Scotland’s first minister has cancelled a speech he was due to give in Glasgow amid speculation over his political future.
Humza Yousaf had been expected to speak about the labour strategy in an independent Scotland, participate in a Q&A session and take questions from the press on Friday.
The cancellation came after allies said he would “come out fighting” after a turbulent day that put his leadership in jeopardy after the Scottish Greens announced they would back a motion of no confidence against him at Holyrood.
Later on Friday morning, Scottish Labour piled on the pressure by tabling its own motion of no confidence in the Scottish government. Unlike the Conservative motion against Yousaf, if Labour was successful it would require the first minister and his ministers to resign.
The Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, told LBC: “I think it’s now a matter of when not if Humza Yousaf resigns as first minister, but I think it would be completely untenable for the SNP to presume they can impose another unelected first minister on Scotland.”
The Scottish National party’s Westminster leader, Stephen Flynn, previously said he had spoken to Yousaf after he blindsided supporters and opponents on Thursday morning by announcing he was axing the governing partnership with the Greens signed by Nicola Sturgeon in 2021.
Flynn told BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme that the first minister was “reflective, but he was also very clear to me that he’s going to come out fighting because he believes in what he says. He believes in delivering for the people for Scotland.”
The vote of no confidence, tabled by the Scottish Conservatives and expected to be debated next Wednesday or Thursday, could bring Yousaf to the brink of defeat – the SNP is two votes short of a majority at Holyrood and he would need to secure the backing of SNP rebels as well as a former SNP minister, Ash Regan, who defected to Alba last October in protest at the party’s stance on gender reform and lack of progress on independence.
Alba is led by the former first minister Alex Salmond, one of Yousaf’s strongest critics.
In a significant move, Michelle Thomson, who ran the SNP leadership campaign for Kate Forbes, who lost narrowly to Yousaf last March and has been critical of many of the Green-influenced policies, said she had “no doubt that every single member of the SNP group will be voting for Humza Yousaf”.
She told the same programme that she expected him to win the vote and “crack on” with the business of government, adding that she was “astounded” that the Greens and Labour were willing to support a Conservative motion.
Like Flynn, Thomson said she fully expected Yousaf to engage in dialogue with Regan and other parties – including the Greens – over the coming days.
After her furious response to Yousaf on Thursday, in which she denounced him as “selling out future generations” by walking away from the Bute House agreement, the Scottish Greens co-leader Lorna Slater told Good Morning Scotland that she was “more disappointed than angry”.
Slater accused the SNP of moving to the right “to appease their own conservative wing” and said she expected to see them roll back on equalities, progressive taxation and climate policies.
The Scottish Labour deputy leader, Jackie Baillie, confirmed the party would vote in support of the no confidence motion. She said: “This is not just about the Bute House agreement – we’ve had 17 years of the SNP, one year of Humza Yousaf, when they are simply not focused on the people’s priorities of taking Scotland forward.”
Regan said on Thursday evening that she had written to Yousaf with a list of demands relating to “progress made towards independence, on how he will defend the rights of women and children and a return to competent governance” in order to secure her support.
Flynn said on Friday morning that, in scrapping the partnership with the Greens, Yousaf had “reset the Scottish government’s focus on the priorities of the people of Scotland, on jobs, on the economy, on the NHS and trying to mitigate the damage of the cost of living crisis”.
This reflects the concerns of many MPs, who have told the Guardian that they feel the party’s priorities are not seen to be in tune with voters in this crucial election year, when the SNP is forecast to make significant losses to a resurgent Labour party.
