March 27, 2023 4:01 p.m
The almost 38-year-old, successor to Nicola Sturgeon, is the first Scottish head of state from a Muslim family
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There Scotland has a new one independence leader. AND Humza Yousaf, not yet 38 years old, the new leader of the SNP party and future prime minister of the local government. This was announced by the Scottish National Party summit in Edinburgh itself, thereby publishing the results of the vote among members to decide on the successor Nicola Sturgeon, who unexpectedly resigned in February after nearly a decade of leadership. Yousaf beat rivals Kate Forbes and Ash Regan.
Yousaf: “I’m the happiest man in the world” After announcing his win, Humza Yousaf expressed his delight. “It’s hard to find the words to describe how honored I am to have been commissioned by our SNP membership.” Yousaf also said he considers himself “the luckiest man in the world” to chair the SNP his, a party he joined 20 years ago.
Origin: Pakistani father and native Kenyan Born in Glasgow on 7 April 1985 to a Pakistani father and a native Kenyan mother but also from an Asian family, Yousaf is the first Scottish leader from a Muslim family. He will have to support the banners of Scottish pro-independence nationalism before Rishi Sunak, the unionized Tory prime minister at the head of Britain’s central government who is himself the son of immigrant parents (Indian and Hindu in his case). Yousaf received 52.1% of the vote in the most recent runoff against Kate Forbes, the very young outgoing Treasury Secretary, in a vote that appears to have split the base almost in half and which officials say around 50,500 militants voted slightly more than 72,000 subscribers (equivalent to approximately 70% of total eligible).
After a first ballot in which he was first by over 40% and less than 4 thousand votes ahead of Forbes and in which the underdog Regan was eliminated in third place with a remainder of 11% of the vote.
The future Prime Minister of Edinburgh is seen as a character loyal to Nicola Sturgeon and is well liked by most of the nomenklatura that has dominated the SNP in recent years (the Covid pandemic); having served as local justice minister for three years since 2018 and having previously dealt with transport.
Graduate in Political Science from the University of Glasgowwas a youth leader of the Muslim Students’ Union and an activist against the war in Iraq, but also determined to expose episodes such as the anti-American attack of September 11, 2001.
Having joined the Scottish National Party’s pro-independence movement in his early twenties, he has been a staunch supporter of Sturgeon’s pro-independence strategy and a defender of the pro-independence emphasis as well
radical-progressive matrix of the party on issues such as the social agenda,
Civil Rights, Gay Marriage or finally the controversial free gender reassignment law.
During the election campaign, however, he acknowledged the need to recalibrate the times and ways of the Separatist challenge after a failed attempt to appeal to London’s Supreme Court to get approval for a referendum, causing the consensus to decline Credited by the polls for independence now just under 40% Scots and the recent decline in SNP membership.
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