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THE rise of the Scottish National Party was built on the dream of independence.

But their stranglehold on power has turned into a nightmare of misrule north of the border.

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Now their destructive time in office may be coming to an end.

Broken by arrogance, incompetence and extremism, their government is in collapse, their party in meltdown.

The immediate cause of their present crisis was the sensational resignation yesterday of their discredited First Minister Humza Yousaf after just 397 days in office.

From the moment he succeeded the long-serving Nicola Sturgeon in early 2023 he was on the defensive, partly because he was a political mediocrity and partly because the SNP did not have a majority in the Edinburgh Parliament and therefore had to rely on the votes of the Greens to sustain their coalition in office.

But the Scottish Greens are even more radical than the SNP.

So they reacted with fury when Yousaf recently admitted his Government would not meet its flagship target of reducing carbon emissions by 75 per cent over the next six years.

As the friction deepened, there was fevered talk of resignation and rebellion by the Greens.

Yet it was Yousaf himself who made the first move, bringing the SNP-Green Coalition to an end in a desperate bid to shore up his crumbling authority.

But the decision backfired spectacularly.

Far from strengthening his position, it plunged his leadership into turmoil as he faced two motions of no confidence — one from Labour, the other from the Conservatives.

In a dramatic twist, his survival against these twin attacks seemed to depend on winning back the support of Ash Regan, his most bitter opponent in the 2023 SNP leadership contest.

After her defeat, she joined the alternative Nationalist party, Alba.

Over the weekend, SNP opinion hardened against Yousaf, many of whose members felt that it would be impossible to govern while being effectively held hostage by Ash Regan.

In addition, his mishandling of the Greens was said to be typical of his ineptitude.

Nicknamed “Hamza Useless”, his record in office was dismal, littered with mismanagement and warped priorities.

He was best known for his notorious Hate Crime Act, which he pushed through as Justice Secretary then implemented as First Minister.

In the name of equality, this heavy-handed measure turned Scotland into a land of draconian censorship where basic liberties, like freedom of expression, were eroded.

Even private conversations in the home were subject to the new regime, which resembled something out of George Orwell’s novel 1984.

While criminal behaviour was often ignored by the authorities, the Scottish police deployed 500 so-called “hate crime champions” to enforce the law, backed up by a deluge of propaganda.

This kind of authoritarianism was typical of Yousaf, a man who exudes partisan zeal.

In a disturbing speech recently, he said he wanted to “make Scotland Tory-free”.

That same spirit of intolerance shines through the SNP’s obsession with gender identity politics in defiance of women’s rights, childhood innocence and biological science.

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Under Sturgeon, at the centre of the SNP’s revolution was the Gender Recognition Act, which proposed to make it far easier for people to change their gender.

But the policy turned out to be a political suicide bomb.

Having been blocked by the Government in London, a convicted double rapist calling himself Isla Bryson was sent to a women’s jail.

So great was the scandal that Sturgeon was forced to quit, leading to Yousaf’s election.

Change at the top has failed to stop the Nationalists freefall.

Membership has halved since 2019, while Sturgeon’s own husband, Peter Murrell, the SNP’s former chief executive, has been charged in connection with embezzlement after the alleged disappearance of £600,000 in campaign funds that were intended for another referendum on independence.

On so many fronts, the SNP Government is failing miserably.

Scotland has easily the highest rate of drug deaths in Western Europe and life expectancy is significantly lower than in England.

Scotland’s state education system used to be among the finest in the world, but under the dogma-driven SNP it has been in headlong decline, with the gap widening between the achievements of affluent and poor pupils and standards falling in maths and English.

Appalling saga

The Scottish economy is stagnating, not least because of the relentless attacks on the oil and gas industry, as well as increases in taxation to pay for the state’s lavish subsidies such as “free” tuition fees or prescriptions.

Scotland now has six income tax bands, compared to three in England, and according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the effective marginal tax rate for someone earning between £100,000 and £125,000 is no less than 69 per cent.

But so much of this money is squandered, as shown in the appalling saga of the two new ferries meant to serve Scotland’s island communities.

The original budget was £97million but the costs have soared threefold and the vessels, originally meant to be operating in 2018, have still not gone into service.

More money has been spent buying off the public sector unions with overly generous pay awards, though productivity remains too low and bureaucracy too large.

The SNP have been in power now for 17 years.

Their greatest achievement has been to prove that they cannot successfully run their own country.

In fact, their sorry record is the strongest possible advert for the maintenance of the union.

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