Humza Yousaf could be forced to quit as Scotland’s first minister next week after the Scottish Greens announced they would back a Conservative motion of no confidence against the man who “betrayed” the Greens by unilaterally ending a coalition deal.
Patrick Harvie, the Scottish Greens’ co-leader, said the party was furious that Yousaf had suddenly torn up the Bute House agreement, under which the Greens had shared power with the Scottish National party (SNP) for nearly three years.
After a dramatic sequence of announcements on Thursday, which began with an emergency cabinet meeting at 8.30am, Harvie said the Greens’ six MSPs would support a Conservative no confidence motion due to be voted on next week.
That brings Yousaf, who only became first minister in April 2023, to the brink of losing the vote, forcing him into a series of deals with his internal critics, six of whom rebelled in a parliamentary vote earlier this week.
The SNP is two votes short of a majority at Holyrood. Yousaf now has to rally every vote from his deeply split party and must also secure the backing of a former SNP minister, Ash Regan, who defected to join Alex Salmond’s centre-right nationalist party Alba last October in protest at the SNP’s stance on gender reform and its soft-pedalling on independence.
If the result is tied, Holyrood’s presiding officer, Alison Johnstone, a former Green MSP, will have to make a casting vote in favour of Yousaf under the protocol that presiding officers vote for the status quo.
Holyrood officials made clear that, as the vote is not binding, under the Scottish parliament’s rules it would be up to the first minister to decide how to respond. However, losing a vote of no confidence so close to a general election in which the SNP could lose dozens of seats to Labour could make his position untenable.
Harvie told BBC Radio Scotland: “It is very clear that Humza Yousaf has decided to burn his bridges with a progressive pro-independence majority that was established by the Bute House agreement.”
He said the full Scottish Greens parliamentary group had decided unanimously to support the no confidence motion, albeit with a “heavy heart”, adding that Yousaf had chosen to “capitulate” to socially and economically conservative voices in the SNP.
Harvie said the Bute House agreement had very clear processes for sorting out policy disagreements, which allowed both parties to change their stance. Yousaf, however, he said, “chose to rip it up, and that can’t be consequence-free”.
Lorna Slater, the Greens’ other co-leader, said: “When we voted for Humza Yousaf’s appointment last year, it was on the basis that we would continue to work together to deliver the progressive policy programme as laid out in the Bute House agreement.
“[His] decision today to end that agreement has without doubt called into question the delivery of that programme. It came with no reassurance that his minority government would continue with these objectives.
“And it abruptly ends the pro-independence majority government which the public voted for, and which members of both parties supported.”
The crisis erupted after the first minister called in Harvie and Slater on Thursday morning to tell them he was unilaterally scrapping his party’s landmark coalition agreement with the Greens.
Yousaf’s move – quickly denounced by Harvie and Slater as “cowardly” and “weak” – followed mounting anger within the SNP about a host of electorally unpopular policies that Yousaf’s internal critics believe were forced on the party by the coalition agreement.
The catalyst for the crisis had been his government’s decision last week to abandon its “world-leading” target to cut Scotland’s carbon emissions by 75% by 2030, a move that provoked an open rebellion by Scottish Green party members.
That rebellion in turn forced Harvie and Slater to agree to an emergency vote by the Scottish Green party on staying in government – a concession that rattled Yousaf and immediately raised questions about the coalition’s viability.
At 8.30am, on Thursday, Yousaf hosted an emergency cabinet meeting in Bute House, his Georgian official residence in Edinburgh’s new town, to tell ministers the SNP was returning to minority government to allow it to have sole control over policies.
The first minister, who is facing the loss of dozens of seats to Labour in the general election, then told reporters the deal had “served its purpose”. It had come to “its natural conclusion” and no longer gave his government the “stability” it needed, he said.
He made clear the SNP would soon abandon or water down some policies it had previously championed, now that government policy was no longer framed by the agreement. “We will of course, have to be very wise and careful around the battles that we choose to fight, and we will be absolutely and entirely focused on the people of Scotland’s priorities,” he said.
The first minister insisted he was proud of what the coalition with the Greens had achieved, including nationalising rail services, taking 100,000 children out of poverty, bolstering green energy production and cutting taxes for the poorest.
However, later, during a fractious and rowdy session of first minister’s questions at Holyrood, it became clear Yousaf’s government faced much greater instability.
Speaking as a backbench MSP for the first time in nearly three years, Harvie accused the first minister of caving in to rightwing forces in Scottish nationalism and in parliament.
The collapse of the agreement also triggered calls from Labour and the Scottish Conservatives for a snap Holyrood election. Douglas Ross, the Scottish Conservative leader, then announced the Tories would be tabling the vote of no confidence.