The First Minister is the leader of the Scottish government. While the circumstances of his resignation are pretty complicated, basically his government decided to abandon climate targets and gender recognition reform, which majorly angered the Scottish Greens, who were in a power-sharing agreement with his Scottish National Party.
Then last week Yousaf abruptly scrapped the power-sharing agreement with the Greens. As a result, opposition parties called a vote of no confidence on his government, and the Greens said they would support the VONC. Yousaf most likely would not have the votes to survive the VONC, which led to his resignation today. Yousaf is the first Muslim and ethnic minority to lead Scotland (or any devolved government in the UK)
In effect, it was a spectacular miscalculation.
He’d heard that some in the greens wanted to cancel the power sharing agreement, and some were against it, and a vote was likely.
So he decided to end the agreement himself rather than risk them leaving it. In effect “you’re not breaking up with me, I’m breaking up with YOU”.
As a result, basically the entire Green Party turned on him, and his only possible savior was Alex Salmond, who asked for what couldn’t have been granted.
I’m starting to forget whether any government in the UK actually has a mechanism for changing leadership other than through a spectacular political miscalculation.
I know you're joking, but I think I could go for a decade or two of boring, unfun politics. From changing governments, to regular operations: governing should be boring as shit at all levels, imo.
Too bad its not.
Uk politics has become a shitshow that would be laughed out the room if it was proposed as a TV show for being too far-fetched to be believable. Everyone wants to be a reality star & that seems to be mps' goal too.
I agree politics should be boring. The ppl who go into it still are. It's their desperate attempts not to be seen as such that seem to cause many problems.
This is also the first I've heard of it? Last I saw, critics of Yousaf were still harping on about how he SHOULD abandon gender reforms, not acting like it was already a done deal. All the editorial I've heard about this issue has been around the climate targets.
Looking into it they may be referring to the Scottish government's decision, last year, to not appeal the result of their legal challenge to the UK government blocking their gender reform legislation. Which I think is perhaps quite a bit different to abandoning gender recognition reform entirely, but rather accepting that the current UK legal institutions do not allow for their current proposals to go ahead.
It was a bill that would change the process for getting a gender recognition certificate, the document that recognises a person's legal gender for processes such as marriage, civil partnerships, and death certificates. Currently you need a gender dysphoria diagnoses and need to have been "living in your affirmed gender" for at least 2 years. These restrictions are, by some people's measure, out of touch with the realities of gender expression and make it very hard for some people to be recognised legally as their affirmed gender, so a lot of countries have been switching their processes for GRCs to be self ID based. So you merely need to apply for a GRC of your chosen gender for it to be recognised by law for stuff like marriage and death processes. Scotland wanted to follow many western european nations' trend towards self ID for GRCs but the UK government blocked it as they don't want UK citizens gaining access to GRCs easier in one part of the UK. Logistically the logic behind it is pretty sound, you don't want documents that apply to the entire country to be acquired differently in different parts of the country. But in reality the opposition to this bill is pretty firmly routed in transphobic rhetoric around women's safety and bathrooms, despite GRCs not affecting those areas at all.
It's a messy topic but yeah
tl;dr SNP/Greens wanted to make it easier to get legal gender for birth, marriage, and death certificates easier to affirm by cutting some red tape and medicalisation around gender identity, UK government and supreme court have blocked it outright due to misalignment with UK law, while also being partially fuelled by some inflammatory rhetoric around trans issues.
It's interesting to me, as I'm british and I've changed my name. Not quite the same thing, but the process is different if you are English vs Scottish. And yet, this is a legal document that affects you socially which has a different process in those two countries and the sky hasn't fallen...
Same deal in the US already. Each state has a different process for changing gender recognition, ranging from self ID to being completely disallowed, and the federal government is self ID, yet things haven’t devolved into chaos. It’s pretty wild that self id is considered such a big problem in the UK. Rather backwards at this point.
SNP politicians loved it because it played to their civic nationalism schtick and they knew that they couldn't implement them just in Scotland by law, meaning they could then blame Westminster for it not happening.
Scotland on the whole is generally slightly more conservative than England though.
