On Fergus Ewing, Humza Yousaf has weakened his already shaky leadership - Euan McColm

Consistency in politics is overrated. Sometimes, the application of double standards is the wisest course of action.

The disciplining of SNP troublemaker Fergus Ewing is one such case.

Last week, the MSP for Inverness and Nairn was suspended from the nationalists’ Holyrood group for a week after colleagues voted to sanction him for backing a Conservative motion of no confidence in Green cabinet minister Lorna Slater.

If the intention was to drag Ewing back into line, those SNP MSPs failed spectacularly. Rather than shutting the veteran politician up, they confirmed their party is deeply divided. And leader Humza Yousaf now looks weaker, not stronger.

Ewing emerged entirely uncowed from the meeting at which his suspension was confirmed. He was bullish, criticising the SNP for no longer putting “Scotland first”. When he had criticised government policies - as well as believing Slater’s handling of the Deposit Return Scheme to be incompetent, Ewing is no fan of plans to reform the Gender Recognition Act or the power-sharing deal that brought the Greens into government - he had done so, he said, in the interests of his constituents.

Ewing’s defiance was one thing, another was the fact that - as he faced the press - he was flanked by colleagues including Kate Forbes, who ran Yousaf very close indeed in the SNP leadership election.

When Yousaf narrowly defeated Forbes to succeed Nicola Sturgeon, he exposed a fundamental split in the SNP. It would have been sensible for him to try to bring together his supporters and the many who would have preferred he’d lost. Instead, in seeing to it that Ewing was punished, he has made matters more difficult for himself.

Many in the SNP see Forbes as leader-in-waiting. They expect Yousaf to fail and for her to take over when he does so. When Forbes stood supportively with Ewing, she represented a substantial section of the party. Surely, those members will now feel their opposition to a Yousaf leadership was entirely justified.

Ewing is SNP royalty: he’s the son of the late Winnie Ewing, whose victory in the Hamilton by-election in 1967 is regarded as a key turning point in the nationalists’ electoral fortunes; he was married to the late Maggie Ewing, who entered Holyrood as an MSP alongside him in 1999; and he’s the brother of Annabel Ewing, currently a deputy presiding officer in the Scottish Parliament.

None of this should matter when it comes to the question of disciplinary action, but the fact is that it does. The Ewing name is iconic to many SNP members - especially those whose support for independence long precedes the party’s relatively recent successes.

At 66, Fergus Ewing is, to some of his colleagues, a dinosaur who embodies a version of the party - conservative on social issues, liberal on economic ones - with which they don’t identify.

But the “progressives” who now - just about - dominate the party should have learned from this year’s leadership contest that Ewing is not some lone wolf. Rather, the level of support for Kate Forbes showed that the SNP is still home to tens of thousands of members who remain unenthusiastic about the vision of the party outlined by Nicola Sturgeon and maintained by her preferred successor.

Had Yousaf been faced by repeated rebellions and criticism of policy by a political nobody, then disciplinary action would have made sense. But he should have decided on a little necessary hypocrisy when it came to Ewing.

Yousaf should have shrugged off his older colleague’s behaviour - “Fergus will be Fergus” - and let matters rest at that.

Twenty-one years ago, the SNP - under the leadership of John Swinney - decided to try to put an end to the parliamentary career of another troublemaker. MSP Margo MacDonald found herself ranked so low down the list of candidates for the Lothian region that she faced losing her place in the Scottish Parliament in the 2002 election.

Rather than accept her fate, MacDonald stood as an independent and returned to Holyrood, costing the SNP a seat in the process.

It would not be at all surprising if Ewing were to follow a similar course of action in Inverness and Nairn. Were he to stand without parliamentary affiliation, he’d have an excellent chance of victory, And if he fell short, he’d surely win enough support to split the nationalist vote and let the Tories - who came second at the last election - through.

Humza Yousaf has struggled, since becoming SNP leader in March, to convince that he has a political vision beyond the fulfilment of personal ambition. Often, he seems like the dog that caught the car; having achieved victory, Yousaf provides little evidence that he knows what to do with the power he wields.

Against this backdrop, the suspension of Ewing from the SNP looks like an act of panic.

On Thursday, voters in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election will choose a successor to Margaret Ferrier, the former SNP MP booted out after being convicted of breaking coronavirus lockdown laws. The nationalists are predicted to lose the seat to Labour.

Should the SNP suffer defeat, Humza Yousaf will face questions from within party ranks about his fitness for leadership.

Nicola Sturgeon had the power and authority to shoulder defeats - the loss of 21 SNP seats in the 2017 general election had no impact on her leadership - but Yousaf does not. A substantial number of SNP members would gladly see him go and those people will see the suspension of Ewing as further evidence that they’re being led by the wrong person.

In playing the strongman in the case of Fergus Ewing, Humza Yousaf has weakened his already shaky leadership.