Yesterday’s post discussed the resignation of Scotland’s First Minister, Humza Yousaf, on Monday, April 29, 2024.

Today’s entry looks back at his career in the Scottish Parliament.

Before that, let us look briefly at the February 22, 2023 post from CaltonJock which tells us more about Yousaf’s youth (purple emphases mine):

Humza Yousaf was born on 7 April 1985 in Glasgow, Scotland. He enjoyed a trouble free lifestyle being privately educated at Hutchesons’ Grammar School, a fee paying independent school in Glasgow then going on to study Politics at the University of Glasgow, graduating with an MA in 2007.

He left university to work as a parliamentary assistant for a number of MSPs and has been financed from the public purse ever since. He has no experience of work outside the public sector.

Ministerial appointments

Yousaf was fortunate to have held rather important ministerial appointments in the Scottish parliament, beginning in 2012. He was Minister for External Affairs and International Development under then-First Minister Alex Salmond. When Nicola Sturgeon succeeded Salmond, Yousaf retained the position but under a different title, that of Minister for Europe and International Development.

In 2016, Sturgeon made him Minister for Transport and the Islands.

In 2018, Sturgeon promoted him to Cabinet Secretary for Justice, a post which he held until 2021. The level of police recorded crimes rose from 244,504 to 246,511 in 2020-2021. During that time, he came up with the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill, further amended only recently, on April 1, 2024, by which time he had been serving as First Minister for a little over a year.

After the May 2021 elections, with Jeane Freeman MSP’s standing down, Sturgeon made Yousaf her replacement as Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, a position he held until he won the SNP leadership contest after Sturgeon resigned in February 2023.

In July that year, the WHO declared that Scotland had six out of ten coronavirus hotspots in Europe.

In September 2021, news emerged that Scottish waiting times for an ambulance reached six hours. Yousaf urged the public to ‘think twice’ before ringing for one. Audit Scotland found that 500 elderly people in Scotland died that year because of delayed access to emergency treatment.

Let’s take a closer look at Yousaf’s actions during his time as an MSP (Member of the Scottish Parliament).

Transport Minister failings

While Yousaf was the Cabinet Minister for Transport, he was caught driving without car insurance.

On December 8, 2016, Scotland’s Herald reported:

TRANSPORT Minister Humza Yousaf has blamed the break up of his marriage after being caught by police while driving without insurance.

Mr Yousaf, who is already under pressure over poor service on Scotland’s railways, said he had made an “honest mistake” and would not contest the charge.

However, Yousaf had greater failings in the area of transport, as the aforementioned CaltonJock reminds us:

On 18 May 2016, he was promoted Minister for Transport and the Islands and was at the centre of controversy and public criticism over the poor performance of ScotRail, with its trains facing severe delays, cancellations and overcrowding.

Sturgeon was called upon to sack him over his shambolic handling of transport after the prolific Twitter-using Transport Minister admitted he knew nothing about his brief as he tried to defend his failings.

He was quizzed by MSP’s at Holyrood over his administration’s handling of the beleaguered network amid stalled projects and declining services after it emerged the bill for rail upgrades had rocketed by £379 million.

The intervention became necessary when a report from quango Transport Scotland revealed the cost of five schemes had risen to £1.5 billion from £1.1 billion.

The transport workers union Aslef called for Mr Yousaf to be sacked amid a growing crisis on the railway network.

Aslef general secretary Mick Whelan said: “The Scottish government response to the rail crisis has been pathetic. Transport Minister Humza Yousaf has stood by while Abellio Scotrail takes Scotland’s passengers and taxpayers for a ride”.

Hate speech

As if coping with coronavirus were not enough, on October 29, 2020, Yousaf wanted to ban freedom of speech in one’s own home, something he finally realised on April 1, 2024.

The Scottish chronicler, Effie Deans, posted on her site, Lily of St Leonard’s, ‘Why does Humza Yousaf want to police what I say in private?’

