Humza Yousaf

The 37-year-old son of South Asian immigrants is set to become the first person of color to serve as Scotland's first minister.

He says he wants to build a “settled, sustained” majority for independence. The SNP wants a new vote, but the central government in London has refused to authorize one, and the U.K. Scottish voters backed remaining in the U.K. The smaller party had warned it might quit the coalition if the SNP elected a leader that doesn’t share its progressive views — meaning a victory by Forbes or Regan could have splintered the government. Yousaf has signaled he will act cautiously. A formidable leader who led the SNP to a dominant position in Scottish politics, Sturgeon failed in her aim of leading Scotland out of the United Kingdom, and divided the party with a contentious transgender rights law.

New leader needs to convince Scotland that he can take the SNP in a fresh direction.

Yousaf’s allies suggest he has been underestimated but admit it is up to him to demonstrate his talents. It will involve countering his rival Kate Forbes’s attack that he was incompetent in the three policy briefs he held. He initially said he would take legal action, but then suggested he would only proceed if the advice suggested he could win. Yet his opponents suggest that if there was any real hope of another independence referendum, Sturgeon would still be in post. “He’s got to show he’s prepared to do that,” one said of Yousaf. Downing Street has already made it clear that Sunak’s response to Yousaf will be no different.

Humza Yousaf narrowly succeeds over conservative Christian Kate Forbes to win the contest for leader of the SNP, pledging to continue the fights for gender ...

His late grandfather came to Scotland from a small town in Pakistan in 1962 with barely a word of English. In stepping into the party leadership role, Mr Yousaf will vacate the health secretary position he came to in 2021 when the service was overwhelmed following the first wave of COVID-19. I don't think they have any right to use that," he said. "I don't imagine in his wildest dreams that his grandson would one day be running to be first minister of Scotland," Mr Yousaf said. Mr Yousaf is the grandson of immigrants who arrived in Glasgow in the 1960s. He is the first Muslim leader of a major political party in Scotland, and is no stranger to such milestones – in 2012 Mr Yousaf became the youngest person, and the first from an ethnic minority background, to be appointed to the Scottish government when he took on the role of Minister for Europe and International Development at age 26.

He will become the nation's youngest First Minister and also the first ever person from a minority ethnic background to hold the post.

Mr Yousaf, 37, will become Scotland’s youngest First Minister and also the first ever person from a minority ethnic background to hold the post. Humza Yousaf has been elected as the next leader of the Scottish National Party and will become Scotland’s new First Minister. He will become the nation’s youngest First Minister and also the first ever person from a minority ethnic background to hold the post.

Having styled himself as the continuity candidate, the leadership contest has highlighted how much needs to change inside the party.

The campaign has signalled the end of “wheesht for indy” – all-pervasive internal discipline that meant frustrations about party management or policy were cut off in order to maintain focus on the main prize. By mid-April, he must also decide whether to contest the UK government’s block on Holyrood’s gender recognition bill. Working with him you realise he’s very on the ball and far from the buffoonish media caricature.” An hour after the result, Alex Salmond’s Alba party launched a recruitment drive based around Forbes’ slogan “continuity won’t cut it”. As much as the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, decries Yousaf’s lack of electoral mandate, his mandate within the party itself is also slim. As an equalities activist I’ve never had to explain why something mattered.

Scottish Health Minister Humza Yousaf has been elected as the leader of the Scottish National Party, setting him up to become the country's leader.

Scotland's governing Scottish National Party elected Humza Yousaf as its new leader on Monday after a bruis...

He says he wants to build a "settled, sustained" majority for independence. The acrimonious SNP leadership contest has sent the SNP's poll ratings plunging — to the delight of the Labour Party and the Conservatives, which hope to gain seats in Scotland during the next UK-wide election, due by the end of 2024. Yousaf has signalled he will act cautiously. A formidable leader who led the SNP to a dominant position in Scottish politics, Sturgeon failed in her aim of leading Scotland out of the United Kingdom, and divided the party with a contentious transgender rights law. The SNP holds 64 of the 129 seats in the Scottish parliament and governs in coalition with the much smaller Greens. Yousaf, who is due to be confirmed as first minister by Scottish lawmakers on Tuesday, faces the challenge of uniting the SNP and reenergising its campaign for Scottish independence from the United Kingdom.

Humza Yousaf faces some enormous challenges as he takes over from Nicola Sturgeon as SNP leader and Scotland's first minister. Being the leader of a divided ...

