Bonus post: The dance of death of Scottish devolution

How Holyrood holds up a mirror to British democracy as a whole

This piece was published as a long-read on spiked last week (6 May). Link below to the whole thing.

The political demise of former Scottish first minister Humza Yousaf is the climax (for now) of a dance of death for the Scottish National Party (SNP) government that began with the resignation of Yousaf’s predecessor, Nicola Sturgeon, last March. Having dominated Scottish politics for more than a decade, the SNP can’t seem to put a foot right.

A variety of policy failures and blunders culminated in the ending of the SNP’s power-sharing deal with the Scottish Greens, leaving the government unable to govern and the already weak Yousaf lacking any credibility. Few believe Yousaf’s successor John Swinney is likely to save the SNP’s fortunes, and nor is there anything resembling a government-in-waiting among the opposition parties. Whatever happens next is likely to happen slowly and painfully.

In fact, one way to understand the whole 25-year history of the devolved Scottish parliament is as a much longer, but no less painful, dance of death. That of Scottish – and indeed British – Labourism. The fact that the zombified Labour Party itself is set to be the beneficiary of the SNP’s demise, perhaps in Scotland and almost certainly at the UK level, only underlines the old truth about history repeating itself, first as tragedy and then as farce.

Read on at spiked.