Former SNP leader Humza Yousaf has always been in the right on one issue

Without distinctive characters, our job would be considerably more difficult. We need heroes and villains, protagonists and antagonists who bring analysis of policy to life.

We also need fools. Some weeks, the news agenda is so relentlessly grim that the instinct is to try to make the reader laugh. If I feel I’d like to read something light on a Sunday morning after a miserable week, then I trust myself other people might feel similarly.

So, thanks, Newspaper Gods, for delivering to us Humza Yousaf.

The former First Minister appears the archetype of the over-confident, under-qualified political high-flyer. He’s a well-connected smoothie, with a cockiness that makes it easy to laugh at him, and his political career appeared a masterclass in how to fall upwards. Not only that, but Yousaf also sounds a bit like useless. Get it?

These flaws – or maybe they’re the default characteristics of the majority of successful politicians – make Yousaf a joy to describe. In fact, I once enjoyed writing about his foolishness so much that I was given a press award for my take on the time when, showboating for the television cameras, he tumbled from a scooter in a Scottish Parliament corridor.

Let’s assume, before this descends into simple bullying, you catch my drift. I don’t think Humza Yousaf is a great politician.

While making that as clear as I possibly can, however, I can’t image who, right now, I would rather listen to on the matter of unity and calm.

Of course, many of those who do not share the former SNP leader’s politics will find this idea ridiculous. Humza Yousaf? Of the divisive SNP? You want us to listen to that fellow?

Yes, I do.

When Hamas psychopaths launched a murderous attack on Israel on October 7 last year, Yousaf’s parents-in-law were visiting relatives in Gaza. They had left Dundee for a holiday and found themselves trapped in a war zone.

The then First Minister had neither the time nor the space his family needed from him then. I state this confidently not because I have ever heard him say as much but because I have children and an imagination. At a time of crisis, the instinct (yes, angry unionists, even I imagine for the most committed Nat) is to do whatever your loved ones need. Circumstances prevented Yousaf from being able to fully satisfy that urge.

The responsibilities of office meant Yousaf couldn’t be with his wife and daughters at crucial moments when they needed him. Instead, he was performing the responsibilities of leadership, maintaining a high public profile and working to reassure fearful Scots. While his in-laws’ fate remained uncertain, he prayed with Jewish Scots in their synagogue and embraced their Rabbi.

This was both performative and profound. It was important at that time to demonstrate unity and would could be more powerful than the image of a Muslim leader sharing the sorrow of fearful and angry Jewish Scots? But carefully choreographed or not, the moment was powerful and I know, because I have friends from Giffnock who were there that evening, that Yousaf’s tears were real.

At a fundamental level, this was the minimum required of a leader at such a time. Not only had the Hamas attack unsettled Jews and stirred up racial tensions, Scotsman Bernard Cowan was among the victims and this had to be recognised. So, yes, Yousaf did what his job asked of him.

But just because something is a minimum requirement that doesn’t mean it’s easy. At a fraught and difficult time when Jewish people were under attack and Muslims under suspicion, Yousaf handled matters with dignity and empathy. And to do this while deeply worried that his parents-in-law might be dead was, I think, doubly impressive. If the test of a person’s character is whether they do the right thing no matter how difficult that might be, then Yousaf breezed it.

After his decision to end the SNP’s power-sharing agreement with the Greens went catastrophically wrong and he quit office, Yousaf would have been forgiven for fading into back-bench obscurity. Indeed, a number of his colleagues would have liked that very much.

Instead, when asked – and sometimes even when not – he has continued to speak out loudly and clearly about the damage of prejudice and the need for unity.

In the process, Yousaf has attracted the attention of the exhausting billionaire Elon Musk, who – after buying Twitter and rebranding it X – now thinks himself a great geopolitical visionary rather than the lucky bore he is.

Musk’s view – based, it seems, on a video clip showing part of a speech in which Yousaf talks about institutional bigotry – is that Yousaf is a “racist scumbag”.

I’ve thought about this long and hard. I’ve tried to remove any influencing factors (I have reminded myself, for example, not to allow the fact that Yousaf grew up with people calling him a P*** c*** and Musk was born the privileged son of an emerald-mine owner in apartheid-era South Africa, for example, affect my view on which of these men I trust on the subject of racism) and I’m not buying. I have met racist scumbags and Yousaf isn’t that.

While Musk tried to whip up anger, Yousaf remained defiant, calling him out, refusing to be silenced, not taking any more of his shit.

Bravo, I say. Bravo.

When the time comes to take stock, Yousaf may regret political mis-steps, he may wonder whether he made a difference. But none of that will matter. What will matter is that when his family and his country needed an example of doing the right thing even in the most difficult times, he stepped up.

I might not think Humza Yousaf a brilliant politician, but I think him a good man and I hope I’ve learned something from him.