SNP to announce new leader today
Humza Yousaf, Kate Forbes and Ash Regan in running to
replace Nicola Sturgeon
Severin
Carrell Scotland editor
@severincarrell
Mon 27 Mar
2023 06.00 BST
The
Scottish National party is preparing to announce later on Monday which
candidate has won the bitterly contested battle to be Scotland’s next first
minister.
Whoever
wins may need to do deals with unionist parties if the power-sharing deal with
the Greens collapses, the next first minister has been warned.
In a barely
concealed challenge to Kate Forbes, the centre-right candidate vying to succeed
Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish Greens said: “Progressive politics and climate
justice … must be at the heart of any vision for Scotland that we will
support.”
Forbes, who
mounted a combative campaign, has raised substantial doubts about the future of
an SNP-Green agreement signed by Sturgeon in 2021. She has criticised measures
on gender recognition, the climate crisis, recycling and limiting
road-building. Another candidate, Ash Regan, has taken a similar position to
Forbes in many areas.
Lorna
Slater, the Scottish Greens’ co-leader, echoed her warnings on Saturday about
the risks a Forbes premiership posed to the agreement and went further, stating
that the Greens were considering what they would do if they joined the
opposition ranks.
“We are,
first and foremost, true to ourselves and committed to delivering change,”
Slater said, in a statement to mark the close of the SNP contest. “We will put
ourselves in the place where we can best achieve this. If that is in opposition
to an SNP government that has lost its way and abandoned its commitments to
cooperation, equality and environmental progress then so be it.”
The
six-week campaign, the SNP’s first leadership contest for nearly 20 years, was
triggered by Sturgeon’s shock decision in February to quit after more than
eight years as party leader and first minister.
Sturgeon’s
preferred candidate, Humza Yousaf, who has closely aligned himself to her
policies, is widely tipped as the favourite and is the only candidate to firmly
commit himself to upholding the Bute House power-sharing agreement brokered
with the Greens.
The first
cooperation deal signed by the SNP since taking power in 2007 gave ministerial
seats to Slater and to her co-leader Patrick Harvie, and cemented a
pro-independence majority at the Scottish parliament.
Without it,
the SNP would be one vote short of controlling Holyrood. If the Greens refuse
to do deals, the next first minister would have to negotiate with the
anti-independence Conservative, Labour or Liberal Democrat parties to build
majorities for budgets and policies.
Soon after
the result is announced, the new SNP leader is expected to call Harvie and
Slater. The Greens will then convene a party council meeting on Monday to
confirm what its next steps will be.
On Tuesday,
the new SNP leader must win a vote at Holyrood to become Scotland’s first
minister-elect. The king then confirms the leader’s appointment by letter,
before the leader is sworn in by senior Scottish judges in Edinburgh on
Wednesday morning.
Forbes has
said she remains open to working with the Greens but said on Sunday she was
relaxed about leading a minority SNP government. “It matters more to govern
well, even as a minority, than it is to dance to the tune played by another
party,” she told the Mail on Sunday.
Anas
Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, said none of the candidates would give
Scotland the change and vision it needed. “Everyone agrees that the same old
mediocrity, continuity and incompetence won’t cut it – but no one in this dire
race has shown they’re up to the job,” he said.
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