It was a small but deliberate act by Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s new first minister, a politician increasingly keen to distance himself from Nicola Sturgeon and one with a keen eye for symbolism. On Thursday, for his first briefing with Holyrood’s political correspondents at Bute House, the first minister’s elegant Georgian townhouse in Edinburgh, settees had been placed in a circle in the drawing room. Gone were the regimented ranks of chairs used by Sturgeon; gone was her lectern facing the room. Yousaf provided Tunnock’s chocolate wafers, tea and coffee. This, reporters were told before they sank into the sofas, was a fireside chat. It was a deliberate effort to strike a different, confident tone. It needed to be: earlier the previous day the Scottish National party had heard the stunning news that Sturgeon’s husband, Peter Murrell, had been arrested by detectives at the couple’s home in Glasgow. Police Scotland said Murrell, the party’s former chief executive, was “a suspect” in a long-running investigation into alleged financial impropriety at the SNP, before being released without charge. Tents were erected across the front of the house, police tape strung across the pavement and officers seen searching the couple’s garden. Officers had meanwhile closed off the SNP’s headquarters under warrant, carrying in large plastic crates. “It’s hard to get the imagery of the tent out of your mind, isn’t it,” Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster leader, told the News Agents podcast.
Yousaf acknowledged it had been a “bruising” 24 hours for the party. It had been a very bruising election contest too, he added, alluding to the bitter ideological battles he had with his closest rival, Kate Forbes, her blunt attacks on his competence, and the tightrope he had to walk between defending Sturgeon’s record while criticising her missteps. His priority, he added on Thursday, was to shift the focus away from the SNP’s internal crises on to the priorities of government – the economy, the cost of living crisis, NHS waiting lists and poverty. “There’s a huge opportunity for us to re-energise, to refresh and to make sure we are being as bold as ambitious as we possibly can be.” He has only been in post as SNP leader for 10 days and just eight as first minister. The police raids had blown apart any hope of a honeymoon period. And looming large on his horizon is another significant challenge, fighting a byelection in one of Scottish Labour’s main target seats, Rutherglen and Hamilton West, where the local MP Margaret Ferrier faces a recall petition after being found guilty of knowingly travelling while ill with Covid in 2020. As Yousaf was arranging the sofas in Bute House, the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, was on Main Street in Rutherglen, cosying up to local voters, many of whom recognised him and posed for selfies, joking that he looked slimmer in real life. Labour activists handed out glossy, full-colour leaflets to passersby labelling Ferrier “a criminal SNP MP who put lives at risk”. This is where the political significance of the SNP’s crisis becomes real. Scottish Labour are already pouring resources into Rutherglen because they believe the mood among Scotland’s voters has quite suddenly and dramatically flipped. Labour’s campaign in Rutherglen is focused on alerting voters to the likelihood there will be a recall petition against Ferrier to force a byelection. That petition will go live if she is suspended from the Commons for 30 days, in line with a recommendation by the Commons standards committee. The leaflets carry a QR code for voters to add themselves to Labour’s email alerts once the recall petition goes live.
Bouyed up by a series of polls putting them within five to 10 points of the SNP, Labour believes it is on the brink of winning back a host of Scottish seats from the nationalists. If there is a byelection, Rutherglen will be a dry run for the next general election. Those close to Keir Starmer say the UK Labour leader had been convinced for some time the party had to make considerable ground in Scotland in order to win a Commons majority. It currently has just one of Scotland’s 59 Commons seats. Labour strategists and Sarwar argue that despite Murrell’s arrest, Sturgeon’s resignation and the SNP’s tumultuous leadership contest, little has happened that alters their strategy. “Nothing changes the process,” said one Labour aide. “We know what we need to do and we need to keep rolling out the strategy we have agreed on.” They say Starmer has five goals in Scotland central to that strategy, goals they believe have now been accomplished. One was to oust Richard Leonard, the Corbynite Scottish leader who struggled to make any impact, and second to show UK Labour could win a general election. The third was to overtake the Scottish Conservatives in the polls, believing they would not get a hearing without being Scotland’s main opposition party. The fourth step was to produce a credible answer to independence. Labour believes Gordon Brown’s plan to overhaul the constitution, including replacing the House of Lords with a senate of nations and regions and giving Holyrood more powers, does that. Finally, there was one element Labour desperately wanted but over which it had limited power: Sturgeon’s political demise. Party aides are clear that her continued leadership of the SNP was one of the biggest blocks to it winning Scottish seats. Sarwar, on his walkabout through Rutherglen on Thursday, said the other task was to prove Labour deserved “people’s trust”. That meant being credible on British defence, on the economy and on protecting public services. “This is a potential tipping point in Scottish politics,” he said. “People are now starting to see the SNP is a political party that is fallible. This is a political party that’s mired in scandal and division. But we still have to offer people that positive alternative and Labour is working relentlessly to do that.”