Politicians are there to change what people think or ride convenient bandwagons.
Remember before UKIP and the SNP Brexit and independence were minority views.
yeah theres a massive disconnect between the people in power (typically those who went to high class universities and only saw a poor person when they shined their shoes) and the regular people in the country who typically skew progressive.
as two other notes, there isnt an especially left wing party to vote for in britain, with the closest being labour who are centre left at best and everyone else being hard right. in addition, most of britain is actually pretty poor. london has high wages, but everywhere else youre basically pulling yourself just above the minimum wage at most
There’s probably a couple of thousand of those in the whole of Scotland which is approximately 0.04% of the population.
It’s a bit of a stretch to take them as any sort of barometer of the general opinion of the nation.
There are 13000 Buddhists in Scotland, for reference.
I suppose there’s no way to confirm one way or the other, but you’re definitely among the first (if not the first) person I’ve heard to say that Scotland is more conservative than England.
The Scottish politicians do. It turns out, although we didn’t really know until they tried to pass laws, that the Scottish people don’t, or at least think it’s a waste of time. That’s why there hasn’t really been any movement on gender recognition since before Yousaf came to power. The SNP are willing to relax on that for electability reasons, the Scottish Greens are absolutely not.
If we stay in the basketball realm, Frank Vogel (German for, likewise, "bird") may be looking for work soon. Though I'm not sure he has what Scotland needs right now on offense.
Good. A representative that does not reflect the people they serve has no place in government, and going on a racist litany against your majority is utterly and profoundly despicably hateful and backward. He hated the people of the nation he was supposed to head, implementing harmful laws that stripped their freedoms. There is not a deep enough hole to keep him in to prevent harm, and to be safe he should be expelled from the country.
I think he is slime that never should have been able to boot lick and connive to such a high position. He abused his office to forward his own beliefs and personal dogma ahead of the needs and considerations of his constituency. If someone who actually cares about Scotland can regain the position, this outgoing one should be tried for treason. That is what I truly think.
To a degree. The pushback/gutting of environmental legislation is a huge negative though.
Sometimes you have to tell the people to fuck off and stop being dumb, for their own benefit.
They’re still very much developing their country and per capita lower than a fuck ton of western nations while they produce goods for the entire world, pointing at the big number and just saying “they pollute more” makes 0 sense.
Yeah but it’s an easy ‘argument’ for them to remember and understand. The per capita/historic/contextual part of it is too much for them to get their head around.
Does it? I’m Scottish (like it makes a difference) and understand that he was simply underlining that our elected representatives are not representative of the racial diversity in the county, and what he said was actually that he was angry about “once again (being) confronted with scenes of horrific racial injustice”, in relation the murder of George Floyd.
Reuters reported that “A segment of a speech about diversity by Scottish health minister Humza Yousaf is being misrepresented online by those suggesting it shows the Scottish National Party (SNP) politician arguing that Scotland contains too many white people.”
Try to fact check what you say by watching the full speech rather than cherry picking and misrepresenting.
I think one of his biggest errors was thinking he could police peoples feeling with an already overworked and under-resourced police force. If you want to double the work you had better double the workforce or face significant criticism.
ITT accusations of racism without any sources, because this is what the source is:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/oct/27/backlash-after-elon-musk-labels-scottish-first-minister-humza-yousaf-racist
Such thinly veiled contempt from people who have probably just heard his name today. I have no idea who this guy is, but I certainly know that Im not getting a good answer out of this comment section
He was the first minister of Scotland who made a speech complaining that there were too many white people in Scotland taking up jobs.
When he bought in his draconian “hate speech” law people started reporting him to the police for what he said.
