Opponents of SNP-Green deal only want one thing, Humza Yousaf out of Bute House

Critics of the deal have transparent self-interest in its collapse, they should just admit it.

In recent days we’ve heard from Fergus Ewing, Kate Forbes, and Alex Salmond that the Bute House Agreement between the SNP and the Greens should either be scrapped or members should be given another say on the issue.

This is often framed, not least by Ms Forbes, as a democratic issue. ‘Checking in’ was her phrase, ‘detach himself’ – a more executive show of power – was Ewing's.

Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster leader, has offered the strongest opposition to this, telling critics of the deal to effectively put up or shut up. ‘Set out an alternate’, he told reporters on Wednesday.

It is also worth remembering the party effectively voted on the deal when it chose its leader in March.

There was no scenario in which the Bute House Agreement survived a Kate Forbes victory after her comments on gay marriage, and no world in which it would be ditched by Humza Yousaf after his spirited defence of it throughout the contest.

Some will point at the former Green leader Robin Harper's decision to ‘defect’ to Labour due to his party having “lost the plot” as a reason for members vote on the deal.

A decision, by a man who has worked with Gordon Brown’s unionist think-tank Our Scottish Future for a while, timed perfectly to lift some pressure off Scottish Labour’s internal policy disagreements that had dominated the news cycle.

It also neatly pushed the attention back onto internal pro-independence critics of the deal.

But those critics have transparent self-interest, and it is manifestly baffling to ignore this.

All want Humza Yousaf out of Bute House, and ongoing internal debate and psychodrama makes that more, not less, likely.

Mr Salmond wants the Scottish Greens out and, by extension, totally discredited for one reason alone: for Alba to take advantage of a splintering independence vote on the list in 2026.

Voters do not like divided parties, but Ms Forbes and her “government in waiting” on the SNP backbenches revel in the fact Mr Yousaf has lost his bottle when it comes to internal discipline (see one Fergus Ewing’s continued sanction-free life).

The more chaos they sow, the worse the SNP do in the polls and the closer the First Minister gets to the exit.