Humza Yousaf is the new First Minister of Scotland having been confirmed in the position by the Scottish Parliament yesterday.
Over the weekend he was confirmed as the new leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), following a bitterly contested election. He narrowly beat Kate Forbes, winning 52% of the vote in the second round of voting, compared to Forbes’s 48%.
The SNP currently governs Scotland in a coalition with the Scottish Greens.
Yousaf becomes the first Muslim leader of Scotland as well as the first from an ethnic minority. The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Rishi Sunak, is also from an ethnic minority. The Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of Ireland, Leo Varadkar, is also of partly of Asian descent – his father was from India while his mother was Irish.
Yousaf faces an uphill battle to unite his party after internal policy battles over a number of issues, particularly the rights of trans people.
The next Scottish election is due only in 2025 but recent polls show that the SNP is starting to lose support, with some polls showing that as few as 30% of Scots now support the party.
[Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/scottishgovernment/27081162726]