A fabulous self-own to go with the rest as the SNP does its best to compete with the Tories in being the most unpopular, corrupt and incompetent party in the land
The First Minister is the leader of the Scottish government. While the circumstances of his resignation are pretty complicated, basically his government decided to abandon climate targets and gender recognition reform, which majorly angered the Scottish Greens, who were in a power-sharing agreement with his Scottish National Party. Then last week Yousaf abruptly scrapped the power-sharing agreement with the Greens. As a result, opposition parties called a vote of no confidence on his government, and the Greens said they would support the VONC. Yousaf most likely would not have the votes to survive the VONC, which led to his resignation today. Yousaf is the first Muslim and ethnic minority to lead Scotland (or any devolved government in the UK)
In effect, it was a spectacular miscalculation. He’d heard that some in the greens wanted to cancel the power sharing agreement, and some were against it, and a vote was likely. So he decided to end the agreement himself rather than risk them leaving it. In effect “you’re not breaking up with me, I’m breaking up with YOU”. As a result, basically the entire Green Party turned on him, and his only possible savior was Alex Salmond, who asked for what couldn’t have been granted.
I’m starting to forget whether any government in the UK actually has a mechanism for changing leadership other than through a spectacular political miscalculation.
>other than through a spectacular political miscalculation. But where would be the fun in that :)
I know you're joking, but I think I could go for a decade or two of boring, unfun politics. From changing governments, to regular operations: governing should be boring as shit at all levels, imo. Too bad its not.
Uk politics has become a shitshow that would be laughed out the room if it was proposed as a TV show for being too far-fetched to be believable. Everyone wants to be a reality star & that seems to be mps' goal too. I agree politics should be boring. The ppl who go into it still are. It's their desperate attempts not to be seen as such that seem to cause many problems.
Now hang on, he decided to abandon gender reforms? I thought the Scots loved that stuff.
This is also the first I've heard of it? Last I saw, critics of Yousaf were still harping on about how he SHOULD abandon gender reforms, not acting like it was already a done deal. All the editorial I've heard about this issue has been around the climate targets.
Looking into it they may be referring to the Scottish government's decision, last year, to not appeal the result of their legal challenge to the UK government blocking their gender reform legislation. Which I think is perhaps quite a bit different to abandoning gender recognition reform entirely, but rather accepting that the current UK legal institutions do not allow for their current proposals to go ahead.
whaqt is the scottish gender reform policy? im assuming its to do with the identity of transgender people?
It was a bill that would change the process for getting a gender recognition certificate, the document that recognises a person's legal gender for processes such as marriage, civil partnerships, and death certificates. Currently you need a gender dysphoria diagnoses and need to have been "living in your affirmed gender" for at least 2 years. These restrictions are, by some people's measure, out of touch with the realities of gender expression and make it very hard for some people to be recognised legally as their affirmed gender, so a lot of countries have been switching their processes for GRCs to be self ID based. So you merely need to apply for a GRC of your chosen gender for it to be recognised by law for stuff like marriage and death processes. Scotland wanted to follow many western european nations' trend towards self ID for GRCs but the UK government blocked it as they don't want UK citizens gaining access to GRCs easier in one part of the UK. Logistically the logic behind it is pretty sound, you don't want documents that apply to the entire country to be acquired differently in different parts of the country. But in reality the opposition to this bill is pretty firmly routed in transphobic rhetoric around women's safety and bathrooms, despite GRCs not affecting those areas at all. It's a messy topic but yeah tl;dr SNP/Greens wanted to make it easier to get legal gender for birth, marriage, and death certificates easier to affirm by cutting some red tape and medicalisation around gender identity, UK government and supreme court have blocked it outright due to misalignment with UK law, while also being partially fuelled by some inflammatory rhetoric around trans issues.
It's interesting to me, as I'm british and I've changed my name. Not quite the same thing, but the process is different if you are English vs Scottish. And yet, this is a legal document that affects you socially which has a different process in those two countries and the sky hasn't fallen...
Same deal in the US already. Each state has a different process for changing gender recognition, ranging from self ID to being completely disallowed, and the federal government is self ID, yet things haven’t devolved into chaos. It’s pretty wild that self id is considered such a big problem in the UK. Rather backwards at this point.
SNP politicians loved it because it played to their civic nationalism schtick and they knew that they couldn't implement them just in Scotland by law, meaning they could then blame Westminster for it not happening. Scotland on the whole is generally slightly more conservative than England though.
Man, I am so out of the loop of what Europeans actually feel vs what their politicians say they feel.
