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Parliament has confirmed Humza Yousaf, leader of the Scottish National Party, as prime minister. He is the first Muslim to hold the position in the country. The new Scottish Prime Minister faces the challenge of getting the independence movement out of a bottleneck in which he has been immersed for several years and from which a difficult way out is looming.
A revolution of new leaders displaying previously unrepresented diversity rocks the UK. The latest example comes from Scotland, in the figure of Humza Yousaf, the new independentist and Muslim leader. The milestone comes five months after the UK registered its first Hindu leader with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. The British capital is led by London Mayor Sadiq Khan, son of Pakistani immigrants. The new leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) was appointed on Tuesday as the first head of government of the Muslim religion of this nation with 5.5 million inhabitants, unprecedented in Western Europe. Yousafwho presented himself as the continuity candidate who will maintain the progressive line Nicola Sturgeon’s predecessor, won the majority support of the more than 70,000 members of the SNP, after five weeks of hard fighting that exposed deep fractures within the independence movement. The new leader of the Scottish nationalists, the fifth since the party was founded in 1979, has prevailed in the second round and with 52% of votes for Finance Minister Kate Forbes.
Daniel Postigo, RFI correspondent in London, explains that this outcome means that the “SNP continues with the same progressive line”, although in the independence cause he bets by a long-term strategy of “winning converts” and “not turning next year’s generals into plebiscites as Sturgeon intended”
The new Scottish First Minister faces the challenge of get the independence movement out of a jam in which he has been immersed for several years and from which a complicated exit is looming. Scotland voted to remain in the UK in 2014. Now his party wants a new referendum, but the London government has refused to authorize it and the UK Supreme Court has ruled that Scotland cannot hold such a vote without the consent of the British Government. Given this, Yousaf has indicated that he will act with caution. The young new prime minister says he wants to build a “settled and sustained” majority in favor of independence. Polls show that there is a dead heat between those who want to leave the London umbrella and those who want to remain part of the UK.
At 37 it will also be the youngest leader in Scottish historysurpasses Jack McConnell who came to power in 2001 at 41. He has recounted his personal experience before Parliament, such as that after the 9/11 attacks he lost count of the times his loyalty to Scotland was questioned due to his religion and origins .
He SNPthe party of the new prime minister, has 64 of the 129 seats in the Scottish Parliament and governs in coalition with The Greens, who have seven deputies. These they had threatened to leave the coalition if the SNP elected a leader who did not share their progressive views.
(With AFP and British media)