At the start of the leadership contest Humza Yousaf seemed committed to challenging that position in court. While that is substantially true, it may not be the only factor. I expect that whatever she might be offered, Kate Forbes would want a fair amount of autonomy if she is to continue in government. Then of course there are significant policy issues to be addressed. That's not a prediction. In his acceptance speech, he acknowledged the "bruising" nature of the leadership campaign and called for divisions to be healed quickly.

Scotland has elected its new First Minister with Humza Yousaf becoming the youngest leader and the first from a minority ethnic background.

"The SNP do not have the answers on the NHS or on the cost-of-living crisis," Labour leader Keir Starmer tweeted alongside his congratulations to Mr Yousaf. The Glasgow-born Yousaf took his oath in English and Urdu when he was first elected to the Scottish Parliament in 2011, before progressing to become the first Muslim to serve in the devolved government's cabinet. "We should all take pride in the fact that today we have sent a clear message: that your colour of skin or indeed your faith is not a barrier to leading the country that we all call home," Yousaf said. He is set to be sworn in as the first minister on Wednesday, becoming the first ethnic minority leader of a devolved government and the first Muslim to lead a major UK party. "We will be the generation that delivers independence for Scotland," Mr Yousaf said in his victory speech, adding in subsequent interviews that he would formally request that the UK government allow another vote. - Labour leader Keir Starmer congratulated Mr Yousaf but said the SNP "do not have the answers" for Scotland's economy.

Downing Street said it would reject any formal request for indyref2 should Mr Yousaf ask for one.

Those are the issues that the public care about and that’s what the Government will be focused on.” It’s time to hold Westminster’s feet to the fire.” The way we get independence is making sure we get a consistent majority for independence. He added: “I hope we can get independence within five years. “The people of Scotland have voted in election after election not for who the First Minister should be, but for Scotland to have a choice on its future,” he added. Calling for Mr Yousaf to “reunite the movement” for independence, he said: “Continuity won’t cut it.

This bitterly fought contest has only widened divisions, and the opposition parties are already circling, says Herald columnist Dani Garavelli.

But the Greens would have been the likely beneficiaries of a mass exit of “woke” members, and Forbes might have proved a challenging adversary across the chamber. It is impossible yet to know if Scottish Labour will rise to the occasion and capitalise on the widening faultlines within the SNP. And, of course, there is still the police probe into the [£600,000 of funds](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nicola-sturgeon-600k-husband-investigation-b2283471.html) said to have gone missing from the party’s accounts (the party has not responded to the allegation, due to the ongoing investigation). [new taxes for the wealthy](https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/humza-yousaf-back-wealth-tax-29553552) is preferable to Forbes’s more conservative economic bent. The divisions within the party, and the miasma of failure around it, have only increased as a result of a bitterly fought contest and a relentless succession of bad news stories, something that is evident in the tight result. It was a growing recognition that the Salmond/Sturgeon era had run out of steam that led to her resignation. One of the quirks of the contest was that many unionist activists and commentators seemed to be lobbying for Forbes, which suggests they thought a victory for her would most boost their own position. Meanwhile, his predisposition to fight the UK government on its section 35 obstruction of the SNP’s [gender recognition reform bill](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/16/rishi-sunak-blocks-scotlands-gender-recognition-legislation) may be exactly what the progressives who voted for him want; but it will also rekindle the divisions that helped force his predecessor’s exit. [came through in the end](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/mar/27/humza-yousaf-elected-leader-scottish-national-party-snp), although by a tighter margin than any new leader of a party would want. With no second referendum on the horizon, and Sturgeon out of the picture, the cork has popped off the bottle and will not be forced back in. As the “establishment” candidate, he already has the support of the majority of MSPs and ministers. He will find it easier than Forbes would have done to form a cabinet, and his election makes it unlikely the Greens will walk out of their powersharing deal, as they had already

Humza Yousaf is the new leader of the SNP and in the coming days will be sworn in at the Court of Session in Edinburgh as the county's sixth first minister.

