MAGPIES ARE CHARMING BIRDS
If these are the first 100 days of the Humza Yousaf administration, I don’t imagine there will be too many more still to come
YESTERDAY when news broke of the arrest of one Peter Murrell I recalled an old cartoon. In the 1946 Terrytoon cartoon ‘The Talking Magpie’, Mr and Mrs Magpie are trying to find a new place to live, to escape from their troubles. At one point Mr Magpie attempts to convince an angry old farmer to let them live in his house. He explains, “the magpie is the most charming bird in all the world,” adding “he’s the best friend” you could ever have. “Treat him kindly, treat him gently and always remember the magpie deserves your respect”.
I suspect the former Chief Executive of the Scottish National Party (SNP) has similar sentiments in mind. Mr Murrell has long been the éminence grise -grey eminence - at the heart of both the SNP and Scottish politics. He has easily been the most significant and powerful decision-maker or adviser who has impacted on your life that you likely never heard of. He operated behind the scenes, in a non-public capacity engineering repeated election wins for his boss (and wife) Nicola Sturgeon.
Under his aegis in charge of SNP HQ, the previously monolithic Scottish Labour was defenestrated, traduced and brought to unbelievably dire straits. In political circles the message was clear, Peter deserved your respect. Those who worked for the 2014 ‘Yes’ campaign such as Green MSP Ross Greer insist he is a charming, truly decent bloke who always did you a good turn.
I do not know Mr Murrell, never met him, so am not going to be commenting here as to his character. Nor will I be discussing the details of Operation Branchform now that an arrest was made. I for one have no intention of falling foul of Contempt of Court Act 1981 by discussing matters. Instead, let’s focus specifically on the huge political implications of yesterday.
The sky is falling
At 07.35am on the morning April 5th, an unmarked police vehicle arrived at the home of Mr Murrell and Nicola Sturgeon; at which point Peter Murrell was present and arrested. At 08.10am Ms Sturgeon was whisked away in a black Volvo, “understood to be a Scottish Government vehicle.” By 08.30am the police vans had arrived and the investigation began. Simultaneously over in Edinburgh the SNP HQ was raided by the cops. You do not need to try hard to imagine the shock within the SNP as these events unfolded yesterday.
Clearly Humza Yousaf was caught on the hop just like the entire country was. Stuck in Glasgow doing a health related photo-op, our new First Minister did nothing to ease his party’s nerves.
In a truly bizarre failure of public relations, the SNP leader and First Minister decided it was his job to be spokesperson for why Nicola resigned as leader. Stranger still, he insisted on communicating none of this was anything to do with him (nobody ever said it was). And he did so in front of a dishevelled picture of a grinning man with the words “my local advisor helped me quit”.
Nothing can communicate as well just how sudden the collapse of SNP media management has been. For much of the last two decades the party machine was masterful in handling public relations, image and messaging. That era is clearly now over.
And that weird moment is not the only problem facing Humza Yousaf. Very real questions have been raised concerning his judgement following Mr Peter Murrell’s arrest and release pending further investigations.
The new leader insisted on defining himself as the continuity candidate. Does anyone seriously think the Sturgeon political era is something voters want more of? The reason Scottish Labour is breathing down SNP necks once more is because voters want change. Humza Yousaf now struggles of offer this.
Just glance at the polling and you can see his favourability ratings are significantly worse than Scottish Labour’s Anas Sarwar or UK Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer. According to SavantaComRes polling, Mr Yousaf is beginning his first 100 days with a poor -12 net rating, whereas Mr Sarwar enjoys -1 net (and more undecideds so more room to grow, unlike Humza Yousaf).
Folks are hurting, inflation is burning through the economy as voters feel the pinch in the pockets. In light of that, it isn’t surprising Humza Yousaf’s public image is floundering.
But, returning to the issue at hand, another reason self-defining as ‘Mr Continuity’is problematic is obvious. Our new First Minister has gone from eagerly hugging the Sturgeon-Murrell power couple to frantically dashing for distance. It was only a little over a week ago that Mr Yousaf was insisting he had Ms Sturgeon “on speed dial”. Now he insists he has not had any conversations with her since Mr Murrell’s arrest and release.
He also won the top job lavishing a tongue bath of praise on Mr Murrell describing him as “a proven winner”.
That Mr Yousaf was touting Peter Murrell as an asset to the SNP in the days before he resigned over giving out false party membership numbers already raised questions of Yousaf’s judgement. That he also was happy to have kept Mr Murrell on as Chief Executive had he wished to stay in post will also now be raising eyebrows.
To put it simply, there are growing nerves and anxieties that Humza Yousaf is politically damaged goods before he even gets his feet under the desk. These fears do not strike me as wrong.
Furthermore, as The Courier columnist Andrew Liddle has pointed out, this has all come after Humza Yousaf already knee-capped his own authority. Before the scenes yesterday outside the Murrell home and the raided SNP HQ, Yousaf had already created his own rebels in waiting.
“He was the first choice of fewer than half of SNP members who bothered to vote – a number that falls to just over a third when you include SNP members who were not inspired enough to cast a ballot at all.
This, then, is about as far as you can get from a thumping mandate.
Yousaf might have survived this setback if he had stayed true to his promise to embrace a big tent by bringing in the other candidates – notably Kate Forbes – who had attracted so much support among the membership.
Instead, he contrived to remove Forbes from office, making a tokenistic offer of the Rural Affairs portfolio that he knew would be rejected.”
This means as the latest events have unfolded - only adding to questions of Mr Yousaf’s judgement - there were already internal rebels seething. It is no accident that SNP grandees are whispering to the press (including yours truly) that they think Ms Forbes would have won if Mr Murrell had been arrested before members voted. There is a Forbes faction of around 15 SNP MSPs who were made ‘irreconcilables’ to Yousaf’s new regime following is effective purging of Forbes from cabinet.
These backbenchers in Holyrood have demanded a ‘reset’ with Scotland’s business sector, vowing to publish their own policy papers in defiance of the new leadership. Humza Yousaf has been reduced to pretending he would welcome any challenges to his policies as part of his "collaborative style" of leadership. But I bet any money he’s privately seething. And all of that went down prior to the Murrell arrest and release pending further investigation. All before the sight of the cops filling vans with packed boxes removed from his party’s HQ.
Suddenly continuity doesn’t seem like such a good idea anymore. If these are the first 100 days of the Humza Yousaf administration, I don’t imagine there will be too many more still to come. The reasons are many beginning with defining himself as Mr Continuity amid a cost of living crisis. An error added to by his own political flatfooted mishandling of internal critics upon a narrow victory. All underscored by the political fallout felt from being too close to a power-couple whose house is taped off by coppers.
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