Yousaf in peril as Greens say they will back no-confidence motion

Scotland's first minister stuns MSPs by ending power-sharing deal

- Severin Carrell

Humza Yousaf could be forced to quit as Scotland's first minister after the Scottish Greens announced they would back a motion of no confidence against him at Holyrood.

The Greens said they would vote next week against the man who had "betrayed" them, hours after Yousaf unilaterally ended their power-sharing deal with his Scottish National party. Yousaf had stunned his allies and opponents yesterday morning by announcing he was axing the arrangement with the Greens signed by Nicola Sturgeon in 2021.

He called in Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater, the Scottish Greens' co-leaders and junior ministers in his government, early in the morning to tell them they had been sacked and he was ripping up the agreement.

The move, quickly denounced by Harvie and Slater as "cowardly" and "weak", followed mounting anger within the SNP about a host of electorally unpopular policies that Yousaf's internal critics believe were forced on the party by the Bute House coalition agreement.

His decision was rubber-stamped by an emergency cabinet meeting, with Harvie and Slater absent, at 8.30am, triggering a dramatic series of events that culminated in the Greens announcing they were backing a Tory no-confidence motion scheduled for next week.

"It is very clear that Humza Yousaf has decided to burn his bridges with a progressive pro-independence majority that was established by the Bute House agreement," Harvie told BBC Radio Scotland.

That brings Yousaf, who became first minister in early 2023, to the brink of defeat, forcing him into a series of deals with SNP critics, seven of whom rebelled in a parliamentary vote this week, and his nationalist rivals in the centre-right Alba party set up by Yousaf's fiercest critic, Alex Salmond.

The SNP is two votes short of a majority at Holyrood.