Scottish Parliament election: Humza Yousaf is right about need for 'new beginning'. But it should be without him – Brian Wilson

Unless, of course, Mr Yousaf was reflecting that none of them left office at a time of their choosing. If one excludes death as an option, precedents range from the verdict of voters to Operation Branchform.

It is difficult to see a happier ending for Humza. Before Thursday, his opponents probably concurred that the SNP could hardly find anyone worse so best leave him where he is. Then, in the exuberance of the moment, they all piled in to support a vote of no confidence which changes the dynamic.

Most immediately, the fate of Nicola Sturgeon’s continuity First Minister could well lie in the hands of Alex Salmond’s Holyrood proxy, Ash Regan. If that scenario prevails, Ms Sturgeon may find she has an urgent book festival to attend.

Pious talk about ‘people of Scotland’

There is no obvious reason why any opposition party should back off over the next few days. The Greens would look particularly daft but maybe that should not be ruled out and Humza would hobble on… but enough of idle speculation.

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If all the pious talk about “the people of Scotland” means anything, the time has come when these sainted people have the right to an early Holyrood election rather than continue to be lumbered with a First Minister (Humza or whoever) and an agenda they never voted for.

Scotland did not vote to have Yousaf as First Minister. It did not vote for the Greens to be in government or for the Greens to be out of government. It did not vote for the bizarre policies and calamities that have dominated Scottish politics for three years. And if Yousaf falls, it will not have voted for whoever the SNP anoints to succeed him.

A political opportunity

The logic is that all parties which are calling for a Holyrood election must also reject any proposed SNP successor, if that situation arises. Having started down this road, they all must follow through and take their electoral chances. Labour’s confidence motion helps clarify that the logic of a no confidence vote in Mr Yousaf is an election – not a successor.

Of course, even if all the opposition parties stay united, it could still come down to Mr Salmond and Ms Regan deciding if there is an acceptable SNP First Minister. But Alba too might sniff opportunity in an election under these circumstances, rather than two years from now with a different SNP leader.

SNP in crisis: Alba MSP Ash Regan's letter to First Minister in full

Nobody anticipated Thursday’s chaotic end to what passed for “stable” government or the Greens turning so vehemently against their long-time associates whom they propped up for years before entering government. The timing for a election is far from ideal for any party.

Candidates would need to be selected with haste and campaigning diverted from Westminster elections. However, these inconveniences for political parties are transcended by the far more pressing need to give Scotland a fresh start under a democratic mandate, whatever it might turn out to be.

The real disgrace

This should, as I argued at the time, have happened when Mr Yousaf was foisted upon us by a vote within the SNP membership. I recalled then that when Liz Truss became Prime Minister on the say-so of Tory party members, Ms Sturgeon proclaimed that “a general election is a democratic imperative”.

Well, of course it was. Then the Tories repeated the same trick by installing Rishi Sunak without going to the country. If the SNP again tries to change the First Minister without calling an election, it will be in exactly the same position as the “detested” Tories at Westminster – with gross hypocrisy as an additional charge.

Away from parliamentary arithmetic and the Holyrood goldfish bowl, the real political disgrace in Mr Yousaf’s Bute House performance lay in his claim that getting rid of the Greens marked “a new beginning” for the Scottish Government, focused on child poverty, the NHS and education.

It is the corollary of these empty words which should cause outrage – ie, that these were not the previous priorities, particularly through the past three years, when so many Scottish people, communities and services were really suffering.

Whatever the outcome of next week’s vote, that confession should be hung round the necks of Mr Yousaf and his unlamented predecessor – when Scotland needed a government focused on the politics of necessity, they got one instead which was obsessed with fringe issues and doomed diversions.

Stagnating nation

Mr Yousaf cannot have it both ways. By ditching the Greens now, he must also recognise that they should never have been near government in the first place. By apparently baulking at Patrick Harvie’s rejection of the Cass Report, he should apologise for Scotland having been waylaid into extreme gender politics.

It is far too late for the SNP to talk about “new beginnings”. They have had 17 years to drive change on all these fronts which we are now told will become the new priorities. The outcome by each yardstick has been stagnation or decline.

Today’s Scotland is not a happier, healthier, more prosperous, better educated nation than the one which the SNP inherited. But it is certainly more divided – economically, socially and politically with all the fundamental inequalities entirely untouched; the ones that should inspire political action.

Announcing a “new beginning” certainly does not guarantee there will be one, while the absolutely certainty is that the same people who spent years leading Scotland into this week’s fiasco are utterly unqualified to lead us out of it.

Scotland does indeed need a “new beginning”, as Humza Yousaf had the gall to say, but not one in which he or his colleagues have any useful part to play.