London: Humza Yousaf has been elected the first minority ethnic leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) and will become Scotland’s first ethnic minority first minister.
The 37 year old is the first Muslim to lead a major party in the United Kingdom.
In a leadership contest that exposed deep divisions – with unprecedented personal attacks and the resignation of the party’s chief executive Peter Murrell – within the Scottish National Party, Yousaf, the health secretary, narrowly defeated Kate Forbes, the finance secretary, in a contentious race to succeed Nicola Sturgeon. Though Sturgeon did not explicitly back any of the candidates in the contest, Yousaf was overwhelmingly backed by most senior SNP members.
Among SNP members, Yousaf received 48.2% of the first preference ballots cast, compared to Kate Forbes’s 40.7% and outsider Ash Regan’s meagre 11.11%.
With their widespread backing of Yousaf’s campaign, the SNP establishment was greatly relieved by the outcome, which was announced at Edinburgh’s Murrayfield stadium shortly after 2 pm.
Taking to the stage, Yousaf began by thanking the SNP’s national secretary and headquarters staff. He exclaimed, “It’s hard for me to find the words just how honoured I am to be trusted by our membership to be the leader of the SNP and to be on the cusp of our party’s first minister. Can I pay tribute to Kate and Ash. You both have put in an incredible shift and I know collectively we will continue to work hard as team SNP. I also feel like the luckiest man in the world.”
Following his victory, Yousaf vowed to shift the independence movement into “fifth gear” and said he would move on with his plans to designate an independent minister.
In addition, he declared that he would proceed with his plans to file a lawsuit to overturn the UK government’s decision to veto Sturgeon’s divisive gender law, which would permit Scots to change their legal sex by affixing a declaration.
“I am a proud Scot and equally a proud European too and Scotland is a European nation,” he added in his speech. “We want to return to the European Union and play our part in building a continent that is based on human rights, on peace, prosperity and social justice.”
After Nicola Sturgeon offers her resignation to the King on Tuesday, MSPs will vote for Yousaf to become Scotland’s first Muslim first minister.
After news last week that child poverty in Scotland was at the same level as when the SNP first came to power in 2007, he promised to call an anti-poverty summit as his first official act as first minister. At the summit, experts are likely to debate wealth taxes to pay for support for the poor.
After completing his political studies at Glasgow University, Yousaf started working as SNP leader Bashir Ahmad’s office manager. Ahmad was the party’s first MSP from an Asian and Muslim background.
Yousaf continued to work for other MSPs after Ahmad’s passing in 2009, including Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon.
After winning the election as an MSP for the Glasgow region in 2011, he took his oath to the Queen in both English and Urdu.
He replicated this when he was re-elected in 2016, dressing in a kilt and a sherwani to honour his Pakistani and Scottish ancestry, respectively.
In the 1960s, his Kenyan mother and Pakistani father immigrated to the UK.
“We should all take pride in the fact that today we have sent a clear message, that your colour of skin, your faith, is not a barrier to leading the country we all call home,” Yousaf said in his speech.
People with South Asian ancestry, some of whose roots can be found in the former British Empire, have advanced in the UK political system. Their rise is related to census data showing that as Muslim and Hindu populations increased, Britain became less Christian and white than it had been a decade earlier.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, there were a few members of ethnic minorities in the UK parliament, but none were elected until four for Labour in 1987. In the general election of 2019, the total increased to 65, or roughly 10% of the House of Commons.
That comes up just short of the roughly 14% of UK citizens who identify as members of an ethnic minority.
Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, is the most influential Labour politician of South Asian descent in the UK. He is 52 years old. Khan, a Pakistani bus driver and seamstress’s son, made history in 2016 when he became the first Muslim to be elected as the mayor of a significant Western city.
The fifth-largest economy in the world is led by Rishi Sunak, a devout Hindu who is 42 years old and the first person of South Asian origins to hold the post.
“We will be the team that brings independence to Scotland,” Yousaf said in his speech on Monday, emphasising that the shared objective was what had brought the SNP together following recent squabbles. Building support for the cause would have to be done “on the doorstep”, he continued.
Kalrav Joshi is an independent journalist based out of London. He reports and writes on politics, culture, technology and climate.
