Scotland

Humza Yousaf is the continuity candidate. Kate Forbes is the fresh start candidate and Ash Regan is the Braveheart, director's cut, candidate. As far as character positioning goes, it's quite clear where each potential new first minister of Scotland stands. Digging deeper, clear policy differences have emerged between the three. Yousaf wants to directly challenge the UK government in court over its blocking of gender reform, where as Forbes and Regan would drop the issue. Forbes and Yousaf have intimated they will adopt a gradualist approach to independence, where as Regan insists she will somehow engineer separation talks with the UK government if pro-independence parties win more than 50 per cent of the vote at the next Westminster or Holyrood election.

I don’t know about voter’s remorse but there was precious little remorse from Nicola Sturgeon on Loose Women on Monday for the chaos she inflicted on her party by resigning in pique without giving it a chance to organise an orderly transition. She showed all the insouciance of a teenager who had just wrecked the family car. Nothing to do with me – it’s really your fault for giving me the keys. It was fitting that Nicola Sturgeon should have decided to deliver her valedictory, not to a committee of her peers in parliament – she reportedly sidestepped an invitation from the Scottish Affairs Select Committee – but to a gaggle of D-list daytime celebs on Loose Women.

Nicola Sturgeon’s valedictory address to the RSA was her ‘And now we turn to the liars…’ speech. The outgoing SNP leader’s remarks were nominally about inequality and climate change but she was really there to talk about the distorting impact of social media on democratic politics. Given her departure was possibly hastened by the pushback against her Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which saw women’s rights campaigners and others organise via social media, it’s understandable that the First Minister would feel a little irked by these disruptively democratic platforms.  The ‘nature of the discourse’, Sturgeon opined, was ‘undermining our ability… to address the big issues’.

In her eight and a half years at Bute House, Nicola Sturgeon has never been one to show much in the way of grace towards ministers down in London. There were the Brexit debates, where she endlessly sought to undermine those involved in negotiations with Brussels. There were the Covid crises, where she sought to claim the moral high ground by pipping Westminster with unannounced rule-changes. And then there was the Gender Recognition Reform Bill where she paid no heed to constitutional law – and ended up paying the price. So it was no surprise then that Sturgeon's final act in office – her resignation – was carried out in a similar vein.

And so the Nicola Sturgeon years end with neither a bang or a whimper but with one pitiful desk-clearing after another. Peter Murrell, Sturgeon’s husband and the chief executive of the SNP, has announced his resignation. It comes after Murray Foote, the party’s chief spin doctor, walked on Friday. He had been rubbishing media reports that the party’s membership rolls had shrunk by 30,000 since 2021.  Then, Ash Regan, a candidate in the leadership contest to replace Sturgeon, questioned the integrity of that process and demanded the membership numbers be made public. Backed into a corner, SNP HQ released the figures, which showed a drop in members of 32,000 over the last two years.

Well, well, well. It’s been a tumultuous time for the SNP recently, and no one knows that better than their own spin doctor Murray Foote. But it all seemed to prove too much this evening as he announced his shock resignation. Standing down after four years of spinning for the party, Mr Foote issued a rather, erm, coded statement. Acting in good faith and as a courtesy to colleagues at party HQ, I issued agreed party responses to media enquiries regarding membership. It has subsequently become apparent there are serious issues with these responses. Consequently, I concluded this created a serious impediment to my role and I resigned my position within the SNP Group at Holyrood.

Rising NHS waiting lists, a widening attainment gap in education and falling support for independence: Scotland's next first minister will have a bulging in-tray when he or she assumes office in coming weeks. However one issue in particular seems set to be an early thorn in the side of Scotland's new leader: the increasingly scandalous debacle of the ferries fiasco. The latest development is today's Scottish Government announcement of yet another delay in completing the vessels. The first of the boats, Hull 801, otherwise known as the Glen Sannox, is now expected to be ready sometime this autumn instead of May. The other boat, Hull 802, is now expected to be ready by autumn of next year instead of next March.

The fourth and final debate of the SNP leadership contest aired from Edinburgh last night with a live studio audience ready to pounce on the contenders. So how did the candidates fare in the final debate of the contest, and who came out on top? While Humza Yousaf, Kate Forbes and Ash Regan are now all accustomed to dealing with long Q&A sessions at hustings, the BBC’s mixed voter audience was more hostile than they are used to. Initial questions focused on the NHS and the economy, but the debate really livened up after one audience member lambasted the candidates for their ‘total lack of acceptance of accountability’.