Nicola Sturgeon was forced to quit as first minister, Alex Salmond has claimed as he asserted that the circumstances of her resignation had “delegitimised” Humza Yousaf’s position as her successor.
Mr Salmond suggested that Ms Sturgeon was forced to resign due to her decision in January to apply to the Supreme Court to contest the government’s move to block the gender recognition reforms, and then not to follow through.
“Abandoning halfway through is to invite inevitable failure. So clearly it wasn’t the intention to go when Nicola went, it wasn’t a planned departure in that sense,” he told The Times.
“The SNP obviously has questions to answer and the problem with it is that it delegitimises Humza.”
It comes just hours after the accountants that audit the SNP’s accounts resigned after the party’s former chief executive was arrested in a police investigation into SNP finances.
Peter Murrell, who is married to Scotland’s former first minister Nicola Sturgeon and recently stood down from his SNP job, was released without charge pending further investigation after 12 hours of questioning.
