The First Minister's bleak future: Humza Yousaf in Alex Salmond's pocket?
Humza Yousaf deserves to fall as does this Scottish Government. Scotland deserves an election.
Humza Yousaf has a weekend to attempt to salvage his premiership as his year long series of political misjudgements finally come to a head. Scottish Labour, Tory, LibDem, Green are all united in saying this clown show cannot go on, even if two clowns have now left the ministerial clown car.
Unfortunately for the First Minister, it seems his reported personal one-on-one charm has been mistaken for competence. The Hapless Humza's political future collapses, and the scramble is on to find a lifeboat. He undoubtedly hopes that the Greens might abstain than allow the queen over the water Kate Forbes inherit the crown, given she’s the heir apparent and deeply socially reactionary. But what of Fergus the bold and Alba's Ash Regan? Whatever the future, the FM's future is bleak, and the game is increasingly up. Not least if we listen to the latest Ipsos poll (26 March) which found only 32% of Scottish voters believe this government even deserves to be re-elected.
Earlier today I made a brief appearance on GBNEWS discussing the ins and outs of the twilight of the SNP era in devolved Scottish politics.
Back to the future
In aid of a political fightback to salvage his crumbling premiership, our First Minister has resorted to an old SNP trick of talking up housing. Only problem is, some of us have long memories and recall very well the long history of broken Nationalist pledges on housing targets.
Nevertheless, Humza Yousaf has slapped on his cos-playing outfits with accompanying happy face as he attempts to rekindle popular imagination with the age-old political trick of the ‘photo-op’
It’s probably worthwhile that I break out my old 2021 Twitter (no, I’m not calling it ‘X’) thread on the SNPs long history of empty housing target promises. I’ll summarise here in brief
The (now former) First Minister Nicola Sturgeon pledged in 2021 that if re-elected she’d deliver ‘100,000 new affordable homes’ to be build in the next decade. Putting aside the obvious point that she’s resigned and gone into hiding as the fraud squad charge her husband with embezzlement, the SNP had promised affordable housing targets before.
They never met them. Not ever. Not even once.
Let’s go back to the close of the 2016 parliament, where the SNP boasted of meeting their 30,000 affordable homes target.
But 30,000 wasn’t the original original target, in fact that was a slight of hand. Clever PR. A trick if you will. Despite the SNPs self congratulations back in the day, this 30,000 target was a downward revision. They lowered the target after the 2011 victory so as to meet it.
Fast-forward to the close of the 2021 parliament the SNP had promised 50,000 new affordable homes (of which 35,000 would be for social rent).
Did they met this target? You guessed it, nope.
Now, let’s start by being fair, the SNP claimed - with some justification - that the covid pandemic simply stopped them meeting this target.
But, unsurprisingly there was much more to it than that.
Fact is, even before covid struck, they were unlikely to meet that housing target anyway. Newspapers reported desperate stuff including ‘massaging figures’ in rural Scotland...all to boost the numbers (and spare SNP blushes)
Now before anyone says ‘but covid had hit Scotland in 2020’...let me remind you the very first covid case was in March 1st 2020. That audit Scotland report came out barely after that, covid had not entered into those ‘serious risks’ yet. The risk to the much-vaunted SNP housing pledges was there before covid.
Further, the Chartered Institute of Housing reported that a ‘real challenge’ existed for the SNP to meet that housing target of 50,000 March 2021. This explained concerns about meeting the target. All *before* covid.
So sorry, but the SNP have an exceeding long history of making empty promises on housing that they have never had the competence to meet. In fact, their 2021 claim to have missed the 50,000 target of March 2021 due to covid is demonstrably economic with the réalité.
It was factor, sure, but serious doubts predated if they would meet it before pandemic. Even optimistic audit Scotland raised structural concerns about ability to deliver.
So when Nicola Sturgeon promised 100,000 new affordable homes in a decade...many had good reason not to believe her.
They moved goalposts on earlier pledges, revising targets down. They failed to meet more recent targets they didn’t ‘revise’ down (though did try massaging the figures.
And now Mr Continuity Humza Yousaf is breaking out Nicola’s best old tune of making big promises on housing. For some reason this back-to-the-future variety politics is simply unbelievable (in the literal sense of the word, “not able to be believed; unlikely to be true”)
But hey, doesn’t Humza look nice with his hard hat on and high-vis jacket? Bob the builder beware! Meanwhile, the Scottish Labour vote of no confidence in this Scottish Government is still lodged and set to happen, and you can almost hear the violin music as the HMS Nationalist begins to sink beneath the frigid waters of Scottish politics.
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