After a tough year, Humza Yousaf must set out his political philosophy as Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon did before him – Stewart McDonald

After Alex Salmond’s small-c conservative, business-friendly gradualism and Nicola Sturgeon’s social justice-focused tale of a European state-in-waiting, Humza Yousaf needs to outline his own vision for Scotland

“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” One can very easily imagine a well-thumbed copy of The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte sitting open on some table in Bute House, several lines sharply drawn under these famous words.

From Operation Branchform to the Rutherglen by-election, Humza Yousaf has inherited a series of unenviable circumstances – not of his own making – that dominated his first year as First Minister. Next year must be the one when he moves beyond them and outlines a fresh vision for Scotland under his leadership.

It was 364 days ago today, with 2023 peeking around the corner, when the then First Minister and SNP leader stood in Bute House and told the country that “there is much to look forward to in the year ahead”. In many ways, Nicola Sturgeon was right. It was the first year since the start of the pandemic when it felt like we had finally turned the page on the coronavirus and all its accompanying restrictions. It was also the year that the Scottish Government brought ScotRail into public ownership, expanded the most generous childcare offer anywhere in the UK and increased its investment in Scotland’s transition to net zero – all achievements worth celebrating for the improvements they have made and will make to the lives of Scots across the country.

Humza Yousaf inherited a number of problems but can now start to flesh out his own brand of politics (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

Disagreement is normal and healthy

I will not pretend, however, that 2023 is a year that any of us in the SNP will be rushing to reminisce over. Just a few weeks after her optimistic Hogmanay speech, Sturgeon resigned as First Minister and leader of our party and ushered in a leadership contest, a situation no party relishes. Yet while these contests are often dreaded because they reveal divisions within otherwise united parties, I was glad to see such a range of policy platforms and ideological diversity on display within our party. That should be celebrated, not feared! As I have argued before in these columns, there should be nothing more frightening to a democrat than a political campaign in which the candidates largely agree with one another. Debate and disagreement are natural, normal and healthy, so long as everyone can come together again when the dust settles.

Despite the relative closeness of the March vote – 52 per cent for the winning candidate and 48 for the other – the party was able to quickly put a lid on the disagreements that took place during the leadership contest and give our new leader his chance. No party wants to start the year with a leadership election, but the process was as smooth as could have been hoped for, given the circumstances.

The same cannot be said for the months that came after, with Yousaf dealt the toughest hand that any incoming First Minister has been given. Alongside the political issues that dominated the front pages over the year, however, he has one problem that has not been much spoken about.

Sturgeon’s SNP was as much blessed by fortune as by her considerable political talent. She inherited and rode a remarkable wave of pro-independence sentiment from her predecessor and from the 2014 independence campaign and, after just 18 months as First Minister, held the remarkable position of being the only leader of a governing party in Britain who had the foresight and aptitude to oppose Westminster’s kamikaze withdrawal from the European Union.

Economy is voters’ primary concern

The elections of 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2019 were foregrounded by vigorous debates over Scottish independence and the UK’s exit from the EU. Not only were these elections fundamentally ideological – grounded in competing visions of the world and Scotland’s place in it – but they were elections in which the SNP was the only major party to which the enormous pro-independence and/or pro-EU constituencies in Scotland could look for a manifesto that reflected their views.

The next election will be different. Today, with two-thirds of Scots viewing the economy as their primary concern, the battle lines for the next general election are already being drawn firmly in the material world. The electoral salience of independence and Brexit has fallen dramatically among Scottish voters; the 2024 general election and the 2026 Holyrood election will be the first since 2014 fought along traditional lines.

Yousaf, like every elected member in my party, will have to stand before the public and advance an argument about whom to tax, what to spend, and where to cut. And unlike Alex Salmond or Sturgeon, he must do so without the political luxury of a binary referendum in the immediate past or future to rally the troops around. That’s a challenge, but one we should relish.

There are no right answers to these questions. Both his predecessors went into electoral campaigns with distinct yet entirely coherent political philosophies, from Salmond’s “arc of prosperity” and his small-c conservative, business-friendly gradualism, to Sturgeon’s social justice-focused tale of a European state-in-waiting. It is now the First Minister's turn to do the same.

After a difficult 2023, a new year gives the First Minister the chance to now put forward a new vision for Scotland. How do we improve living standards for every Scot? What should Scotland’s relationship with the rest of the UK look like between now and the next independence referendum? What does a realistic path to that referendum look like? What is Scotland’s place in an interconnected and increasingly insecure world? What is the plan to transform and upgrade our public services and public realm?

There are a million different answers that the First Minister can give to these questions; 2024 is the year in which my party must give them a convincing answer and renew our credentials as a modern party of aspiration, prosperity, resilience, fairness and, yes, independence.

Stewart McDonald is SNP MP for Glasgow South