For a country that once built a fifth of the world’s ships this would be nothing short of humiliating. Newspapers splashed this morning on an announcement from Humza that one of the first things he’ll do in office is bring in a wealth tax to help fund the Scottish Child Payment. But that is likely to require getting the deficit down closer to 3 per cent of GDP – the rule set by the But the truth is that there are not a huge number of wealthy Scots to tax. But if independence is still the dream then tackling economic realities has to become a priority. Last year drug deaths dropped in Scotland for the first time in eight years, but it was still the second highest number of deaths in a single year on record. But in England these deaths only account for about a sixth of the life expectancy wealth gap. For unionists this is the United Kingdom’s dividend. But he is perhaps most notorious for his record as health minister, which led to NHS chiefs saying the health service was about to ‘fall over’. But the dream is not over yet for the SNP’s members and its core supporters. That hundreds die every year from drug-related deaths – nearly four times more than anywhere else in Europe and two-and-a-half times more than anywhere else in the UK – shames Scotland. Speaking to Scottish government officials in the last few weeks it’s clear many think the dream of an independent Scotland now really is over for a generation – and a decades-long generation at that.

Newly appointed leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), Humza Yousaf speaks at Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh on March 27, 2023. Andy Buchanan/AFP/Getty ...

“We will be the generation that delivers independence for Scotland,” he said in a victory speech. It remains etched into the memories of many who experienced it, and their descendents. Britain’s Home Secretary Suella Braverman also has Indian roots, while London mayor Sadiq Khan was born to a working-class Pakistani immigrant family. In 2014, Scotland voted against independence by 55%. The hardship reached a breaking point when his grandmother was attacked with an axe, he said. His mother was born in Nairobi, Kenya, also to a family from Punjabi descent. But 75 years since the end of the British Raj, many commentators have remarked at how history has come full circle. [interview](https://www.holyrood.com/inside-politics/view,interview-humza-yousaf-on-tackling-hate-headon_9401.htm) with Scotland’s Holyrood newspaper, Yousaf explained in detail how his mother’s family faced racial discrimination in the East African city for being seen as taking away jobs from the local population. Yousaf joined the SNP while he was a student at the University of Glasgow and rose through the ranks of the party, becoming a member of parliament in 2011 – the first Muslim and non-White cabinet minister to serve in the Scottish Government. Noor Ahmed, from the Citizen’s Archive of Pakistan, a non-profit organization dedicated to cultural and historic preservation, described the journey Yousaf has taken as a “Pakistani story that is moving and aspirational, and will be lauded locally.” On Tuesday, the Scottish Parliament will vote to elect the country’s sixth first minister, a position Yousaf is expected to claim as the head of the party with the most lawmakers. “It was time to get away and again, it made sense because there was a British call for people from the Commonwealth to come and take on industrial jobs,” Yousaf said.

BBC Scotland experts look at some of the issues and challenges facing Scotland's next first minister.

He has pledged to be a "first minister for all of Scotland" after being chosen by party members to replace Nicola Sturgeon. Mr Yousaf, who had been serving as ...

Humza Yousaf has indicated he would like to continue that support, and indeed make it more of a priority for the Scottish government. Or does more of the focus need to be on poverty and disadvantage itself? None of these are simple, single issues to be filed away. An appeal for extra funding was met instead with the threat of 10% cuts. There's the clamour, notably from retailers, to reform business rates. Humza Yousaf is well aware of the mammoth task required to fix the problems across health and social care. And there is a question mark over economic strategy. But to deliver that will have to involve unpopular decisions about what the healthcare system can and cannot afford. But worries have been expressed that it is sometimes proving harder for other young people - who are not necessarily actively advantaged - to get places on certain courses. Can the government properly reset its strained relationship with teachers after the recent strike? It wanted to be judged by its progress raising attainment and helping children and young people from disadvantaged areas. Inevitably, the pandemic has thrown up new problems which are still real issues.

The Scottish National Party has elected 37 year-old Humza Yousaf to replace Nicola Sturgeon as leader - the first Muslim leader of a major party in Scottish ...

The 37-year-old was elected Tuesday by lawmakers as the first Muslim leader of not just Scotland—but any Western democracy.

[according to](https://twitter.com/sundersays/status/1640340872662327296?s=20) Sunder Katwala, the director of the British Future think tank. That his victory comes so soon after the election of Britain’s Prime Minister [Rishi Sunak](https://time.com/6224248/rishi-sunak-britain-new-prime-minister/) last year and Ireland’s Taoiseach [Leo Varadkar](https://time.com/4810472/leo-varadkar-republic-of-ireland/) returning to power in December 2022 means that, for the first time in history, the British, Scottish, and Irish leaders are all of South Asian origin. The most immediate electoral test for Yousaf will be the next U.K. [the three candidates](https://time.com/6265023/scotland-snp-first-minister-candidates-2023/), which included the Scottish finance secretary Kate Forbes and former junior minister Ash Regan, Yousaf was widely seen as the continuity candidate and the favorite of the SNP leadership (save for Sturgeon, who declined to endorse a successor). Such an outcome would be a major boon for the Scottish Labour and Conservative parties, both of which have struggled to best the SNP in recent elections. “As immigrants of this country who knew barely a word of English, they could not have imagined in their wildest dreams that their grandson would one day be on the cusp of being the next First Minister of Scotland,” Yousaf said of his grandparents at Edinburgh’s Murrayfield Stadium on Monday.

