Humza Yousaf's plan for Tory free Scotland sounds pretty hateful to me – John McLellan

The First Minister might insist he only wants to rid Scotland of its Conservative MPs, but some voters may hear a call for something dangerous

You don’t need to be an avid political scientist to understand the public’s capacity for nuanced argument is limited. It’s not that voters are stupid, just too busy getting on with their lives to analyse exactly what is being said. In a world which keeps getting faster, soundbites matter more than ever.

Voters’ choices reflect their experience and expectations, backing those who chime with their hopes and fears, and rejecting those perceived as a threat or spent. It took a couple of years for the danger of a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour party to sink in and by 2019 it produced both the Conservative landslide and the SNP’s Westminster recovery.

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Similarly, relatively few voters understood the fine detail of the various Brexit arguments leading to Theresa May’s downfall, but they knew they wanted the bickering and paralysis to stop, and Boris Johnson promised exactly that. Exhausted by three years of heads colliding with brick walls, the promise to “Get Brexit Done” resonated. Even Remainers just wanted it to stop. The fact the deal might cause as many problems as it solved didn’t matter.

Humza Yousaf's focus on the Conservatives comes despite the threat to SNP seats posed by Labour's revival (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)Humza Yousaf's focus on the Conservatives comes despite the threat to SNP seats posed by Labour's revival (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)
Humza Yousaf's focus on the Conservatives comes despite the threat to SNP seats posed by Labour's revival (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

SNP under pressure from Labour

Getting the top line in a campaign is therefore vital. It might play into sniffy arguments about dumbing down politics, but like politicians complaining about the Press, it’s like sailors complaining about the sea. It’s just the way it is. So with an election now likely to be just seven months away, the weekend’s SNP’s national council in Perth, billed as the starting gun for their campaign, was the moment to set the tone, to give voters a clear idea of what this contest was all about, and Humza Yousaf declared “the story of the year’s election” would be making Scotland Tory-free.

Really? Maybe he’s still smarting from the defection of East Kilbride MP Dr Lisa Cameron to the Conservatives, but on a basic level Mr Yousaf is making the election here about ousting six MPs from seats in the Borders and Northeast, while across swathes of central Scotland his MPs are facing the boot from resurgent Labour.

I have no idea with whom he agreed this approach, but it said more about his prejudices than the actual threat his party faces, and no wonder Nicola Sturgeon’s consiglieri Liz Lloyd questioned his priorities. Why, when polls indicate over 20 nationalist MPs will have more time to spend with their families, would he deprioritise the fight against a party as determined to resist separation as the Conservatives?

Mr Yousaf said independence would be “page one, line one” of his manifesto, but if the advancement of independence is not to be the story it strongly suggests he has accepted defeat on the SNP’s principal aim has already been accepted. Yet, national council delegates clapped like seals. Who thought this through? Maybe with one disaster after another Mr Yousaf doesn’t know who to trust, but someone who has had no luck in his year in office badly needs a clear head and safe hands in his operation to cut the gaffes. Yesterday, they doubled down.

Stirring up hatred

One of those errors of judgment is now coming to boil, and as it was his pet project when Justice Secretary it’s one from which Mr Yousaf has no hiding place: the 2021 Hate Crime and Public Order Act which goes live at the end of the month and for which the awareness campaign featuring the already widely disparaged Hate Monster character has just started.

Aside from the whys and wherefores of creating a tsunami of spurious complaints with which the police cannot deal, there is the contradiction of passing laws against stirring up hatred, and then doing precisely that. It is true the act has protections for freedom of expression, and it is also obviously true that people can change their political allegiances unlike the colour of their skin, or their sex (oops, was that a hate crime?), but nonetheless the First Minister has decided it’s fair game to make his focus the eradication of a party he doesn’t like.

It is not enough to win the election or advance his party’s cause, but he seeks a rival’s annihilation. Doesn’t he realise he risks sounding like Benjamin Netanyahu? Like Ms Sturgeon’s declaration that she loathed the Tories and everything for which they stand, he might back-pedal and say it’s just the MPs he wants out, but if your top line is “Make Scotland Tory Free” that’s what people hear.

Galileo-style renunciation?

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A couple of years ago, I had a particularly nasty exchange with a left-wing journalist who had urged his readers to follow that advice. Logically it doesn’t stop at MPs. It must extend to MSPs and councillors and what struck me then, and again at the weekend, is where exactly are “The Tories” to go?

I was a Conservative councillor, so should I and my colleagues have uprooted our families? Or should Conservatives go though some sort of Galileo procedure to renounce belief in a market economy and small state, as the astronomer was forced to deny the Earth revolved around the sun, to “earn” the right to stay?

Should hundreds of thousands of Scots be denied an alternative to Scotland’s left-wing consensus? Such language helps normalise abuse, like that journalist who, unprovoked, repeatedly called me a “p***k”. Or last weekend, when someone I regarded as a friend, an SNP supporter, out of nowhere called me a “Tory c***”, and not in jest.

We get used to it, but Mr Yousaf’s comment last week about senior Conservatives from minorities “pulling up the ladder” set a new low. Never mind Rishi Sunak, James Cleverly, Kemi Badenoch, Claire Coutinho, Suella Braverman, Sajid Javid, Nadhim Zahawi, Kwasi Kwarteng or Alok Sharma, what possible justification is there for suggesting MSPs Sandesh Gulhane and Pam Gosal somehow deny opportunity to people from similar backgrounds? It was a claim that diminished Mr Yousaf even further. Who needs a cartoon hate monster when they could just have used Humza’s headshot.

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