Dame Jackie Baillie MSP, First Minister Humza Yousaf, Labour leader Sarwar and Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross.
By Bill Heaney
“Humza Yousaf has failed Scotland, his government is in meltdown and, despite his bluster, he knows he’s finished.
“That’s why we got his emergency announcement of more money for affordable housing, months after an SNP budget containing a brutal £196 million cut to it.
“He has the cheek to claim he now seeks compromise with opposition parties when he and the SNP have divided Scotland at every turn. The only letter I want to see from Humza Yousaf is one announcing his resignation.
“His obsession with independence has left our economy and public services worse off.
“The Scottish Conservative Vote of No Confidence in Humza Yousaf will go ahead, and my party is urging every MSP disillusioned with his dismal leadership to back it.”
Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton, left, said: “I want to see a government that is focused on driving down waits for healthcare, tackling the sewage in our rivers and taking action on the cost of living.
“This is clearly not that government.
“For that reason Scottish Liberal Democrats are prepared to vote no confidence in this failed nationalist regime and will provide the remaining signatures required to bring this motion to Parliament.”
Earlier, Jackie Baillie hit out at the “chaotic and incompetent” Scottish Government following the news that the Bute House Agreement has ended.
The politician, who represents the Dumbarton constituency, which includes Helensburgh and the Rosneath Peninsula, said “weak” First Minister Humza Yousaf is letting Scots down.
Her comments came after news broke yesterday that the power-sharing deal between the SNP and the Scottish Greens, known as the Bute House Agreement, had been ditched.
Green co-leaders Lorna Slater and Patrick Harvie, from Dumbarton, have also been sacked from their ministerial positions.
It comes after weeks of speculation as relations between the parties deteriorated.
Tensions had been rising in the wake of the SNP’s U-turn on climate change, with the Scottish government abandoning its target of cutting carbon emissions by 75% by 2030.
Difficulties have also arisen over a number of policy areas such as the Cass Review of gender services and marine policy.
Commenting on the end of the Bute House Agreement Jackie Baillie, said: “This chaotic and incompetent government is falling apart before our eyes while Scots pay the price.
“Humza Yousaf is too weak to hold his own government together and he is too weak to deliver for Scotland.
“Three years into the Bute House Agreement the promises the SNP and Greens made have been torn to shreds.
“While Humza Yousaf is ditching the Bute House Agreement, he cannot escape the fact that it’s the SNP that has left almost one in six Scots on NHS waiting lists, gutted public services and failed to tackle the cost-of-living crisis.
“None of this changes the fact that it is SNP failures that have left Scots with higher bills, higher taxes, fewer jobs and a health care service on the brink.
“The collapse of this ill-fated marriage was inevitable but Scotland needs an entirely new government.
“Only Scottish Labour can deliver the change Scotland needs.”
The Bute House Agreement was signed in August 2021 by Mr Yousaf’s predecessor, former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, which shored up the SNP and brought the Greens into government for the first time in the UK.Humza Yousaf now faces a vote of no confidence in the Scottish Parliament next week.