Humza Yousaf has won the race to become the next leader of the Scottish National party. Yousaf defeated his rival Kate Forbes by 52 per cent to 48 per cent…

While Yousaf is Sturgeon’s continuity candidate, the former health secretary has a lot of work to do to convince the people of Scotland he is up to the job. Yousaf’s approach to independence is one of gradualism: he believes that spending time persuading ‘No’ voters to earn a larger pro-independence vote is the best way to proceed. Yousaf defeated his rival Kate Forbes by 52 per cent to 48 per cent after Ash Regan was eliminated in the first round of voting.

Scotland's parliament on Tuesday confirmed Humza Yousaf will replace Nicola Sturgeon as first minister, the devolved nation's youngest and the first Muslim ...

Yousaf called the discussion "constructive" but in a thinly veiled reference to holding another referendum, said he "also made clear that I expect the democratic wishes of Scotland's people and Parliament to be respected". "I think what it says about the UK is that we are a welcoming group of nations, and Scotland in particular," Stephen Flynn, the party's leader in the UK parliament, told AFP. He then secured the nominations of a majority of lawmakers in a vote Tuesday to become the new first minister and will be formally sworn in on Wednesday. "I will also argue vigorously for independence," he added afterwards, pledging in the meantime "to make the best possible use of this parliament's existing powers". Ahead of the confirmatory vote, Yousaf acknowledged he had "some very big shoes to fill" succeeding Sturgeon but vowed to "continue to ensure that Scotland is a positive, progressive voice on the world stage". Scotland's parliament on Tuesday confirmed Humza Yousaf will replace Nicola Sturgeon as first minister, the devolved nation's youngest and the first Muslim leader of a government in western Europe.

The UK is now the only democracy where the children of formerly colonised people are running the country that colonised their parents' and grandparents' ...

They were part of a generation of immigrants who were able to come to the UK and make a better life for themselves. Class is the true divide in British politics, whatever colour rosette a candidate wears. Sunak the son of a doctor and a pharmacist. It remains to be seen whether their ethnicity becomes a factor in the public debate around their politics. This reminds us that the ethnic minority political identity is not uniform, although for years parties on the left took the minority vote for granted. It is important to note that neither Yousaf or Sunak have yet faced the real stress test. [first minister of Scotland](https://theconversation.com/humza-yousaf-becomes-scotlands-first-minister-a-decade-of-polls-suggest-hell-struggle-to-deliver-independence-just-like-nicola-sturgeon-202666) is a historic moment for the UK. His political awakening had taken place a decade earlier in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in the United States. Indeed, it is rare to hear him described as a “Muslim minister” or “British Asian MSP”. Though Yousaf has stated he is a practising Muslim, he is also clear that he does not believe that legislators should be led by faith in their decision-making. This first wave of postcolonial migrants often worked in the great British industries, in factories and in mills, settling in large town and cities. The moment is monumental.

Voiced by artificial intelligence. LONDON — Humza Yousaf will replace Nicola Sturgeon as Scotland's first minister tomorrow, after the Scottish parliament ...

Yousaf will then begin the process of assembling his cabinet. Currently first minister-designate, Yousaf will formally become first minister tomorrow morning when he is sworn in at the Court of Session. After second preference votes were taken into account, he won 52.1 percent of the vote compared to 47.9 percent for Forbes.

For eight years Nicola Sturgeon towered over Scottish politics. Now there is a new first minister in charge, how will he make his mark?

Libby Brooks explains how much his proximity to Sturgeon helped propel him to power – and why it now means he has inherited some serious problems, while Hannah Moore asks how Yousaf can unite the SNP after such a bruising battle and what his vision for Scotland will be. Now he has won, how will he set himself apart and imprint himself on the minds of Scottish voters? But, finally, Scotland has a new first minister – its youngest ever and the first to come from a minority ethnic background.