The SNP government has won a no confidence vote at Holyrood, but without MSPs coming any closer to knowing who will replace Humza Yousaf, who said on Monday he was resigning as party leader. John Swinney and Kate Forbes, the two leading candidates, are both still deciding what to do. According to a report in the Times, Swinney and Forbes met to discuss the leadership yesterday. In their story John Boothman and Kieran Andrews say: A number of senior SNP politicians have publicly endorsed Swinney while support for Forbes has been more muted. However, Forbes, who narrowly lost last year’s leadership election to Yousaf after Nicola Sturgeon resigned, has refused to back down and said on Tuesday that she was seriously considering her options. One of her supporters confirmed that Swinney and Forbes had met. However, when it was suggested that Swinney supporters would prefer an uncontested transfer of power, the source said: “They are not going to get it. Everything they do makes Kate look stronger.” Several figures in the Swinney camp believe that he would have to offer Forbes a significant post to secure a deal to become SNP leader or to win a leadership battle. “He would need to say, ‘I would have Kate in cabinet’,” said one friend of Swinney. According to a poll by Ipsos Scotland, Forbes has a five-point lead over Swinney amongst all voters on who would make the best first minister. But Swinney has a 10-point lead on this measure amongst people who voted SNP in 2021.
UK ministers have acknowledged for the first time that they are detaining asylum seekers to be removed to Rwanda, sparking demonstrations outside Home Office buildings. Andy Street and Ben Houchen, who are standing for re-election as Conservative mayors of West Midlands and Tees Valley respectively, have both turned to Boris Johnson to support their campaigns. Susan Hall, the Tory candidate for London mayor, has joined a Facebook group which contains Islamophobic hate speech and abusive comments about her opponent Sadiq Khan, the day after an exposé about its contents. Kemi Badenoch has claimed that girls at a school who did not have access to single-sex toilets developed urinary tract infections (UTI) because they did not want to use gender-neutral toilets. Ministers in the UK have agreed to a three-month deadline to establish a compensation scheme for victims of the infected blood scandal but warned it could be “unavoidably” delayed if parliament was not sitting.