Independent Hamza Yusuf was elected Prime Minister of Scotland on Tuesday 28 March in a vote in the local parliament. Aged 37, he took over the leadership of the Scottish National Party (SNP) the day before after an internal ballot triggered by the shock resignation of Nicola Sturgeon in February after eight years in the job. He will officially take office on Wednesday after being formally appointed by Royal Warrant and sworn in at the Court of Session, Scotland’s High Court.
1. Multicultural
Born in 1985 to a Pakistani father and a Kenyan-born mother into a family of South Asian origin, the new leader of the Scottish National Party is married to a Scottish woman of Palestinian descent. After being elected president of the Independence Party on Monday, he paid tribute to his paternal grandparents, who came from Pakistan sixty years ago: “They could not have imagined in their wildest dreams that their grandson would one day become the next First Minister of Scotland.” Hamza Youssef says he suffered a lot from racism, especially after the September 11, 2001 attacks. In 2021, he and his wife filed a discrimination complaint against a nursery school that refused to take their daughter.
sequel after announcement
2. Muslim
Hamza Yusuf was the first Muslim to hold a ministerial position in a Scottish government in 2012. He grew up in Glasgow, a stronghold of the independence movement, and was educated at a private school, then studied political science, and worked at a da’wah center, before becoming assistant to Alex Salmond in 2005. He denounced The leader of the Scottish National Party at the time, the United Kingdom entered the war against Iraq.
3. A good student
In 2011, at the age of 26, Hamza Yusuf was elected to the Scottish Parliament, where he was sworn in in Urdu and English. He then went through several ministries – including justice and transportation – before taking over the health portfolio during the Covid-19 pandemic. The youngest leader at the helm of the SNP stood for election as party leader as a continuity candidate, championing the same political agenda as his predecessor Nicola Sturgeon.
4. “Wake Up”
His election ended six weeks of grueling domestic campaigning, the first in nearly twenty years for the formation. The new leader displays progressive positions on social issues and is centered on the left in the economy, wanting, for example, to increase taxes on the rich. He also promised to defend Nicola Sturgeon’s “Gender Recognition Reform Bill”, a bill blocked by London that would allow gender reassignment from the age of 16. Signed in contrast to her main rival, Kate Forbes. Minister of Finance and a member of the Free Church of Scotland, which opposes same-sex marriage and abortion, the latter campaigned on a more conservative basis.
5. Pro-independence
Hamza Yusuf promised to rule for all Scots whom he wished “Protection from the cost of living crisis”. Above all, he is loyal to his party’s independence line. After winning Monday, he vowed to be a part of “The Generation That Will Get Independence”indicating that “the people” Scotsman A “Need independence now more than ever.”. However, the issue of independence, relaunched by Brexit, which the Scots strongly opposed, appears to have reached a dead end. It is up to him to find a new strategy, while the British government vetoed Nicola Sturgeon’s desire to organize a second referendum, after winning ‘No’ (55%) during the first consultation in 2014, on this pressing issue.
