Iain Macwhirter

Any uncertainty about the extent of the damage inflicted on the SNP by the criminal investigation into party finances can be safely disregarded. An extensive poll by YouGov suggests that those scenes of a police forensics tent outside Nicola  Sturgeon’s Glasgow home, and the arrest of her husband, the SNP chief executive, Peter Murrell, have done lasting damage in the SNP heartland.  According to this survey of 3,500 Scots, conducted in April and May, the Nationalists stand to lose 21 of their 48 MPs in the next general election – including nearly all their Glasgow seats. Labour would return 24 seats across Scotland, up from only one. This could be enough to put Keir Starmer in No. 10 with a majority and pitch Humza Yousaf out of Bute House in a palace coup.

You could almost hear the groans from Scots hard hit by the cost of living crisis when Humza Yousaf this week announced another 'summer of independence'. The FM is promising to bring the campaign 'to every corner of the country', setting up 'regional assemblies across Scotland to bring together and harness the energy of our members'. The intention is of course to do precisely the reverse and revive the divisions over the constitution. We've had these summer offensives every couple of years since the 2014 referendum whenever Nicola Sturgeon tried to reboot her campaign for Indyref2. They invariably achieved little except stirring up apathy, as the late Willie Whitelaw might have put it. However, this campaign season might be rather different – and not in a good way – for the FM.

It looks like a textbook case of what Nicola Sturgeon insisted never happens. A transgender butcher in the Scottish borders picks up a primary school girl, takes her to ‘her’ home to ‘look after her’ and then sexually assaults her for 27 hours. Fortunately, the girl escapes. ‘Man abducted and sexually assaulted schoolgirl while dressed as a woman’, said the headline on the BBC News website, for once not worrying about misgendering Amy George, whose dead name is Andrew Miller. The High Court in Edinburgh was told that Miller, who pleaded guilty to abduction and sexual assault, ‘identifies as transgender’ and is in the process of transitioning to female.

Nicola Sturgeon's sheer brass neck never fails to amaze. A politician whose party is under police investigation, and whose husband has recently been arrested, is hardly best placed to start talking about scrapping juries in criminal trials. It's a bit like Boris Johnson, at the height of partygate, speculating about the breaking up of the Metropolitan Police. Sturgeon's first venture into policy advice since her resignation came in a column in the Guardian supporting First Minister Humza Yousaf's proposed Victims, Witnesses and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill. This bill, which she sponsored before she resigned in February, calls for a trial of judge-only specialist courts for sexual offences.

The scandalous debacle of Scotland’s ferries fiasco has rumbled on for some time. It is almost a decade since Nicola Sturgeon announced the takeover of the Ferguson Marine shipyard by the Clyde Blowers billionaire, Jim McColl. He was the preferred bidder to build two new dual-fuel car ferries for the state owned CalMac island ferry service. They never materialised. The ferries saga has been the longest-running procurement scandal since the SNP entered government in 2007. Now, First Minister Humza Yousaf, who was transport secretary when things started to go wrong in 2018, thinks he has finally hit on a solution: privatising the beleaguered shipyard on the Clyde. But there’s a snag: one of Scotland's largest unions is furious.

Another feminist getting no-platformed in Scotland is hardly news. Poets, writers, students, academics, comedians and, of course, film-makers have become inured to being cancelled north of the border if they stray from the dogma that trans women are women. Normally this kind of thing happens in the shadows, without publicity. People just find, like the poet Jenny Lindsay, that their livelihood disappears. Cancellation is the standard operating procedure for the handful of trans activists who seem to have a stranglehold on Scottish cultural life and education institutions. But this time they took on someone willing to fight back.

The leader of a governing party that seems to be spending most of its time helping police with their inquiries would, you might have thought, be a little wary of launching one of the most radical changes to the justice system in 800 years - but not Humza Yousaf. The politician who gave us the illiberal Hate Crime Act, which makes 'stirring up hatred' even in the privacy of one's home a criminal offence, is now threatening to abolish jury trials in Scotland. Since Magna Carta was issued in 1215, those accused of serious crimes in Scotland have had the right to be judged by a panel of their peers, but perhaps not for much longer. The SNP's Victims, Witnesses and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill will pilot judge-only courts for sexual offences.

It's often said that those whom the gods wish to destroy they first turn mad, which may or may not apply to the Scottish National Party. But the deities always find it easier to punish hubris when those guilty of it turn themselves into figures of fun. And, when it comes to that, Humza Yousaf is your man.  The First Minister is a virtuoso of bathos. He can hardly open his mouth without saying something that turns a serious matter into an unintentional gag. When the SNP national treasurer, Colin Beattie, was arrested last week, on the day of the new First Minister's big 'vision' speech to Holyrood, Humza told reporters that he 'did not believe' the SNP is a criminal organisation.

Scottish politics has never been more febrile. If we go a day without an arrest, a resignation, a revelation about financial mismanagement in the Scottish National Party we wonder what we've missed. It's probably a little like this after a coup or in a failing Latin American state. Okay, there are no tanks rumbling along Sauchiehall St., but the political and media worlds have been holding their collective breath waiting to see if the former First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, will be arrested by police. Newspapers have their profiles ready to run. So far she has avoided the long hand of the law. Why is everyone expecting this hitherto blameless politician, this icon of progressive feminism, to be taken into police custody?

