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Humza Yousaf holds emergency cabinet meeting as SNP abandons power sharing with Greens
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2024
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UK Politics
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Only if the post of FM is vacant for 28 days, or a 2/3 majority votes for it.
The SNP are unlikely to support an earlier election as they don't have a lot of spare funding.
The conservatives are unlikely to support an earlier election as they are set to lose many of their seats.
The green party leadership knows they are likely to lose votes in an election where they've opposed the SNP. The leadership is aware that most of their votes come from SNP voters choosing to vote Greens on their second vote to increase pro independence MSPs. The Green members and junior MSPs don't seem to understand this and it's caused this arrangement to end. The SNP can whip it's members to support the government, the Greens struggle with this. Only the green leaders seem to accept that they are part of the government (until know).
This leaves 27 MSPs, out of 129 that would support an early election. Getting a 2/3rd majority for non-ordinary election means the post has to be left vacant for 28 days. Then the next election has to happen on the first Thursday of May, which will be May 2025 due to the timing.
The SNP only needs the support of one of Labour, Conservatives, LibDems or Greens to remain in government as a minority. They will probably get the support of the Greens, even after being kicked out of government. A Labour/LibDem/Conservative agenda won't be as pro green issues as the SNP. If the SNP don't get the greens support they are likely able to make deals with one of the other parties, including play them off each other.
This is probably true. Do you think it's likely, though, that the Conservatives will want to be seen propping up the SNP, when that would strongly encourage unionist voters to split even more towards Labour and the Lib Dems?
EDIT: Turns out the Conservatives are going to table a VONC, so clearly they think it's a risk worth taking. Leads us into the whole question of whether Labour will want to be seen backing a 'Tory' motion, though!
EDIT 2: Labour and the Lib Dems will back the VONC, voting against Yousaf. So it comes down to the Greens, Ash Regan and perhaps any other quite mad SNP MSPs who don't mind losing the whip or their seats.
They wouldn't be seen to do this. Because throughout the entire affair they will be criticising the SNP on real and imagined issues. They have substantially more political media presence in Scotland (SNPs presence is largely government, or criticism of the SNP). They are also substantially better funded than the other parties in Scotland, despite a significantly smaller number of members. This means they can set their narrative rather well. Those that don't pay much attention to politics will base their vote on Rishi Sunak rather than Douglas Ross.
Those that pay attention to politics in Scotland are less likely to be changing their vote irregardless of the Conservatives parliamentary record and will do so again. They are voting for a leader with three jobs, who repeatedly shows he doesn't understand how the Scottish Parliament operates and in a friendly interview when he first became leader proposed enacting genocidal legislation if he was prime minister for a day.
The Scottish Parliament has a serious lack of talent in the opposition parties. There are some exceptions of previous leaders that were sacked and some newer MSPs. The SNPs landslide elections and the way party's selected candidates in Scotland PR system prior to this wiped out the vast majority of senior party and talented members in particular. If you follow Scottish politics closely it's hard to see anyone that is going to compently run the Scottish Government other than the SNP.