Humza Yousaf resigns as Scotland’s first minister
Humza Yousaf has resigned as Scotland’s first minister after cutting ties with his government’s power-sharing partners.
The leader of the SNP, who only took on the role in March last year, has been at the centre of a chaotic few days in Holyrood after he made the surprise announcement to end his power-sharing deal with the Scottish Green Party on Thursday.
Mr Yousaf cut ties following a bitter row over the SNP’s climbdown on climate targets as he said the agreement between the parties had “served its purpose”.
But as a result, his former Green allies teamed up with the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats to get behind two no-confidence motions, one in himself as leader of Scotland and another regarding the entire Scottish government.
Ahead of any of those votes taking place, Mr Yousaf stepped down as Scotland’s first minister just after midday on Monday as he said he was “not willing to treat my values and principles or do deals with whomever simply for retaining power”.
He said he will remain in post until a replacement first minister is chosen.
Over the weekend, Mr Yousaf insisted he would not resign but by Monday morning his tune had changed and Sky News was told he was considering resigning.
He was due to meet the Alba Party’s sole MSP, Ash Regan, who was set to make demands in exchange for her support during a confidence vote. Her vote could have been the decider but he chose to step down before it came to that.
Announcing he was quitting, Mr Yousaf said he “clearly underestimated the level of heart and upset” he caused the Greens when he cut ties with them.
“To my colleagues in opposition, regardless of political party, genuinely, I bear no ill will and certainly no grudge against anyone,” he said as his voice broke while thanking his wife, children and family for “putting up with me over the years”.
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‘We stand ready to work with new leader’
Mr Yousaf said it had been “an honour” to serve as first minister of Scotland and it was a role he “could never have dreamt” of as a young boy growing up there.
The politician, whose parents are Pakistani and Kenyan, also said he is evidence multiculturalism has flourished in the UK.
“People who looked like me were not in positions of political influence, let alone leading governments, when I was younger,” he said.
“We now live in a UK that has a British Hindu prime minister, a Muslim mayor of London, a black Welsh first minister, and for a little while longer a Scottish Asian first minister of this country.
“So for those who decry that multiculturalism has failed across the UK, I would suggest that the evidence is quite to the contrary and that is something we should all celebrate.”
Mr Yousaf said he was proud to have overseen “the most progressive” tax system in the UK and played a part in lifting an expected 100,000 children out of poverty this year.
He added that he will continue to campaign for independence, which he said “feels frustratingly close” and he is “absolutely certain” his successor will achieve it.
The race to replace Mr Yousaf has now commenced, with several names in the fray, although none have officially declared they have thrown their hats in the ring.
Close ally of Mr Yousaf, John Swinney, former deputy leader under Nicola Sturgeon, is being touted as the favourite.
Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster leader, has also been mentioned as has Kate Forbes who lost out to Mr Yousaf during last year’s leadership contest.
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Has Labour got the right strategy to tackle Reform UK?
Nigel Farage’s party cost the Tories dozens, maybe 100-plus seats at the general election. Now it looks like the party is hitting Labour too. But has Sir Keir Starmer got the right answers?
Last year, Labour won a landslide because the Tory vote collapsed, in part because Reform UK took chunks of their supporters in constituencies across the UK.
And here is the situation on 1 May this year – the national equivalent vote share at the council elections put Reform well ahead in first place. Success – this time at the expense of Labour too.
How big a threat is this to MPs? As a very crude experiment, Sky News has looked at what would happen if this result was replicated evenly across parliamentary constituencies.
Within the areas where there were county council elections are 77 complete Westminster seats with sitting Labour MPs.
This includes places like Wycombe, where Treasury minister Emma Reynolds holds. Or Lincoln, won by Foreign Office minister Hamish Falconer.
Now if – for fun – we mapped the country council results from 1 May evenly across these general election constituencies, almost all those Labour seats are gone. All lost, apart from five. That’s 72 out of 77 Labour MPs losing their seats and mostly to Reform UK.
What if we took that swing an applied across the whole country, places where there weren’t local elections?
Angela Rayner in Greater Manchester and Jess Phillips in Birmingham would lose their seats.
Yes this is a crude measure – it assumes a uniform swing can be drawn from the 1 May polls – and local and national elections are very different.
But importantly, YouGov’s latest national opinion polls paint a similar picture to the council elections. Meanwhile, 89 out of 98 constituencies where Reform came second place have Labour in first. Labour MPs are feeling the heat from Farage.
The Reform threat is real. Sir Keir Starmer knows it – and this year has started chasing Reform votes. Slashing aid spending. Abandoning green promises. Hard talk about immigration and living on an “Island of Strangers”.
Sensible given the clear and evident Reform UK threat? Actually – maybe not. Look at the data in detail:
This block here is all the people who voted Labour in last year’s general election. Now thanks to YouGov polling, we know what people in this block would do with their vote now.
It shows Labour has lost more than half of last year’s voters. Just 46% still say they’d still vote for Sir Keir’s party. But – despite the PM’s strategy – they’re not actually going to Reform in large numbers.
Just 6% of Labour’s voters at last year’s general election – six out of every 100 – said they would vote Reform now. That’s all. So where have they gone?
Well, they’ve been lost much more to liberal and left-wing parties – 12% to the Lib Dems, 9% to the Greens.
So just pause there. That means the number of Labour voters who have switched to the Lib Dems and Greens, arguably on the left of the political spectrum, is three times the number going to Reform to the right.
