Just after sunset on Tuesday, Humza Yousaf led his family in Islamic prayer and broke his Ramadan fast in unusual surroundings: the 18th-century chandeliered drawing room of Bute House, grand Edinburgh residence of Scotland’s first ministers.
Yousaf, 37, had just made history. Scotland’s devolved parliament had that day confirmed him as the nation’s first Muslim first minister, as well its youngest and its first from an ethnic minority.
Now the new leader of the governing Scottish National party can focus on an even bigger goal: ending the 316-year-old union between Scotland and England.
Nearly a decade after Scots in 2014 voted by 55 per cent to 45 per cent to remain in that union, the UK’s constitutional future remains shrouded in uncertainty. Polls suggest Scottish opinion is near-evenly split on independence — and that younger voters clearly favour leaving the UK.
“We will be the generation that delivers independence for Scotland,” Yousaf assured SNP members after his election victory this week.
But ending the union will be no easy task for Yousaf, the private school-educated grandson of a Pakistani tailor who migrated to west Scotland in the 1960s. His narrow victory in the SNP leadership election to succeed Nicola Sturgeon capped a bitter contest that inflamed divisions in the previously tightly disciplined party.
After nearly 16 years in government, the SNP faces growing criticism of its record. While Yousaf has been seen as a rising party star since he was elected to the Scottish parliament in 2011, many analysts question his ability to overcome the UK government’s refusal to allow a second independence referendum.
Sir John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde university, said Yousaf must overcome poor public approval ratings, a possible preference for surrounding himself with “like-minded people” and a tendency to be defensive when criticised.
“He’s intelligent, eloquent and fluent, but is not very popular and he has a much-criticised record,” Curtice said.
Yousaf has insisted that turbulent stints as transport minister, as cabinet secretary for justice and most recently health showed he could handle the toughest government gigs. But with Scotland’s health system still in something close to crisis, critics say he has “failed upwards”.
It was Kate Forbes, the fresh-faced 32-year-old finance secretary who was Yousaf’s main leadership rival, that pushed the knife in deepest. “When you were transport minister, the trains were never on time; when you were justice minister the police were strained to breaking point; and now as health minister we’ve got record-high waiting times,” she told him during one fiery televised debate.
It is a mark of how much Scotland has changed in recent decades, however, that it was the traditional conservative Christian beliefs held by Forbes and her opposition to gay marriage that became a campaign issue, rather than Yousaf’s Muslim faith.
Unlike Forbes, the new first minister sees no contradiction between his religion and the socially progressive agenda championed by Sturgeon, including legislation intended to make it easier for trans people to gain official recognition of gender change.
But the narrowness of Yousaf’s victory — he beat Forbes by a final tally of 52 to 48 per cent — suggests SNP members may be more conservative than previously thought.
Controversy over gender recognition reform, which opponents say threatens women’s sex-based rights, clouded Sturgeon’s last months in office. Yousaf intends to challenge a UK government block on the Scottish law, but critics sense vulnerability.
“@HumzaYousaf is the kid who just saw the skater in front of him disappear through the ice, but yells ‘watch me, everybody!’ while wobbling straight for the hole,” said author JK Rowling in a tweet.
Yousaf’s progressive values also make some co-religionists uncomfortable. But for many Muslims and people of South Asian descent, his success is a milestone. Junaid Ashraf, co-founder of the Scottish Asian Business Chamber, said it was a joy to see a Scot from the same immigrant background rise to lead the nation and be celebrated for it. “The feeling that I have is one of safety and warmth,” he said.
Yousaf, a career politician who studied politics at Glasgow university and was spurred by opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq to follow his father into the SNP, hopes his election will encourage anyone who feels “they do not belong”.
“No matter whether Scotland has been your home for a day or for 10 generations, no matter your ethnicity, no matter your gender, no matter your religion and no matter your sexual orientation, transgender identity or disability, this is your home,” he said on Tuesday.
It is a message that contrasts the SNP’s brand of “civic nationalism” with the approach of the UK’s governing Conservatives. While Rishi Sunak is a Hindu of South Asian descent and the UK’s first non-white prime minister, he has made limiting migrant arrivals a top priority.
Yousaf, who as international development minister helped Syrian refugees ashore during a visit to Greece in 2015, has described the UK government’s attempt to block almost all migrants from claiming asylum as “horrific”.
“The UK government’s cruelty to refugees is exactly why we need independence for Scotland,” he said.
But the SNP needs wider justification for independence than differences on immigration or gender. Curtice said Yousaf needed to set out an “intellectually credible case” that showed how Scotland could be better off outside the UK.
Yousaf this week appointed the nation’s first “minister for independence”, but has yet to seriously address its likely economic and fiscal impact.
Still, Habib Malik, former head of the charity Islamic Relief Scotland, has no doubts about the determination of the man he took on as a teenage volunteer in 2003. Yousaf started off sorting donated clothes and cleaning toilets but quickly became an accomplished fundraiser and organiser.
“He has challenges, no doubt, massive challenges. But one thing I know: he will not give up,” Malik said.