She says:

Humza Yousaf has explained that he wants to punish Scots for having insulting conversations at home. While we would retain the right to be offensive anyone stirring up hatred against various protected groups will be prosecuted. What this means is that we would no longer be allowed to speak freely in our own homes.

Yousaf had cited some hypothetical examples of private speech that should be criminalised. Yet, Effie Deans pointed out that such instances of criminality are:

already covered by other laws.

True!

Interestingly, Yousaf himself made a speech at Holyrood which many Scots — and other Britons — found objectionable. He complained with escalating anger that white people occupy most of the prominent positions in Scotland. That should come as no surprise since between 94% and 96% of Scots are Caucasian:

Around a year later, on April 15, 2024, the Revd Stu Campbell, author of Wings Over Scotland, noticed that not all of Yousaf’s text for that speech reached the official Scottish parliament transcript. Last month, he wrote to Holyrood to find out why and told the story in ‘The mutability of history’.

Campbell says that the transcript, which he linked to, reads as follows:

Why are we so surprised when the most senior positions in Scotland are filled almost exclusively by people who are white? Take my portfolio, for example. The Lord President is white, the Lord Justice Clerk is white, every High Court judge is white, the Lord Advocate is white, the Solicitor General is white, the chief constable is white, every deputy chief constable is white, every assistant chief constable is white, the head of the Law Society is white, the head of the Faculty of Advocates is white and every prison governor is white.

That is not the case only in justice. The chief medical officer is white, the chief nursing officer is white, the chief veterinary officer is white, the chief social work adviser is white.

However, in reality, as can be seen on the video, Yousaf went through a whole list of examples, which I won’t quote here but which you can read on Campbell’s post.

Campbell also remarked on the disagreeable tone of the speech:

He issued a string of sharp, accusatory and exclamatory sentences, each clearly separated by pauses, in an angry manner. What the Report presents reads very differently, like a calm list with no particular inflection.

Tone is of course to SOME degree a matter of personal interpretation (although I doubt any reasonable observer watching the speech either live or on video would doubt or dispute the Cabinet Secretary’s anger), but no amount of personal interpretation justifies material ALTERATION, such as the addition of words to the speech or the combining of multiple sentences into one, in order to better fit that interpretation.

Yousaf displayed biases during his time as Justice Minister, too, according to CaltonJock:

His social media shenanigans on Twitter got him into several scrapes when he was Justice Secretary.

He rushed to slam Rangers football players on Twitter for being filmed supposedly making sectarian chants – a video which was subsequently shown to be a fake, for which Yousaf refused to apologise.

The rush to judgement which was all the more troubling in light of his responsibility for the Scottish prosecution service.

The malicious prosecution of Rangers Football Club Directors was the illegal prosecution of innocent men in Scotland by the Crown Office and the Procurator Fiscal Service, with taxpayers being hit with a £51million and rising compensation bill with every penny being taken from front-line services.

A senior police officer who abused his power resigned, and a sheriff who abused his power is also resigning. Sturgeon and Yousaf the Cabinet Secretary for Justice remain silent on a scandal that contaminates Scottish justice.

Identity politics

During the 2023 SNP leadership contest, Guido Fawkes did some digging around in Yousaf’s past votes in Holyrood which betray what he was saying on the campaign trail.

On February 22 that year, Guido told us about Yousaf’s absence from a 2014 vote on gay marriage (red emphases his):

Humza Yousaf has become the frontrunner in the SNP leadership race. The Scottish Health Secretary has been quick to present himself as a champion of the LGBT community – in contrast to his nearest rival – and the SNP has lapped it up. In the past, Humza’s support hasn’t always been so forthcoming.

In 2014 Yousaf didn’t turn up for the pivotal vote to legalise gay marriage. He claims this was due to an unavoidable meeting with Pakistan General Consul about a Scot on death row – a meeting he booked 19 days prior, just two days after he was told the date he would need to attend the historic gay marriage vote. Surely unrelated to the fact Glasgow imams, an influential voice within his constituency, opposed the reform.

