Humza Yousaf elected leader of Scottish National party

Humza Yousaf has been elected the first minority ethnic leader of the Scottish National party, in a narrow victory that confirmed deep divisions over policy within his party.

Yousaf is almost certain to be confirmed as Scotland’s next first minister in a nominal vote at Holyrood on Tuesday but now has to bridge those divides by bringing the SNP’s warring wings together.

Widely seen as Nicola Sturgeon’s preference as her successor, Yousaf defeated his closest rival, Kate Forbes, by a narrower than expected 52% to 48% after second preference votes cast by supporters of the third candidate, Ash Regan, who came last in the first round, were counted. The turnout was 70%.

In the first round, Yousaf led with 48% of the votes, with Forbes on 40%. Yousaf secured less of Regan’s second preference votes than Forbes but took enough to win.

Forbes, a social and fiscal conservative, founded her campaign on blunt and highly critical attacks on Yousaf’s record and denounced his avowed support for Sturgeon’s centre-left policies as “mediocre” and complacent.

Yousaf responded by warning that if Forbes won, the SNP could lose elections and see Sturgeon’s power-sharing deal with the Scottish Greens at Holyrood collapse, leaving the SNP as a minority government.

Speaking after the results were announced, Yousaf said his first task was to meet Forbes and Regan to discuss keeping them in the government, and did not deny he would offer them posts in his government.

He said he wanted to unite all sections of the party – the size of Forbes’s support suggests he may need to rethink many of his boldest taxation policies in order to keep her in his cabinet.

“Leadership elections by their nature can be bruising; however, in the SNP we are a family,” Yousaf said. “Over the last five weeks, we may have been competitors or supporters of different candidates. We are no longer Team Humza or Team Ash or Team Kate – we are one team, and we will be one team.

“[Where] there are divisions to heal, we must do so quickly because we have a job to do and as a party we are at our strongest when we are united.”

Forbes, the finance secretary, who is due to return from maternity leave in early April, told reporters after Yousaf’s speech she would discuss staying in his cabinet but refused to say what she would expect in return.

But she made clear she expected him to listen to party members – nearly half of whom preferred her policy platform to his – and would not commit to backing Yousaf’s policy of fighting the UK government’s block on Holyrood’s gender recognition bill.

Many opinion polls suggested Scottish voters also preferred Yousaf to Forbes, although those polls also showed most voters were unsure who would be the best first minister.

She insisted she was a democrat, adding: “I’m here to support the new leader of the SNP. I absolutely accept Humza Yousaf is the new leader and of course I will continue to work with him to ensure we have a plan which has the confidence of SNP members.”

She said she expected Yousaf to accept that discussions about the SNP’s policies and direction had to continue now the leadership contest was over – a strong hint she wanted him to compromise on his policies. “We’re absolutely united [but] we want to create the opportunity in the party now to continue to discuss ideas, but we are united as one, to serve the people of Scotland.”

In an interview published on Monday before the announcement, Yousaf vowed to hold an anti-poverty summit as his first act as first minister, where experts could discuss wealth taxes to fund support for poorer people, after figures last week showed child poverty in Scotland was at the same level as when the SNP first came to power in 2007.

The announcement at Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh on Monday afternoon came after a fractious contest that has included deep policy divisions between candidates, unprecedented personal attacks and the resignation of the party’s chief executive and Sturgeon’s husband, Peter Murrell, after damaging revelations that the media had been fed false information about membership figures.

The party revealed its membership had fallen from 104,000 to 72,000 since December 2021 after all three candidates, Yousaf, Forbes and the outlier Ash Regan, demanded transparency in how the vote was being run.

The result was announced after the online ballot of members closed at midday, concluding the first leadership contest since 2004, after Sturgeon was elected unopposed to replace Alex Salmond in 2014.