Euan McColm: Rishi Sunak and Humza Yousaf fail early tests of leadership over Boris Johnson and Lorna Slater

“HOW” asks a character in Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises, “did you go bankrupt?”

"Two ways," replies another, "Gradually and then suddenly.”

Ask any former Prime or First Minister and they’ll tell you the same process applies to the diminution of political capital. Many, including Tony Blair, have gone on to express regret about not spending it while they had it.

From the moment a leader takes office, their political capital begins to drain away like the sands of an egg timer. Only fools believe they can prevent this from happening.

Power should be liberating. The achievement of their great political ambition should free a leader to be bold; if one cannot be bold while holding the highest office in the land then when?

Currently, we have a Prime Minister at Westminster and a First Minister at Holyrood who, through fear and pointless caution, have frittered away what little political capital they have.

When Rishi Sunak succeeded Liz Truss as Prime Minister, his main positive was that he wasn’t Liz Truss but there was a glimmer of something else. It seemed he understood that Truss’s predecessor, Boris Johnson, had truly debased our national politics. When he spoke of leading with honour and integrity, one dared to hope he would use his newly acquired power to come down hard on any colleague who thought lies and deception perfectly reasonable.

For the good of our politics, Sunak should have been loud and clear in his condemnation of Johnson’s behaviour. But there was another reason the PM should have done this. It was in his personal interest to trash Johnson, who had shown no sign of losing interest in making life difficult for those who had played their part in his departure from Downing Street.

Sunak foolishly ignored the Johnson problem. This he did not because he thought paying no attention would make Johnson go away but because he feared the wrath of that minority of Tory supporters who continue to humiliate themselves by offering the former Prime Minister their entirely unearned loyalty and who blame Sunak for their hero’s downfall.

But here’s the thing. Those who held the view, when Sunak took office, that his resignation as Chancellor last year made him entirely culpable for the end of Johnson’s premiership, were never going to change their minds. And since these people would never be placated, it was foolish to try.

But try Sunak did, avoiding giving clear and direct answers to questions about Johnson’s behaviour and doing nothing but growing weaker in the process.

When MPs met in the House of Commons on Monday to vote on the devastating privileges committee report which found Johnson lied to parliament, Sunak should have been there. He should have shown leadership and placed the integrity of our democracy before all else.

Instead, he stayed away. The Prime Minister’s cowardice will haunt him.

Wing-nut Johnson lickspittles may pop up on TV to tell us that people want to move on from “partygate” but that is simply not true. People do not want to move on from their grief over loved ones lost to Coronavirus, they do not want to move on from the fact Johnson and his staff held parties while the rest of us obeyed strict lockdown rules, they do not want to move on from the bleak truth that the former Prime Minister lied to us all.

Sunak’s abstention on the vote was not only shameful, it was self-defeating. The Conservatives are on course for richly deserved defeat at the next general election. Perhaps some evidence that he understood – and respected – the anger of the public over “partygate” might have helped ameliorate the pain coming his way. Instead, his failure to engage in the debate and participate in the vote looks (because it is) like contempt for the importance of standards in public life.

Asked, on Thursday, whether he agreed with the privileges committee’s verdict on Johnson, Sunak said he was not focussed on the past and wanted to look forward. With that, he flushed away the last grains of his political capital.

First Minister Humza Yousaf proved no wiser when it came to using what little power he had when taking office.

After a campaign to succeed Nicola Sturgeon during which he was happy to be seen as the continuity candidate, Yousaf immediately found himself bogged down in the police investigation into allegations of fraud within the SNP.

When he should have been outlining a fresh vision for government, Yousaf was singing the praises of the woman he replaced and insisting that he would see through some of her most unpopular decisions.

Yousaf chose to set himself against public opinion by proceeding with a legal action to protect his Government’s hopelessly flawed attempt to reform the Gender Recognition Act.

And he threw a protective arm round the shoulder of Green minister Lorna Slater even as it became abundantly clear that her incompetence was entirely to blame for the collapse of the planned deposit return scheme.

On Tuesday, the First Minister ordered his colleagues to back Slater against a vote of no confidence tabled by the Tories. This, all but one did, despite many of them having publicly expressed grave doubts about the workability of the scheme.

One nationalist MSP – Fergus Ewing – rebelled, leading to calls for Yousaf to withdraw from him the SNP whip.

When Yousaf became First Minister, he had the power to change the direction of his party. He could – and should – have ditched the legal battle over the GRA and sacked Lorna Slater, replacing her with someone more capable. Instead – like Sunak – Yousaf displayed weakness, rather than strength. Instead,. after just three months of his leadership, support for the SNP is plummeting.

Anyone with ambitions to succeed in public office should see the failure of both Rishi Sunak and Humza Yousaf to spend political capital when they had it as a grave warning.