’s been another stellar outing for the self-identifying ‘natural party of government’. Today’s members’ discussion was focused on – what else? – independence.

As the SNP gathers for its conference in Aberdeen this weekend, Humza Yousaf faces a sea of trouble. But worst of all for the party leader, he faces disillusion with the ‘divisive’ independence project itself, as expressed by Lisa Cameron, MP for East Kilbride, who has (uniquely in SNP history) left the party for the Conservatives. Don’t expect many to follow her path. However, she is not alone in rethinking her support for the SNP’s independence strategy. Others, like former Yes campaign strategist Stephen Noon, have been saying this week that the referendum route has become a dead end and that the SNP should revert to its older, incremental approach to advancing the economic powers of Holyrood.

Dear oh dear. The SNP is not a happy place right now. Following yesterday’s spectacular defection from Lisa Cameron, Kate Forbes has today announced she will also be a no-show at SNP conference for the first time since becoming an MSP. Forbes, who narrowly lost hapless Humza earlier this year, plans to shun her party’s Aberdeen shindig and head instead stateside. Forbes says she has ‘longstanding engagements’ in the US, but her timing will raise eyebrows among the SNP establishment. Sunny climates or watching your party implode in the Granite City? Tough choice…. Forbes isn’t likely to be the only SNP politician snubbing Yousaf’s first party conference, senior nationalists tell Steerpike.

The SNP exodus continues. Only hours after Lisa Cameron MP defected to the Tories, nationalist councillor Kairin van Sweeden has now quit too after being accused of racism. The spat broke out with Labour colleague Deena Tissera after van Sweeden suggested her fellow councillor was unaware of the bedroom tax as, er, a ‘new Scot’. Blood and soil nationalism? So much for progressive… Tissera claims that the jibe was used in the context of suggesting she ‘had just come off a boat’, penning a furious letter to First Minister Humza Yousaf and his chief executive and former spin doctor Murray Foote.

Keir Starmer’s chances of becoming the UK’s next prime minister seem to be improving by the day. From a huge win in the Rutherglen by-election to a ‘buoyant’ atmosphere at Labour’s party conference in Liverpool, the party of the opposition is on the up. The Tories and the SNP, meanwhile, continue to be distracted by chaotic messaging and party infighting. But could a Labour government pull together the fractured state that is Great Britain in a way the Tories haven’t been able to? Possibly – but it would mean repairing relationships within their own party first. In the politics of the Union, Welsh and Scottish Labour have been at loggerheads for quite a while – and reports suggest this has Starmer’s office pretty worried.

The SNP wasn’t the only loser last week when Labour triumphed in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election with a 20 per cent swing – the Scottish Conservatives also had reason to feel short-changed. Their vote collapse was so dire that Tory candidate Thomas Kerr only won 3.9 per cent and lost his £500 deposit. While the party insists that the Rutherglen result is not representative of Scotland more generally, it shows the tricky terrain the Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross faces. ‘You're going to see Conservative gains at the next general election,’ he insists, when we met in Manchester at the Conservative Party Conference. Sheltering from the rain in a fringe event tent, Ross explains why an SNP implosion could work in his party’s favour.