Chris

So much going on here it’s hard to know how best to characterise it.

This morning, Humza Yousaf, First Minister of Scotland and leader of the SNP, sacked all his Green Party cabinet ministers. Basically, he ended the SNP/Green coalition. Why would he do such a thing, leaving himself with a minority government at a time the SNP’s popularity is on the wane in the polls? Because the Greens were about to jump anyway, so he thought he’d look like the strongman if he pushed them first. Which he did, at an emergency cabinet meeting at porridge-o’clock this morning. (Or roll’n’sausage o’clock, take your pick, I’m not fussy).

The Green Party has talked at length at how they’ve been betrayed over Scotland’s abandonment of some of its net zero pledges. I have a sliver of sympathy for them, limited by a generous dose of “Duh? What did you think Nicola brought you into coalition for? Because it wasn’t to get your programme through.”

What they’ve been less vocal about over the last 48 hours is the realisation that their near religious belief in the ideology of the gendered soul (Trans Rights Activism, to you) is inevitably going to come under scrutiny thanks to the tenacity and hard work of Dr Hilary Cass, whose findings are so serious the Scottish government can no longer bury its head in the sand and pretend that conducting unevidenced medical experiments on vulnerable children is just an English problem. Policy is about to unfold in a way not necessarily to the Greens’ advantage.

So they have gone, the SNP is a minority administration, and the Tories have alread called a vote of no confidence in Humza Useless. I wonder what happens next.