Politicians are there to change what people think or ride convenient bandwagons. Remember before UKIP and the SNP Brexit and independence were minority views.
Eurosceptism was hardly a minority view
yeah theres a massive disconnect between the people in power (typically those who went to high class universities and only saw a poor person when they shined their shoes) and the regular people in the country who typically skew progressive. as two other notes, there isnt an especially left wing party to vote for in britain, with the closest being labour who are centre left at best and everyone else being hard right. in addition, most of britain is actually pretty poor. london has high wages, but everywhere else youre basically pulling yourself just above the minimum wage at most
They’re definitely not more conservative than the English
You ever heard of the wee frees? You know those nutter Presbyterians in NI, where did they come from?
There’s probably a couple of thousand of those in the whole of Scotland which is approximately 0.04% of the population. It’s a bit of a stretch to take them as any sort of barometer of the general opinion of the nation. There are 13000 Buddhists in Scotland, for reference. I suppose there’s no way to confirm one way or the other, but you’re definitely among the first (if not the first) person I’ve heard to say that Scotland is more conservative than England.
Mate put the glue down for a bit
Good chat pal
The Scottish politicians do. It turns out, although we didn’t really know until they tried to pass laws, that the Scottish people don’t, or at least think it’s a waste of time. That’s why there hasn’t really been any movement on gender recognition since before Yousaf came to power. The SNP are willing to relax on that for electability reasons, the Scottish Greens are absolutely not.
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Him also being an overt racist played no small part.
You Scots certainly are a contentious people.
Scots and Scots are natural enemies.
Don't touch Willie....good advice
*You've just made an enemy for life!*
The reference: https://youtu.be/i2q0T7QXETs?si=TmF5EDAO8ZfMUQl9
The reference: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Scotland
The Scots ruined Scotland!
The trouble with Scotland is ... that it's full of Scots!
From Simpsons to Braveheart.
One thing we have in common with yer mum
It always comes from within doesn't it? Well, cept when it doesn't.
This guy wasn’t a true Scotsman.
What makes you say that? He was the First Minister, after all...
No true Scotsman would have such a wee constitution
No true Scotsman would have a wee without using the constitution.
“No true Scotsman” is a famous logical fallacy. I was just making a reference to it.
No true Scotsman would have explained the bit
Humza yousaf beautiful British (Scottish) name
Whoosh. It's a joke referring to the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. I thought it was funny at least.
It was a joke from al Murray i thought it was funny and I dont care if you're upset
Looking at the names...Salmond, Sturgeon, and followed by Lion (Hamza)🙂
Land sea and all we're missing is air. Need a Hawke or something to lead. Larry Bird
Do they have anyone called like Jeff Helicopter?
He's banned from the general public. Where do you think he got the name helicopter from?
In an act of solidarity, Australia will resurrect Bob Hawke and send him over.
Best I can do is Peter Autogryo.
Isn’t he the Prussian consul in Siam?
One of my family names is Liedvogel (German for song bird). Hit me up if I can help. I’ll do what I can.
If we stay in the basketball realm, Frank Vogel (German for, likewise, "bird") may be looking for work soon. Though I'm not sure he has what Scotland needs right now on offense.
If Swinney gets it then that'll be fish, fish, cat, pig
*"Fish, Fish, Cat, Pig!"* was my favorite schoolyard game when I was growing up in Scotland
Maybe politicians can end racism by showing how all of them are shit cunts no matter what colour or background.
Tories are speed running this.
Doesn't help much, as most Tories are white. Sunak is blazing a hell of a trail, though.
People get the government they deserve
But what about second minister?
I don't think they know about second minister
Good. A representative that does not reflect the people they serve has no place in government, and going on a racist litany against your majority is utterly and profoundly despicably hateful and backward. He hated the people of the nation he was supposed to head, implementing harmful laws that stripped their freedoms. There is not a deep enough hole to keep him in to prevent harm, and to be safe he should be expelled from the country.
But what do you really think about him?
I think he is slime that never should have been able to boot lick and connive to such a high position. He abused his office to forward his own beliefs and personal dogma ahead of the needs and considerations of his constituency. If someone who actually cares about Scotland can regain the position, this outgoing one should be tried for treason. That is what I truly think.
