General election: If Humza Yousaf really thinks it's all about independence, he's got a shock coming – John McLellan

The Hate Crime Act, the ferries fiasco and other high-profile Scottish Government blunders may loom large in voters' minds

Be in no doubt, the election will be about independence, Humza Yousaf told The National newspaper on Saturday to the surprise of no-one. Independence-supporting First Minster tells independence-supporting newspaper whose readership is entirely made up of independence supporters that the election is about independence is newsworthy only because it’s so obviously wide of the mark.

How else can it be when the SNP is polling around the 35 per cent mark but backing for independence in principle remains around 48 per cent? You don’t need to be Sir John Curtice to know Mr Yousaf is talking baloney. He might desperately want it to be the case, but up and down the country voters are making their own choices about what the election should be about.

That the game is up for the Conservative party in England has been beyond question for months, with the bookies now giving stupid odds of 1-8 on a Labour majority, and around 9-4 on the Conservatives not winning more than 150 seats, so again whatever Mr Yousaf might say, in Scotland it is not about his other stated aim of Conservative-cleansing or defeating the Tories because English voters have already made that decision and he and the SNP have given voters plenty of other options on which to base their choice.

SNP incompetence

Entering the charts straight in at number one, as Tony Blackburn might say, is the new Hate Crime Act which, according to pollsters FindOutNow, 45 per cent of adults want to see repealed after only going live eight days ago. With so much confusion about what the Act does or doesn’t do, both opponents and supporters must surely agree it has been a communications cock-up on a truly colossal scale, with both the Scottish Government and Police Scotland sharing the responsibility.

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Last week, a Scottish Government spokesperson said: “It's not about freedom of expression or even the right to offend… It would be helpful for people to take the trouble to understand the law before sounding off in public." It would also be helpful, therefore, if Police Scotland’s website didn’t specifically say that hate crimes can include “verbal abuse or insults including name-calling”. But when community safety minister Siobhian Brown said “there has been a lot of misinformation and hysteria regarding this bill being introduced”, it can safely be presumed she didn’t have the police in mind, although the evidence is there in black and white.

The ferries fiasco has come to symbolise SNP incompetence, with the painted-on windows, the gross overspend and interminable delays, but unless you are an islander or regular visitor to the Hebrides, the direct effect is minimal. But the Hate Crime Act publicity has sucked in thousands of people (not just Ally McCoist and Old Firm fans) who are now questioning what they think and how they say it.

Supporters will say that’s good, but having had three years to get it right, creating such widespread uncertainty about something as fundamental as thoughts and words smacks of incompetence or wilfulness, or both. Plenty of people will have police officer friends and relatives who will testify to rank-and-file dismay about what they’ve been landed with, and that percolates to the wider public. I spoke to an ex-officer with over 25 years’ experience last week who agrees with the principles, but who could only shake his head at the implementation. That a police officer reportedly rejected a complaint about a social media post equating Zionism with Nazism because the complainant wasn’t Jewish simply beggars belief.

Although all other parties except the Scottish Conservatives backed the legislation, communicating and implementing government policy is not the opposition’s job, so Mr Yousaf’s administration has no one else to blame for this shambles, and others. Conservative disintegration in Westminster is no shield because there are too many other failures in recent memory for the charge of incompetence not to stick in the minds of a growing number of voters.

Greens’ hectoring of public

Mr Yousaf may have justification in arguing that to achieve independence as soon as possible means voting SNP, but that’s not the same as the election being about independence when thousands of separatists are abandoning the SNP, hoping the job will eventually be done under a different leadership, vehicle or circumstances. After all, voters “sending a signal” to their party of choice is hardly new; it happened to Labour in 2019, the Conservatives in 1997, and is happening again.

Mr Yousaf’s priority should be to clear his decks of any more controversy or, like hate crime, direct challenges to thousands of people to change their ways against their inclinations. Unfortunately for him, that’s the Greens’ agenda, a party which makes no attempt to appeal to the majority but to hector it. Co-leader Patrick Harvie’s Heat in Buildings Bill is a perfect example, threatening to saddle owners of older homes with vast cost and disruption to “do something” about climate change. He was only saved from Lorna Slater’s botched deposit-return scheme by UK Government intervention but had the foresight to scrap the Green-backed highly protected marine areas (HPMAs) plan which threatened the livelihoods of fishing communities.

Now Ms Slater is steering the agricultural version of HPMAs, new national parks based on environmental criteria like promoting biodiversity, despite problems with the existing ones like Cairngorm. Small, self-appointed groups without community support are hijacking the process and battle lines are already being drawn in Lochaber, where the SNP will struggle to hold the retiring Ian Blackford’s seat from the Lib Dems whose candidate, Councillor Angus MacDonald, opposes the parks plan. If Mr Yousaf had any sense, he’d tap Ms Slater on the shoulder and tell her to forget it. Similarly, the SNP-Green obsession with wind power is fuelling the march of onshore turbines which, ironically, lines the pockets of wealthy landowners, costs taxpayers a fortune, and wrecks the rural landscape.

So, the election is all about independence? If Mr Yousaf really believes that, he’s in for a shock.