After the resignation on April 29 of Humza Yousaf, the new leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP, the Scottish independence party), John Swinney, was unsurprisingly elected Prime Minister on Tuesday, May 7, by the local Parliament, with a heavy task to relaunch his training, which is struggling as the British legislative elections approach. He received 64 votes out of 129 in Parliament in Holyrood, a district of Edinburgh, where the SNP is far ahead of the various opposition parties but does not have an absolute majority.

He must now be sworn in at the Court of Session, Scotland’s highest civil court. The day after becoming leader of the party to replace Mr Yousaf, John Swinney, a 60-year-old veteran of local politics and long-time number two in the executive, becomes the third head of the Scottish government in just a short time. more than a year. He replaces Humza Yousaf, 39, who announced his resignation after ending his government coalition with environmentalists. The latter abstained during the vote on Tuesday.

After his election, Mr Yousaf praised the “extraordinary privilege” of his mandate, promising to be a “Prime Minister for everyone in Scotland”. “I will give everything I have to build a better future for our country,” he said. The British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, fiercely opposed to Scottish independence, has, in a message on X, expressed his eagerness to work with John Swinney on “the real issues that matter to families”, citing employment, growth and public services.

Left in turmoil

Earlier in the day, Humza Yousaf, who was Scotland’s first and youngest head of government from an ethnic minority, formally submitted his resignation in a letter to King Charles III. He remained in power for thirteen months, succeeding the charismatic Nicola Sturgeon, without having fully succeeded in embodying the future. “As a young Muslim boy, who was born and raised in Scotland, I could never have dreamed of one day having the privilege of leading my country,” he wrote.

The Scottish Parliament is responsible for many areas, including health and education, while foreign affairs and defense fall to London. The task promises to be difficult for John Swinney, a long-time close friend of former Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon and who more than anyone represents a certain continuity. The party is weakened by the ongoing investigation into its finances, in which its former chief executive and husband of Nicola Sturgeon, Peter Murrell, is accused of embezzlement.

John Swinney was, from 2014 to 2023, Nicola Sturgeon’s deputy prime minister before leaving this post at the time of the latter’s surprise resignation. He previously led the SNP between 2000 and 2004, when the party was in opposition.

One of the main challenges for the new leader will be to limit the rise of the Labor Party in Scotland, in the run-up to the elections to the British Parliament. While part of the opposition accuses the SNP, in power since 2007, of prioritizing its fight for self-determination to the detriment of the daily lives of Scots, John Swinney promised on Monday to focus on “the ‘economy, employment, cost of living’, as well as on the health system, education and the climate crisis.

He also spoke of his ambition to see Scotland become an independent country. A fight which has been temporarily deadlocked since the British Supreme Court ruled, at the end of 2022, that only the British government could authorize a new referendum. The last vote, in 2014, was won by 55% against independence.