Guido concluded:

Humza has also previously voiced his support for Imran Khan – the populist former Prime Minister of Pakistan who banned gay dating app grindr. It seems his unequivocal LGBT support only extends as far as it’s politically expedient…

On February 25, Guido posted the reason why Yousaf missed the 2014 vote, which came from Alex Neil, an MSP who remembers, via Times Radio:

We were having a free vote at stage three.. and any minister who wasn’t going to vote for the bill, or we wanted to skip the vote, had to get the permission of the first minister to do so. There was a request from Humza, because, in his words, of pressure he was under from the mosque for him to be absent from the vote. And Alex Salmond, the first minister, gave him permission to do that. And a ministerial meeting was arranged to take place at exactly the same time as the vote in Glasgow to give Humza cover for not being there. Now, I’m not saying Humza was against the bill or anything like that because he wasn’t, he had voted at stage one, but because he had voted in stage one, in his words, he was put under pressure by his words, put under pressure by the leaders of the mosque in Glasgow about the possibility he might vote for it at stage three, and he requested to skip and he was skipped and the meeting was arranged deliberately to give him cover for the timing of the vote. That’s all I’m saying. But the key point is, Kate, on the one hand has been brutally honest to her own cost, brutally honest about what her honest opinion is. Humza I don’t think has been so upfront. And I think he should just be honest, that he skipped a vote and the reasons why he skipped the vote, because I think what people want in this campaign is openness and transparency and honesty. And when I was asked the question, is it true that he skipped the vote, I’ve given the correct answer the true answer, he did skip the vote.

Afterwards, CaltonJock says that Yousaf posted a spurious explanation on Twitter:

“Meeting Pakistan Consul discussing Scot on death row accused under Blasphemy Law not one could/want avoid.” But Mr Ashgar was sentenced to death for blasphemy eight days after the meeting meaning his “death row” status was not known at the time the meeting was set up.

Yousaf’s pandemic as Health Minister

CaltonJock tells us about Yousaf’s time managing the pandemic as Health and Social Care Minister:

He disappointed the public with his response to the Covid pandemic with a botched attempt to grab a headline when he announced that ten children up to the age of nine had been admitted to Scottish hospitals in the previous week “because of Covid”.

Professor Steve Turner, Scotland officer for the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, contradicted him and said that children’s wards were “not seeing a rise in cases with Covid” and added that the children in question had been hospitalised for other reasons.

Yousaf apologised for causing “any undue alarm”.

When the WHO declared Scotland the site of six out of ten European coronavirus hotspots:

The Scottish Government was accused of being ‘missing in action’ after it emerged that First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, Deputy First Minister John Swinney and Yousaf himself were all away on holiday at the time.

Yousaf said he had promised to take his stepdaughter to Harry Potter World, tweeting that: “Most important job I have is being a good father, step-father & husband to my wife and kids”.

Half a million facemasks had to be withdrawn under his tenure because they were past their expiry date:

This represented, conservatively, a possible waste of public funds to the tune of £4.5Million, money that might have been spent on employing 130 nurses for a year.

And there is no hard evidence that a single life has been saved by the use of these masks; in fact, the very lack of PR by politicians or health executives since their unveiling suggests strongly that there have been no patient – or staff – benefits whatsoever.

However, perhaps not all blame can be laid at Yousaf’s feet. Professor Jason Leitch, Scotland’s National Clinical Director, gave some strange advice about mask wearing.

Considering that Scotland had some of the strictest pandemic rules in the UK, Leitch told Yousaf that masks were not needed as long as one was carrying a drink.

On January 23, 2024, The Telegraph reported on what emerged at Britain’s coronavirus inquiry that day:

Mr Yousaf said he knew that he did not have to wear a mask when seated but did not know the rules around whether he needed one when “standing talking to folk”, despite being the health secretary.

