The by-election result in Hamilton and Rutherglen West came as no surprise to seasoned observers of the Scottish political scene.
A trend best described as “anyone but the SNP” has been growing for some time. The Party has lost a series of council by elections-in Stirling and South Ayrshire to the Conservatives, in Edinburgh to the Liberal Democrats and in South Lanarkshire and Aberdeen to Labour.
The scale of the Nationalists defeat though was unexpected with Labour polling 59% to the SNP’s 28%. If the result was repeated across Scotland at the general election Labour would win 41 seats to the SNP’s 6.
The parties’ fortunes had begun to reverse prior to Nicola Sturgeon’s arrest and PoliceScotland’s ongoing Operation Branchform, which is investigating the missing £600k from the party’s finances amongst other allegations.
The underlying reason for change has been the switch from constitutional politics to “traditional” concerns around the state of public services and ongoing delivery disasters such as the two ferries, now years behind schedule, and millions over budget.
Humza Yousef will not reverse that trend, indeed the “continuity candidate” has accelerated that decline. And there has been growing despair amongst SNP activists at the ongoing SNP/Green coalition following an agenda marginal to the real concerns of the Scottish people.
So, what now?
Many want Humza to go now. But with more and more policy and implementation failures on the horizon, who would want to take over and own responsibility for the inevitable general election meltdown?
A compromise may be that he continues as First Minister until the general election but on the basis that the deal with the Green Party is terminated.
Looking beyond the short term, independence faces further problems. The 2022 Scottish census revealed that one in five Scots is of pensionable age while the number of people aged 65 and over is projected to grow by 29.7% by mid-2045, from 1.06 million to 1.37 million. And projections show that those aged 90 and over in Scotland will double between 2019 and 2043.
And as the Biblical rain demonstrated just this weekend, Scotland needs to factor in increasing costs to help mitigate climate change. The effect of both of these factors would blow apart the revenue and capital budgets of an independent Scotland.
Scotland is moving on, and as Stephen Moon, the former Yes Scotland strategist said following Rutherglen, “The age of the referendum is over”.