STEPHEN DAISLEY'S HOLYROOD SKETCH: At the world's end, Humza will pipe up: 'It's worse in Wales'
If you’re wondering what went wrong with the Hate Crime Act, just know that everyone except Humza Yousaf is to blame. At Holyrood, the First Minister ran through the ID parade of suspects.
The Tories. The far Right. ‘Bad faith actors’. ‘Deliberate disinformation’. ‘Shoddy tabloid headlines’. Everyone except the bloke who introduced the law.
The consequences of his own actions should really stop victimising Humza Yousaf.
Douglas Ross approached the matter as a policy failure, citing the 40 overtime officers drafted in to deal with 9,000 complaints. The Scottish Tory leader continues to believe his interlocutor can be engaged in debate. His interlocutor simply regards opponents of his legislation as haters.
Yousaf charged Ross with ‘debasing’ political discourse in pursuit of ‘shoddy tabloid headlines’. Since this is a First Minister who would gnaw off his own right arm for a tabloid headline, shoddy or otherwise, it was hard to take this criticism seriously. Again, Ross tried to appeal to Yousaf’s reasonable side, which is like trying to appeal to Joe Biden’s lucid side. He demanded to know why the First Minister thought he knew better than police representatives who have outlined the additional pressures the Hate Crime Act has piled on frontline officers.
This earned him a rebuke for failing to listen to victims of hate crime. Citing police officers has as much chance of swaying the First Minister as does reference to Lord Hope’s calls for the Act to be repealed. Since none of these people go by the name ‘Humza Yousaf’, they don’t stand a chance of being heeded.
Humza said Scotland was on course to meet its Net Zero target before the UK.
The Tory leader brought up a poll showing two-thirds of Scots want the Act gone. As if that is going to persuade Yousaf. He is convinced he is all that stands in the way of a tsunami of hatred that threatens to wash over the country.
Ross said his party had tried to warn the First Minister that things would end up in a shambles. Yousaf resumed his finger-pointing routine.
It wasn’t his fault. It was Colonel Misinformation in the billiards room with the bad-faith actors.
Another thing that wasn’t Yousaf’s fault was his government’s decision to roll back on its climate targets. It’s been rolling back on them for some time, failing to meet them in eight of the last 12 years. Yousaf was scathing when Rishi Sunak did the same, because Sunak broke his promises at Westminster while Yousaf broke his at Holyrood. It was progressive promise-breaking.
Scotland, he said, was on course to meet its Net Zero target before the UK. When the planet is engulfed in a fiery ball, lochs bled dry, up will pipe the reassuring voice of Humza Yousaf: things are worse in Wales.
Unfortunately for the First Minister, Green MSP Ariane Burgess asked a toadying question about ‘plans to accelerate action to ensure that Scotland achieves Net Zero by 2045’. This prompted laughter as Yousaf had to repeat his flimsy excuses. Burgess accused the opposition of ‘corralling the full forces of climate denialism’ to undermine the Scottish Government’s climate goals. The Government seems more than capable of doing that itself.
