Three days after Scotland’s First Minister Humza Yousaf proclaimed he would fight and win a vote of no confidence in his leadership, he has resigned as SNP party leader. Unable to win back the support of the Greens after severing the coalition his minority government had signed up to, and unwilling to bargain with Alex Salmond’s Alba Party, he boxed himself into a corner, leaving the SNP and independence movement in crisis.

The missteps that led him to this point will go down in history as a masterclass in how not to do politics. It was the Greens who first cast doubt on the future of the Bute House Agreement (BHA) — calling an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) so their membership could vote on it after the SNP government reneged on ambitious climate change targets. But it was the abrupt manner in which Yousaf preempted that EGM, breaking off the deal without talks, that led to the Greens’ current fury and refusal to back him in a no-confidence motion. That motion had been lodged by Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross and was due to take place on Thursday.

With the numbers stacked evenly for and against him, Yousaf found himself relying on the support of Alba’s one MSP Ash Regan, formerly of the SNP, who stood against him in last year’s leadership contest before defecting.

The First Minister called her move to Alba “no great loss”, so she could perhaps be forgiven the obvious schadenfreude she felt at her position of power. Salmond, too, was barely able to suppress his glee as his party sought to extract concessions — including the protection “of the dignity and safety of women and children” and “progress on independence”. Alba also wanted the SNP to step aside in some Scottish seats.

To outside observers, these demands from a party pursuing the same endgame might seem reasonable. But to those following Scottish politics, the notion the SNP could cosy up to Alba was unthinkable. The feud between Salmond and his successor Nicola Sturgeon is at the heart of the independence movement’s ongoing civil war, and Alba has striven to undermine first her and then Yousaf’s leadership.

The reference to “the safety of women”  also underscored another fault line: the ill-fated Gender Recognition Reform (GRR) bill. It would be difficult to overestimate the extent to which a polarisation over trans rights has riven the party, and fed into its current travails. Those on the movement’s gender-critical wing — including Regan — have long railed against the Greens’ supposed “wokeness”, and held them responsible for pushing the SNP towards more “progressive” policies. Meanwhile, the Greens have done little to ease the situation, criticising the recent Cass review and the decision to pause the prescribing of puberty blockers.

Yousaf’s decision to ditch the BHA was largely a response to criticism that, within the coalition, the tail was now wagging the dog. But if he saw it as a show of strength, then it backfired, demonstrating only how beholden he was to opposite and irreconcilable forces.

This tension between the social conservatives and the progressives will continue to impact on the efforts to find a successor. The most obvious contender, Kate Forbes, who also ran against Yousaf last year, has been positioning herself as a future first minister for some time, and is said to have been rallying support over the weekend.

From the Highlands, Forbes is considered by many to be competent and likely to appeal to rural voters who switched their allegiance to the SNP under Salmond. But she is a fiscal and social conservative, who is against abortion, same-sex marriage and the presumption against further exploration for North Sea Oil.

As such, she is unlikely to gain the support of the Greens on whose votes the Scottish government would continue to rely in order to pass legislation and their budget. Alternatively, might Forbes gain support from the Scottish Tories? If this seems unlikely, given Ross was the architect of the no-confidence motion, it is worth remembering that it was an alliance with the Conservatives which kept the SNP functioning as a minority government between 2007 and 2011.

A renewed alliance could see a shift to the Right that threatens, for example, the proposed standalone misogyny legislation, and the attempt to introduce no-protest buffer zones outside abortion clinics. That would push younger, more progressive members and voters away in their droves. It might win back some of those who became disaffected in the fallout from the GRR debacle, but it is important to remember that many of those on the gender-critical wing are passionate advocates of women’s reproductive rights.

Yousaf has resigned as party leader but will remain as First Minister until a replacement is found. If Forbes is considered too divisive, an alternative would be to find a safer, more unifying figure, who could steer the Scottish government through the general election and on to the next scheduled Holyrood election in 2026. Whenever the words “safe pair of hands” are uttered north of the border, attention turns to former leader John Swinney, a capable, well-liked and unifying figure. Swinney has previously intimated that he has no desire to return to frontline politics, but he may be persuaded to make the sacrifice to rescue his party from the mess it’s in.

In the meantime, many of the SNP faithful are pondering how Yousaf came to make such a grave and irreversible miscalculation? Where were his advisers? Had no one crunched the numbers or war-gamed the potential fallout? During his resignation speech, he conceded he had underestimated the hurt his sudden severing of the BHA had caused the Greens. With his leadership ended after 13 trouble-filled months, the soon-to-be former First Minister will have plenty of time to further reflect on his choices.

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Dani Garavelli is a Scotland-based freelance journalist and columnist for The Herald.

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