FORCING the dissolution of the Scottish Parliament could be a vote-loser, a political expert has warned.
A motion of no confidence in the Scottish Government has been lodged by Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar – but Professor Murray Leith said a Holyrood election at this time might not go down well with voters.
“They might think there are more important issues right now,” said Leith, professor of political science at the University of the West of Scotland.
“Party politics is one thing but you don’t want to upset the electorate as a whole and any party that brings down the Scottish Parliament or seeks to bring it down might not resonate with Scottish voters at the moment.
“An election could be called any time south of the Border between now and January and I wonder how the people of Scotland would respond to one here.”
If the vote of no confidence passes, then First Minister Humza Yousaf will have to resign and if Holyrood cannot agree on a replacement within 28 days, an election will be called.
Labour’s no-confidence motion in the Scottish Government and the Tories’ no-confidence motion in the First Minister were lodged after Yousaf ended the Bute House power-sharing agreement with the Scottish Greens on Thursday. This pre-empted a vote by Scottish Green members on whether the agreement should continue after climate targets were ditched.
READ MORE: Fears over impact of partisan politics on Scottish Parliament
“The ending of the Bute agreement caught quite a few people by surprise as the First Minister was expected to wait and see what the Green membership voted on,” said Professor Leith.
Right-wingers in the SNP had already been calling for the agreement to be dumped but he said this did not mean the party was suddenly going to lurch to the right.
“The SNP’s sole reason for existing is for an independent Scotland and that cuts across ideological lines,” he said. “The SNP have very broad wings but at the same time, they consistently describe themselves as a centre-left party. That is where they get a lot of votes from and there are a significant number of MSPs who are not on the right of the party.
“Fergus Ewing was probably one of the happier people last week but I don’t see the SNP suddenly lurching to the right, given the broad nature of the support they get.”
The big issue for the SNP now is that the Greens are lined up with the opposition even though they have been broadly supportive since the SNP took power in 2007, according to Richard Parry, Honorary Fellow at Edinburgh University’s Centre on Constitutional Change “The First Minister might build back in a way for them but I think he handled this brutally, making Lorna Slater and Patrick Harvie walk out of Bute House with all the cameras on them,” he said.
“They had been trying to help him in the last week so I am not sure why he treated them so badly.
“They are hurt, and Lorna Slater put in strong words how hurt she felt – I quite understand that because it is a brutal thing to lose your job as a minister. You get kind of used to your private office and your advisers as well so I think it could be quite a while before the Greens come round.
“Humza behaved quite ungraciously to the Greens, I think, but you can’t have a tail wagging a dog and the Green tail seemed to be getting a bit strong in recent times.”
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