Just 2% go to the Tories.
And much more seriously for Labour, 22% aren’t going to vote, don’t know or won’t say.
The bottom line is people who voted Reform have never backed Labour in large numbers.
This shows how Reform supporters last year voted in each election since 2005. You can see – Reform voters are former UKIP voters. They’re Boris Johnson’s Tories.
Let’s put it another way. While 11% of Labour voters may one day be open to voting Reform, 70% are at risk of going to the Lib Dems or Greens – seven times the threat from Reform.
And typically, these voters don’t like the hard line, Reform-leaning policies of Sir Keir Starmer recently.
The local elections show there is a threat to Labour from Reform. But our data suggests Keir Starmer trying to be Nigel Farage lite isn’t the answer.
Is Labour’s strategy really working?
The US Securities and Exchange Commission has charged crypto platform Unicoin and three of its executives, alleging they made false and misleading statements about its crypto assets that raised $100 million from investors.
The SEC said on May 20 that it charged Unicoin CEO Alex Konanykhin, board member Silvina Moschini, and former investment chief Alex Dominguez with misleading investors about certificates that conveyed rights to receive Unicoin tokens and stock.
Mark Cave, associate director in the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, claimed the trio “exploited thousands of investors with fictitious promises that its tokens, when issued, would be backed by real-world assets including an international portfolio of valuable real estate holdings.”
Related: SEC crypto task force to release first report ‘in the next few months’
“The real estate assets were worth a mere fraction of what the company claimed, and the majority of the company’s sales of rights certificates were illusory,” Cave added.
The SEC’s complaint, filed in a Manhattan federal court, charged Unicoin and the three executives with various securities laws violations and asks for permanent injunctive relief, along with paying back the allegedly ill-gotten gains.
Magazine: SEC’s U-turn on crypto leaves key questions unanswered
After weeks of speculation among crypto enthusiasts and news outlets, Tron founder Justin Sun has claimed he owns the wallet that purchased the largest amount of Donald Trump’s memecoin, allowing him to qualify for a dinner and reception with the US president.
In a May 19 X post, Sun said he had received an invitation to attend Trump’s dinner at his golf club outside Washington, DC, as part of a reward for the top 220 memecoin holders. The Tron founder claimed he controlled the top wallet on the TRUMP token leaderboard under the username “Sun,” which held roughly $19 million worth of the memecoin at a price of $13.20.
According to Sun, he plans to network at the May 22 memecoin dinner, “talk crypto,” and “discuss the future” of the industry. It’s unclear why the Tron founder chose to announce his planned presence at the event now, when the leaderboard was finalized on May 12.
Cointelegraph reached out to a spokesperson for Sun for comment, but had not received a response at the time of publication.
Though not a surprise to many who speculated that Sun was the individual behind the memecoin purchases, his attendance at the dinner only deepens his ties to the Trump administration and the president’s family. In addition to the dinner for the 220 tokenholders, Trump said he would hold a reception and “VIP tour” for the top 25 wallets on the leaderboard.
Related: What to expect at Trump’s memecoin dinner
Sun spent $75 million on tokens through World Liberty Financial, the crypto platform backed by Trump’s three sons, including a $30 million investment a few weeks after the 2024 election. The Tron founder is also an adviser to the company.
Before Trump won the November election, Sun had been facing a lawsuit from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed in 2023 over the alleged “orchestration of the unregistered offer and sale, manipulative trading, and unlawful touting of crypto asset securities.” In February, roughly a month after Trump took office and appointed Commissioner Mark Uyeda as acting chair of the SEC, the regulator and Sun jointly filed a motion for a federal judge to stay the case, which was granted.
Memecoin’s potential conflicts of interest are affecting Congress
Sun’s and others’ involvement in Trump’s crypto ventures has prompted calls for investigations and oversight among many Democratic lawmakers, who argued that some individuals could use digital assets to essentially purchase influence with the president. The concerns initially slowed progress on a bill to regulate stablecoins in the Senate, the GENIUS Act, complicated by World Liberty Financial’s own stablecoin, USD1. The chamber voted to move forward on the bill on May 19, a few hours before Sun’s announcement.
“How convenient: the day after the Senate advances the GENIUS Act, Justin Sun — a major investor in the Trump family crypto venture — announces he’s getting a private dinner as the president’s top crypto buyer,” said Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, according to Bloomberg. “It’s critical that everyone understands the GENIUS Act doesn’t stop this type of corruption — it greenlights it.”
At a May 20 oversight hearing, Maryland Representative Glenn Ivey questioned SEC Chair Paul Atkins on Sun’s case being stayed, as well as his investments in World Liberty Financial and Trump’s memecoin. Though the case was stayed before Atkins was sworn in as chair, Ivey expressed concern about the timeline between Sun’s investments and the SEC not pursuing its own enforcement action.
The memecoin dinner applicants are likely still subject to background checks before meeting Trump in person. As of May 20, those planning to attend included Kronos Research chief investment officer Vincent Liu, Hyperithm co-CEO Oh Sangrok, Synthetix founder Kain Warwick, a consultant named Vincent Deriu, crypto user Morten Christensen, a World Liberty Financial adviser going by the pseudonym “Ogle,” and a representative from the startup MemeCore.
Magazine: Trump’s crypto ventures raise conflict of interest, insider trading questions
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