Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s former first minister, has announced he is to quit frontline politics at the next Scottish elections as he criticised Elon Musk’s interference in the US election and his potential role in the next UK election.
Yousaf, 39, who last year became the first Asian Muslim to lead a European government, has been sitting as a backbencher since resigning as first minister in April over a crisis with his erstwhile partners in the Scottish Greens.
In a letter to his constituency party in Glasgow Pollok, Yousaf said he would have been an MSP for 15 years when the Holyrood elections took place in May 2026, and hoped his achievements would inspire young people “of any background” to take up public service.
His decision to step down as an MSP may increase speculation on the future of his predecessor, Nicola Sturgeon, at Holyrood.
Sturgeon has confirmed she plans to put in nomination papers for the 2026 election but has said she has not decided whether to stand for reelection. Many observers expect her to quit rather than remain on the backbenches.
In an interview with the journalist Mehdi Hasan, Yousaf said alarm bells ought to be ringing “right up and down” British politics about the threat posed by Musk, given his reported plans to bankroll the far right through Reform UK.
Yousaf, who has clashed with Musk several times on the US billionaire’s social media platform X, said Musk “amplified disinformation” that “undoubtedly lit the fuse for some of the race riots that we saw in Southport in the summer”.
After funding Donald Trump’s US election campaign, Musk is “apparently sitting in the interviews for chief of staff, for secretaries of state and living in Mar-a-Lago. And if he is trying to emulate that influence in the next UK general election, that should – as I say – ring alarm bells right up and down the country.”
Yousaf also defended his decision to collapse the power-sharing deal with the Scottish Greens. It left his successor, John Swinney, able to make decisions “without having to negotiate and compromise with the Greens. They can do that on an issue by issue basis, which I think is the best way to do it,” he said.
He also told Hasan “there is no doubt in my mind” that the UK Labour government was complicit in a genocide in Gaza. “How can they not be?”
“We have an Israel, a government that has killed at least 45,000 people,” Yousaf said. “The person that leads that government has an ICC arrest warrant out for them for war crimes and crimes against humanity. And yet, astonishingly, this government, the UK government, is sending weapons, arms, and components for F-35 jets.”
