Humza Yousaf ‘considering whether to resign’ forward of knife-edge confidence vote | Politics | News | EUROtoday

Humza Yousaf is contemplating whether or not to resign earlier than shedding subsequent week’s crunch confidence vote, it has been reported.

Mr Yousaf’s future as First Minister of Scotland now hangs within the stability, with 64 MSPs from the Tories, Labour, Greens and LibDems pledging to vote towards him persevering with in workplace.

With simply 63 SNP MSPs, the way forward for Nicola Sturgeon’s successor now rests on the vote on Alba MSP Ash Reagan, whom Mr Yousaf insulted as “no great loss” when she defected from the SNP final October.

With the vote set to be a knife-edge consequence, it’s now been claimed that Mr Yousaf is contemplating whether or not to leap earlier than he’s pushed from the highest job in Scottish politics.

A former ally and supporter of Mr Yousaf has instructed The Times: “He’s done. Whether it’s today, tomorrow or later than that, he’s done”.

Meanwhile STV has additionally reported that the SNP chief is “considering his position”

A spokesperson for Mr Yousaf has dominated out that he may resign as quickly as as we speak, with the First Minister nonetheless set to ship a speech this lunchtime at Strathclyde University.

Asked whether or not he’ll resign if he loses the vote of confidence, the spokesman stated they wouldn’t reply “hypothetical” questions.

The SNP mouthpiece additionally boasted that the now-collapsed SNP-Green coalition deal lasted 19 instances longer than Liz Truss’s premiership.

Thankfully for Mr Yousaf, 15 days in the past he overtook former Labour First Minister Henry McLeish’s tenure, which means he’ll simply keep away from having to undergo the ignominy of being Scotland’s shortest-serving chief in historical past.

Mr Yousaf has cancelled not less than one deliberate go to, prompting hypothesis about his schedule over the approaching week.

A supply instructed the Times: “This appears to have been war-gamed without anyone knowing how to count.”

However one senior SNP supply predicted that Mr Yousaf will keep and battle for his job.

They warned: “Only one MSP needs to change their mind and he’s going to make every effort to convince at least one MSP to do just that.”

Delighting within the SNP’s implosion, Tory minister Andrew Bowie yesterday identified: “So, the future of the Nicola Sturgeon continuity candidate’s entire First Ministership is now dependent on the whim of one member of a Party led by… Alex Salmond.”

Yesterday Alex Salmond stated that Ms Regan, who has despatched the SNP an inventory of calls for she desires assembly earlier than giving Mr Yousaf her help, is the “most powerful MSP in the Scottish parliament”.

He additionally criticised his successor-but-one’s “kamikaze instinct”.

Mr Salmond instructed Times Radio: “If I were Humza Yousaf, I’d get drafting a very favourable answer, otherwise he’s going to be known, I suppose, as ‘Humza the Brief’ with a one-year tenure as first minister and that will be that.

“Humza Yousaf today has managed to insult every opposition party. If you’re going to run a minority government, by definition, you must try and not insult at least one of the opposition parties otherwise they’ll vote you out.

“A much more sensible way to end the agreement, I would have thought, would have been to have told the Greens that the SNP, like the Greens, were going to put it to their membership and then nobody could have complained about that.

“Humza Yousaf has managed to make Ash Regan, an Alba MSP, the most powerful MSP in the Scottish Parliament because she now has the swing vote in the parliament.

He predicted that Ms Regan “will use that power very wisely indeed to progress the cause of independence and to protect the rights of women and to try and find a way to restore confidence within the Scottish Government, which has been so badly lacking recently.”