Prof Leitch replied: “Officially yes. But literally no one does. Have a drink in your hands at ALL times. Then you’re exempt. So if someone comes over and you stand, lift your drink.”

Jamie Dawson KC, counsel to the inquiry, challenged Prof Leitch that he was advising Mr Yousaf how to avoid the SNP government’s own rules using a “workaround”.

He asked: “If the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care didn’t understand the rules, what chance did anybody else have?”

Prof Leitch said it was a “tricky area” and argued that the advice “follows the rules” as people were allowed to stand and talk without a mask if they were drinking.

However, Mr Dawson said: “You told him to have a drink in his hands at all times whether he was drinking it or not.”

Then there were all the deleted WhatsApp messages from the pandemic months:

Prof Leitch also claimed he did not delete his messages every night as he had told colleagues in a WhatsApp group.

He was shown a message where he said that “WhatsApp deletion is a pre-bed ritual” but told the hearing it was a “slightly flippant” comment …

The inquiry was later shown another message where he urged colleagues to delete messages.

On Sept 30 2020, he told members of a WhatsApp group: “Thanks all…and my usual gentle reminder to delete your chat…particularly after we reach a conclusion. Thanks all…”

He said it was not his intention to avoid messages being obtained under Freedom of Information laws but admitted using the auto-delete function in one group chat.

The Ukranian women

On March 16, 2023, during the SNP leadership campaign, Yousaf met with a group of Ukranian women, refugees in Scotland.

Amazingly, he asked them where the men were. They politely explained that their men were back home fighting the Russians:

The Mail had more on the story:

Ukrainian men who are of military age are largely forbidden to leave the country as the war with Russia continues. This means that the majority of the displaced Ukrainians arriving elsewhere in Europe are women, children or the elderly.

Mr Yousaf told the BBC a number of Ukrainian men were elsewhere in the building when he made the remark. He said in an interview later: ‘They of course were rightly saying to me that for many of them their families are not able to make it, not all of their families are able to make it. I don’t think any of the women were at all offended or upset.‘

But opposition parties tore into the gaffe this afternoon, with Scottish Labour’s deputy leader Jackie Baillie saying: ‘This is further evidence that Humza Yousaf is out of his depth. This is embarrassing.’

The Scottish Lib Dem leader Alex Cole-Hamilton added: ‘From the man who would lead Scotland, this is clumsy and insensitive. 

‘Many of these women could have male relatives fighting and dying on the Eastern front, defending not just Ukraine but the free democracies of our world. A worrying lack of awareness on display here.’

Yousaf as SNP leader and First Minister

On Monday, March 27, 2023, Humza Yousaf became SNP leader and Scotland’s First Minister.

Guido gave us the vote tally — a Brexit result of 52% to 48%. Amazing:

Humza Yousaf 52.1%
Kate Forbes 47.9%

Yousaf wins, 52% to 48%. The golden ratio…

Indeed.

That night, Dan Wootton, who was still on GB News, called Yousaf ‘woke’ and ‘useless’ in his editorial (full show available):

Two days later, Yousaf appointed his first cabinet. Guido noted:

Humza has added “NHS Recovery” to the Health Secretary title, presumably to reflect the urgent care it needs after his own tenure leading that department…

SNP issues

The SNP have had an unresolved financial scandal which first came to light a few weeks before the May 2021 election.

Nicola Sturgeon’s husband, Peter Murrell, the Party’s executive, was arrested in connection with it on April 5, 2023.

That day, Guido told us that Yousaf had heaped praise on Murrell in the past:

With the news of Peter Murrell’s arrest breaking this morning, spare a thought for Humza Yousaf. Murrell wasn’t just a “proven election winner” for Humza’s party, he was also a “close acquaintance” of the First Minister. Just weeks ago, Yousaf was mulling over plans to keep him in post as the SNP’s exec, saying “anyone that doesn’t want a proven winner on their side, particularly in politics, I think that would be a little bit daft”. Yousaf’s praise for Murrell didn’t end there, he said the arrested SNP chief executive had done “more for our party and our movement than just about anybody else”. Clearly a great loss to the independence cause.