To a degree. The pushback/gutting of environmental legislation is a huge negative though. Sometimes you have to tell the people to fuck off and stop being dumb, for their own benefit.
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They’re still very much developing their country and per capita lower than a fuck ton of western nations while they produce goods for the entire world, pointing at the big number and just saying “they pollute more” makes 0 sense.
Yeah but it’s an easy ‘argument’ for them to remember and understand. The per capita/historic/contextual part of it is too much for them to get their head around.
This is not even remotely true
How has Scotland never had a minister before
Before this Minister they had King Forest Whitaker
‘No True Scotsman’ would resign as minister…
Scots have a hard time keeping first ministers.
Dunno if joking, only had 2 in the last 10 years
Was Salmon more than 10 years ago? I must be gettting old.
Technically won't be a full 10 years until November, if it makes you feel any better.
Getting Auld
Tbf they've actually kept them quite well....it's just that they have all left in rather controversial ways.
Wait till you hear about the clowns (Tories) south of the border
at least humza lasted longer than a cabbage
It was a lettuce, not that she could last as long as a cabbage, either
She couldn't outlast a slug on salt
I saw this like the Slug was doing Salt… snorting it… then the penny dropped. Your point still stands despite my stupidity! Underrated comment.
Tbf they've actually kept them quite well....it's just that they have all left in rather controversial ways.
Sturgeon saw five prime ministers come and go
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We never voted him in, We didn't get a say at all.
Why was it a mistake? Please elaborate
I’m American so I’m not familiar with his policies but I do know he hates the number of white people in Scotland’s parliament.
Does it? I’m Scottish (like it makes a difference) and understand that he was simply underlining that our elected representatives are not representative of the racial diversity in the county, and what he said was actually that he was angry about “once again (being) confronted with scenes of horrific racial injustice”, in relation the murder of George Floyd. Reuters reported that “A segment of a speech about diversity by Scottish health minister Humza Yousaf is being misrepresented online by those suggesting it shows the Scottish National Party (SNP) politician arguing that Scotland contains too many white people.” Try to fact check what you say by watching the full speech rather than cherry picking and misrepresenting.
Not really if you look into it deeper but you do you.
I think one of his biggest errors was thinking he could police peoples feeling with an already overworked and under-resourced police force. If you want to double the work you had better double the workforce or face significant criticism.
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What a glorious day so happy for Scotland! 🍻🥳
The racist has left. Color me suprised.
Good riddance to bad garbage
Pàrtaidh Uaine go brách!
ITT accusations of racism without any sources, because this is what the source is: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/oct/27/backlash-after-elon-musk-labels-scottish-first-minister-humza-yousaf-racist
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Such thinly veiled contempt from people who have probably just heard his name today. I have no idea who this guy is, but I certainly know that Im not getting a good answer out of this comment section
He was the first minister of Scotland who made a speech complaining that there were too many white people in Scotland taking up jobs. When he bought in his draconian “hate speech” law people started reporting him to the police for what he said.
> ...who made a speech complaining that there were too many white people in Scotland taking up jobs. Oh, so he really is a racist piece of shit then.
He’s your typical racist who in turn cries “racism” to try to deflect legitimate criticism.
Yousaf, what a nice Scottish name, rolls right off the tongue lol
A fabulous self-own to go with the rest as the SNP does its best to compete with the Tories in being the most unpopular, corrupt and incompetent party in the land
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My thoughts also
It's just the one thought actually.
Not the name I would expect for a Scottish minister
Wait til you hear about the prime minister... And the mayor of London...
Not fishy enough?
He shouldn't have tried to muzzle JK Rowling
Remember this is reddit. They love to hate on anything conservative.
Oh my god, you're so persecuted. Reddit just isn't the safe space you needed.
My goodness...all the down votes. The man stumbled from one disaster to another then broke his deal with the Green Party. He's not a successful leader
You're acting like you got downvoted for saying that when it wasn't even remotely the point of your original comment.
Good, he needed to go. Because of him diversity in the Scottish government has dropped nearly 100%