Just what Humza needed on the day of his Big Speech to Holyrood: another arrest in what has inevitably been called the 'campervangate' affair. This time it was the party treasurer, Colin Beattie, who was taken into police custody this morning. The 71-year-old has now been released without charge, pending further investigation. It is the latest stage in the two year long police investigation (Operation Branchform) into what happened to that now infamous £600,000 sum for a referendum campaign that never happened. Earlier this month, the former SNP chief executive, Peter Murrell, was arrested and released without charge - pending further investigation - in what Police Scotland say is an 'ongoing investigation'.

Just don't call him 'Useless'. Humza Yousaf's sister, Faiza, told STV last week of her shock and anger at hearing a hospital porter use the First Minister of Scotland's ubiquitous soubriquet. Well, she'd better get used to it. Once an image is established in the public mind it's hard to get rid of it. And it has to be said that his recent performance has been less than entirely useful.  It's not entirely his fault, I accept that. Yousaf is burdened by the legacy of the nationalist duopoly, Nicola Sturgeon and Peter Murrell, which seems to have run the SNP with all the due diligence of a car boot sale.

With the arrest of the SNP chief executive, Peter Murrell, and police cars surrounding Nicola Sturgeon's home still vivid in the public mind, you might have thought that the new First Minister, Humza Yousaf, would want to lower the temperature of Scottish politics just a bit. To look, for example, for some positive agenda to unite his party and the country, to avoid controversial legislation that is opposed by Scottish voters and divides the independence movement. Apparently not. We're told that he is about to commit to a doomed legal battle against the UK government's veto on the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill. What does he know that we don't?

Not content with putting trans rapists in women’s prisons the Scottish government is now accused of keeping heterosexual rapists out of prison altogether. A furious row has broken out after 21-year-old Sean Hogg was given a community payback sentence by a Scottish judge after being found guilty of raping a 13-year-old girl in a country park in 2018. This bizarre situation has arisen from those good intentions which so often pave the path to perdition What does the SNP have against women? cried rape victims. JK Rowling reached for her keyboard to condemn ‘progressive Scotland’ for failing to protect women's safety. ‘Young Scottish men’, she told her 14 million followers on Twitter , ‘are effectively being told “first time’s free.

With police surrounding the home of Nicola Sturgeon, and the arrest of her husband yesterday, the people of Scotland need answers – and fast. For once, Humza Yousaf was only telling it like it is. ‘This has been a difficult day for the party,’ he said, after the former Chief Executive of the SNP, Peter Murrell, the husband of the former SNP leader, Nicola Sturgeon, was arrested by police in Glasgow. He was released without charge almost 12 hours later pending further investigations. As for the Scottish National party, as it staggers from crisis to crisis, long suffering members must wonder if things will ever be the same again. It's a difficult time for the new First Minister too.

As he took office last week commentators, myself included, compared the new First Minister Humza Yousaf to Liz Truss, the chaotic, unpopular and short-lived former leader of the Conservative Party. Yousaf is similarly unpopular with voters, has a record of serial ministerial failure and, like Truss, has surrounded himself with a cabinet of cronies.  Nor is Yousaf expected to linger very long in Bute House.  Right on cue, the first poll since Humza’s installation as FM shows the SNP lead over Labour cut to 6 per cent – enough for the nationalists to lose 18 seats in next year’s general election.

We knew that Humza Yousaf wasn’t the sharpest tool in the ministerial box but no one expected him to mess up quite so spectacularly on his first day.  It only took the new First Minister a couple of hours to undermine his own authority and provoke a potentially ruinous split in the Scottish National Party. Way to go, Humza!  Forcing his rival Kate Forbes out of his cabinet by making her an offer she couldn’t accept - demotion to rural affairs - Yousaf has deepened the divisions that emerged during the leadership campaign. He has also exposed as false his claim to be a unifier; has lost the most capable minister in the Scottish government; and has made himself look petty and vindictive.

Humza Yousaf has a reputation for being a bit of a crowd-pleaser and, true to form, everyone seemed inordinately happy at his installation as SNP leader – especially the opposition parties. The Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross purred like an overstuffed tabby cat. Yousaf had just scraped home by 52 to 48 per cent – a less than wholehearted endorsement from the SNP membership after a leadership election in which independence somehow got lost in the hustings. Sir Keir Starmer sounded over the moon too and the sigh of relief from No. 10 could be heard all the way from Murrayfield.

Only six weeks ago the Scottish National Party seemed unchallengeable. Its leader, Nicola Sturgeon dominated Scottish politics at every level, was fêted by the metropolitan liberal elite and feared by Tory ministers in WhatsApp messages. Now she’s history, her party is in chaos and her key lieutenants including her husband, chief executive Peter Murrell, have fallen on their swords. One of Europe’s most successful political parties, which until recently threatened to break up Britain, has now broken itself in the most spectacular fashion. It’s hard to think of anything outside political fiction that equates to the self-inflicted misfortune that has engulfed the SNP since Sturgeon resigned, out of the blue, on Wednesday 15 February.

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.

You thought this SNP leadership election couldn't get any more bizarre. It just did. Two of the candidates have effectively accused the leadership of their party of suspected ballot-rigging. Kate Forbes and Ash Regan have called for an independent auditor to be brought in to ensure the conduct of the ballot is 'transparent, fair and equitable'. They clearly do not trust the party's chief executive, Peter Murrell, husband of Nicola Sturgeon, to conduct this election honestly. Ash Regan said straight out that having Murrell in charge of the election is like 'Carrie counting the votes for Boris's successor'.