To sit in Bute House this lunchtime and listen to the first minister of Scotland was to hear fallibility, human and political.
A man still new to the highest office here departing; Humza Yousaf tacitly acknowledging his decision to boot the Scottish Greens out of government last week transformed a bumpy moment – they were deeply unhappy already – into a politically fatal one. They returned the favor for their expulsion by saying they’d help haul him out of government too.
Having lost their votes and unwilling to countenance the support of Alex Salmond’s Alba, the numbers for Yousaf didn’t add up.
So, he concluded, better to voluntarily acknowledge this and accept than be humiliated by arithmetic within days.
All this matters deeply for Scotland’s governance. But it matters in Devizes as well as Dundee, for another spasm of chaos within the Scottish National Party, so dominant here for so long, will broaden smiles within the Labor Party.
Already hopeful of a swathe of gains in the urban areas in, around and between Glasgow and Edinburgh come the general election, further turmoil engulfing its biggest Scottish rival is a further fillip.
If Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer can capitalize on this moment, his path to Downing Street opens up further.
