Humza Yousaf’s resignation is a symptom of years of Scottish Government incompetence, but amid the chaos, there is room for optimism.

Recent weeks saw a rapid unravelling of the SNP-Green power-sharing agreement, the lodging of two motions of no confidence and the First Minister quitting his post in quick succession.

But while these events may appear to have happened very suddenly, they should not be surprising: Humza Yousaf’s resignation is simply the culmination of 17 years of SNP failure in government.

He inherited a government which had become synonymous with mismanagement and had already cemented a legacy of declining public service and economic stagnation.

But his time as First Minister brought little improvement: Scotland’s economy grew by just 0.1 per cent in 2023 and almost 825,000 Scots are still left languishing on NHS waiting lists.

The government’s failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 75 per cent by 2030, which was instrumental in the collapse of the power-sharing deal, was just the latest example of Mr Yousaf’s inability to govern effectively.

The SNP’s repeated failures in government - and its (at time of writing) desperate attempt to find a new leader simply so it can stay in power – leave it looking strikingly similar to the tired, scandal ridden, incompetent Conservative UK Government.

It too has presided over a more than a decade of failure followed by failure.

Within 50 days of being chosen by the Tory party membership to replace Boris Johnson as Prime Minister, Liz Truss crashed the economy with her mini-budget and was forced to resign.

And Truss’s own unelected replacement, Rishi Sunak, recently admitted that he too has failed to succeed in his pledge of cutting NHS waiting lists.

The Scottish people cannot afford to have yet another First Minister imposed upon them by the membership of a party mired in distraction, chaos and incompetence. This would do nothing but make the problems we face worse.

Scotland needs a government which will finally focus on the priorities of the people, in particular the cost-of-living crisis and public services.

Only Labour has a plan to do this.

Labour’s New Deal for Working People will tackle the cost-of-living crisis by strengthening workers’ rights and making their country work for them.

As part of our policy plan, Labour will end in-work poverty, ban exploitative zero-hour contracts and fire and rehire, and introduce a genuine living wage for all adult workers.

Supported by a new publicly-funded green energy company based in Scotland, GB Energy, we will also create 50,000 green jobs, both to support the economy and to counter the SNP’s failures on the environment.

And we will tackle NHS waiting lists once and for all by putting a windfall tax on oil and gas giants – a policy which the SNP has so far rejected – and use the money to invest in public services.

These are just some of the policies Labour has ready to deliver if voted into government in an election.

Both the SNP and the Conservatives have failed and failed again in government. They are out of touch, out of ideas and out of credibility. Only Labour has a plan to bring the change Scotland needs.