Why the SNP are waiting for the Second Coming of Kate Forbes - Murdo Fraser

According to the first minister, we are on the very cusp of secession within the next five years, yet so many of his pals cannot wait for that moment and are resigning.

The Isle of Skye’s favourite merchant banker, Ian Blackford, is stepping down, Mhairi Black – she who was the future once – no longer wishes to take drag queens to her constituents’ primary schools.

Stewart Hosie, once the deputy SNP leader, has decided to call it a day. Already, one in five SNP MPs have decided to chuck it in, and Westminster is still in recess. The numbers can only grow. Even the man who as representative of the Western Isles occasionally left his constituents in shock at his antics – Angus Brendan MacNeill – no longer wears the SNP’s colours.

Rather than crying ‘freedom’ some of the SNP’s most seasoned parliamentarians are crying ‘pay off’. It does not really feel that Mr Yousaf is leading a nation to the brink of independence. In fact, it doesn’t feel like he is leading anything at all.

It poses the problem of how can he persuade the people of Scotland that he is for real when so many of his own elected politicians do not believe that he is anywhere near delivering their raison d’etre? When even they do not believe in him it makes his efforts not to deal with sliding standards in our schools, nor to address the difficulties of our failing health service, or our stuttering economy, but rather announce the colour of a Scottish passport that will never come to pass, all the more risible.

The problem for the rest of us is this. Humza Yousaf is a man described by his own kith and kin in the form of Kate Forbes as a failure at every department he attempted to run – transport, justice and health. He cannot crush a grape, let alone get a grip. What can we expect of him in the foreseeable future as he sees what little authority he has within his own Party, let alone the country, wither away?

Scotland has been on pause as the SNP have asserted, or pretended, that they wanted a rerun of the 2014 referendum. But in this fast moving world being on pause really means going backwards. We cannot afford to stand still any longer while Mr Yousaf tries to decide what to do next.

Scotland remains divided after the referendum which means that the SNP gets votes more in support of independence than as a judgement on their own performance. Undeserved support leads to atrophy in political parties. We all witnessed that in the Scottish Labour Party who used to boast that they could weigh the vote rather than count it, but ended up distinctly slimline because they failed to deliver.

The fear we must all have is that rather than have a First Minister who is trying to honestly address the nation’s problems, we have instead a fumbling Party leader trying to keep control of a diminishing Party with well buttered fingers.

Of course, one of the reasons that so many SNP MPs are calling it a day is that they do not want to face the ignominy of defeat nor see the point in waiting for something they can’t envisage happening. As Kate Forbes put it so admirably at the Festival Fringe this week, the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ is more likely than a second referendum. Even non-believers like Mhairi Black can unite on that thought.

So what we are really waiting for is the next General Election when the SNP is bound to lose seats, probably dramatically. That will lead to inevitable calls for Humza Yousaf to stand down and end the pantomime of his leadership.

His only selling point when he won the contest to be SNP leader, you will recall, was that he was the ‘continuity candidate’ who could continue the work of Nicola Sturgeon. The public taste for that has diminished somewhat.

Which means that while I am not aware of any Samuel Beckett revivals at the Edinburgh Festival, while we are not quite waiting for Godot who never appeared, we are just waiting for Kate who seems to be working hard at her own second coming.

But as we know when the Labour Party went through its own succession battles when in power – Tony Blair and Gordon Brown – and I have to say the latter days of Boris Johnson, when Parties in power fight succession battles it is the country that comes off second best.

It is too early to decide if Humza Yousaf’s first ministership has achieved anything.

But it is not too early to surmise that he believes that success would merely be his political survival, and that is not good enough for a nation which has so many pressing problems that need to be addressed.

Harold Wilson once famously said that the Labour Party was a crusade or it was nothing. We found out painfully that for so many Labour MPs it was a job opportunity with better perks than they could dream of in the real world. The same is true for so many SNP MPs many of whom think even the perks aren’t worth it any more.

The second coming of Jesus? A second referendum? The second coming of Kate Forbes is more likely.