A few days later, Scottish police seized an SNP-owned motorhome vehicle which had been parked at Murrell’s mother’s house for well over a year. The Party had never used it for official purposes.

On April 11, it emerged that the SNP had been without auditors for six months.

Guido told us:

The SNP’s new era of “transparency” and “respect” is off to a roaring start under Humza Yousaf, who today claimed he had no prior knowledge that the party he now leads hasn’t had an auditor for the past six months. The same Humza Yousaf who sat practically an elbow’s length away from Nicola Sturgeon at the cabinet table while this was going on.

Following this morning’s news that Johnston Carmichael mysteriously quit as the SNP’s auditors “round about October“, Yousaf said:

“They resigned last year. I think it was in and and about October last year. But the fact that we don’t have auditors in place is one of the major priorities. You can imagine when I found that out, being the party leader, the party is quickly looking to secure another auditor […] When I learned about the fact that we don’t have an auditor in place, of course I’ve instructed the party to get on with finding another auditor, so we are working very hard to do that […] It’s certainly problematic. I won’t deny that at all.”

He added the situation was “extraordinary“, which is hard to disagree with. Extraordinary as it may be, Peter Murrell is nonetheless still a party member. Despite spending almost 12 hours in police custody last week…

On April 13, Guido posted a quote from Yousaf on the auditor situation; he claimed not to have known about it. Hmm:

Frankly, it would have been helpful to know beforehand…

Then the Party’s treasurer Colin Beattie was arrested in connection with the unresolved financial scandal.

On April 18, Guido reported the following, accompanied by a third-party video:

First Minister Humza Yousaf has spoken publicly for the first time since his party’s Treasurer Colin Beattie was arrested in connection with the SNP finance investigation. Yousaf is about to give a speech outlining his “priorities” for the Scottish government going forward, which he admits have been, erm, undermined somewhat by yet another arrest…

Yousaf said:

It’s clearly a very serious matter indeed, I’ve said already people are innocent until proven guilty… Of course I’m surprised that one of my colleagues has been arrested, but it’s a very serious matter indeed… it’s certainly is not helpful, of course… I’m not going to take away from the fact that the timing of this is far from ideal.

Guido concluded:

Yousaf stressed he does not believe the SNP is a “criminal operation“. This is where we are now. Colin Beattie, like Peter Murrell, still hasn’t been suspended from the party…

And, finally, on matters political, Margaret Ferrier, an SNP MP, had to stand down for violating coronavirus rules at the height of the pandemic. This was a parliamentary decision that was three years overdue; the process is the punishment.

As a result, a by-election took place in her constituency of Rutherglen and Hamilton West, which had a long tradition of voting Labour.

On the day of the by-election, October 5, Yousaf took his frustration out on Douglas Ross, an MP, an MSP and the leader of the Scottish Conservatives. The Presiding Officer demanded an apology from Yousaf.

Guido has the story and the video:

Humza Yousaf is obviously feeling the pressure from today’s Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election. This afternoon the First Minister went on an manic rant at Douglas Ross, accusing the Scottish Conservatives leader of “post-truth […] lies“, and repeatedly refusing to apologise despite the demands of Presiding Officer Alison Johnstone. You can tell that by-election is on a knife-edge…

I know Douglas Ross, despite having three or four or five jobs – I’ve lost count, Presiding Officer – was down at the Conservative Party Conference this week. Or as others have rightly dubbed it, the conspiracy party conference […] His post-truth, his lies about the police service, it simply will not wash here in Scotland.

After three demands for an apology, Yousaf finally relented, claiming he was “happy to apologise to the chamber for any offence“. Which is not quite the personal apology Johnstone demanded…

Yousaf was worried about the SNP holding the seat, and he was right so to be. Labour’s Michael Shanks won.

There’s still a little bit more to the Humza Yousaf story. More on that tomorrow.