Health Secretary Humza Yousaf is favorite to succeed Nicola Sturgeon as leader of the pro-independence Scottish National Party and Scotland’s semi-autonomous government after his main rival lost support by saying she would have voted against same-sex marriage.
(Bloomberg) — Health Secretary Humza Yousaf is favorite to succeed Nicola Sturgeon as leader of the pro-independence Scottish National Party and Scotland’s semi-autonomous government after his main rival lost support by saying she would have voted against same-sex marriage.
Bookmaker William Hill put Yousaf at 8/15 to replace Sturgeon after her surprise resignation last week while Kate Forbes, Scotland’s finance and economy secretary, was second on 15/8.
Both candidates kicked off their campaigns on Monday. They fielded questions about their position on Scotland’s controversial gender recognition reform bill, which Yousaf, 37, backed and Forbes, 32, said she would have voted against. The bill would have made it easier for people to legally change their gender.
Forbes, a member of the socially conservative Free Church of Scotland, also suggested she wouldn’t have supported single-sex marriage, though would defend the policy as leader. Some SNP politicians, including the public finance minister and the minister for children and young people, withdrew support for her after the comments.
Forbes said she would have “respected and defended the democratic choice that was made” on same-sex marriage, but the issue was “a matter of conscience”. Scotland passed the law introducing marriage for same-sex couples in 2014.
LGBTQ rights were already set to be a contentious issue in the race for the Scottish leadership, with Forbes on maternity leave when the Scottish Parliament passed the gender reform legislation. In addition to lowering the age at which transgender people can legally change their gender, it also removed the need to have a medical diagnosis of “gender dysphoria.” Sturgeon stepped down from power weeks after the UK government blocked the bill, the first time it had used such powers against the Scottish Parliament.
Yousaf said that he backed the former First Minister on a range of LGBTQ issues, including same-sex marriage and the gender recognition reform bill, and would challenge the UK’s decision if elected leader.
“I’m a Muslim. I’m somebody who’s proud of my faith,” Yousaf said in an interview with LBC on Monday. “But what I don’t do is, I don’t use my faith as a basis of legislation.”
Read More: How Trans Rights Turned Into a UK Constitutional Feud
A survey of the Scottish public last week by Savanta for Scotland found that Sturgeon’s successor will face a difficult choice over the trans rights bill. 53% of the Scottish public think the Scottish government shouldn’t proceed with a legal challenge over the UK government’s decision to block the legislation. A similar proportion of SNP voters took the opposite view, with 51% wanting the government to stand up to Westminster.
The race to replace Sturgeon so far is seen as being between Yousaf and Forbes after Angus Robertson, a former UK parliamentarian who now serves in the Scottish government as cabinet secretary for the constitution, culture and external affairs, said the time wasn’t right to seek the post.
Ash Regan, a member of the Scottish Parliament who stepped down from a ministerial role over the gender reform bill, is also running. William Hill on Tuesday put her odds of winning at 6/1.
The deadline for nominations for the SNP leadership is Friday, Feb. 24, at noon. The party will announce the winner on March 27 after a vote by members.
Despite the criticism, Forbes said on Tuesday that her campaign was “absolutely not” over.
“I think the public are longing for politicians to answer straight questions with straight answers,” she said in an interview with BBC Radio. “My position on these matters is that I will defend to the hilt everybody’s rights in a pluralistic and tolerant society, to live and to love free of harassment and fear.”
(Update with more details of Forbes’ and Yousaf’s leadership bids)
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