Humza Yousaf is on the brink of quitting today amid the extraordinary meltdown triggered by sacking his Green coalition partners.
The Scottish First Minister is poised to go after failing to drum up enough support to survive a confidence vote.
Mr Yousaf has been frantically wooing MSPs over the weekend, but appears to have concluded there is no way of surviving.
Allies have been suggesting the SNP leader will not ‘do a deal with the devil’ by agreeing terms with Alex Salmond, whose Alba Party potentially holds the balance at Holyrood.
Defeat would risk sparking a snap election in Scotland, with the separatists fearing big losses to Labour.
It would be a dramatic fall for Mr Yousaf, who took over from Nicola Sturgeon barely a year ago.
After he summarily ditched the Greens from the Bute House coalition deal – and publicly humiliated them by making them do a walk of shame in view of cameras – they pledged to back a no confidence motion tabled by the Tories.
It was expected go to a vote later this week.
Senior figures in the SNP have been told Humza Yousaf decided over the weekend that there is no way for him to survive and he may stand down on Monday
Alba defector Ash Regan holds the key vote needed to save Mr Yousaf’s job
Veteran Sturgeon ally John Swinney is said to have been approached by senior party figures to become an interim first minister if Mr Yousaf is forced from office.
The SNP leader, who took over from Ms Sturgeon in March 2023, is facing two votes of no confidence, one in him personally from the Tories and another in his government from Labour.
Excluding the presiding officer there are 128 MSPs in total, but the SNP only has 63 votes while the other opposition parties have 65.
Over the weekend Mr Yousaf has been exploring options to convince one of the opposition party MSPs to vote to save his government.
If he managed to get to 64 votes and tie the vote, the presiding officer would back the status quo, so he would be able to hold on.
The most likely candidate he faced the chance of converting was Ash Regan, the sole MSP in Alex Salmond’s Alba Party.
Former SNP leader and long-time Nicola Sturgeon ally John Swinney (pictured) has been approached by senior party figures to become an interim first minister if Mr Yousaf is forced from office
Mr Swinney was Deputy First Minister of Scotland under Nicola Sturgeon from 2017 to 2023
Mr Yousaf announced the end of the agreement, accompanied by a sign language interpreter, on Thursday
Scottish Green Party co-leaders Patrick Harvie (left) and Lorna Slater (right) arrive for First Minister’s Questions on Thursday. The Greens have said they will support a vote of no confidence in the First Minister
Mr Yousaf’s future is reliant on whether he can persuade Ash Regan (pictured on Thursday), the former SNP leadership candidate and now Alba MSP, to back him
Mr Yousaf previously described her departure from the SNP in October last year as ‘no great loss’.
Ms Regan, a former SNP leadership rival to Mr Yousaf, wrote to him with a list of priorities over the weekend, including ‘defending the rights of women and children’. That is thought to mean accepting the results of the Cass review, which criticised gender therapies, in full.
The pair went head-to-head during the SNP leadership campaign, where she called for more extreme independence tactics and expressed her complete opposition to both transgender ideology and the Greens in government.
Her stance on gender reforms also led her to quit the cabinet during the voting stage in one of the first displays of discontent within the SNP on the trans issue.
JK Rowling even waded into the row, saying it is ‘karma’ that the First Minister is now reliant on Ms Regan, who defected to Alba in protest at the SNP’s gender ID stance.
Ms Regan was also pushing for a commitment to invest in the Grangemouth oil refinery, and unilateral moves towards an independence referendum.
Speaking on Sky News’ Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, her boss Mr Salmond effectively laid out his demands, saying a ‘top line’ of any discussion with Mr Yousaf would be the idea of reviving the Scotland United strategy – which would see a single pro-independence candidate stand in each Scottish constituency.
But those demands seem to have been too much of a cost for Mr Yousaf to bear.
A spokesman for Mr Yousaf dismissed the idea, saying: ‘This is fantasy. There is no possibility of the First Minister agreeing any deal like this with Alex Salmond.’
Meanwhile talks are understood to be taking place with individual Green MSPs to avoid a reliance on Mr Salmond’s Alba party.
If Yousaf was to resign immediately, then the Scottish Parliament would have 28 days to elect a first minister by a simple majority.
John Swinney, Sturgeon’s former deputy first minister, is expected to be appointed to steady the ship while a leadership contest takes place in the SNP.
Other possible candidates include Kate Forbes who came second to Mr Yousaf in the last SNP leadership election with 48 per cent of the vote.
Speaking on Sky News’ Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, effectively laid out his demands, saying a ‘top line’ of any discussion with Mr Yousaf would be the idea of reviving the Scotland United strategy
Ash Regan joined Alex Salmond’s Alba Party in October 2023 following a disagreement with the SNP over transgender ideology
JK Rowling even waded into the row, saying it is ‘karma’ that the First Minister is now reliant on Ms Regan, who defected to Alba in protest at the SNP’s gender ID stance
But her socially conservative views on transgender ideology, gay marriage and abortion would also see her rejected by the Greens.
Tensions had been rising between the SNP and Greens over trans and Net Zero policies, but Mr Yousaf’s decision to scrap the so-called Bute House agreement was still a bombshell.
The Bute House Agreement gave the SNP-led government a majority at Holyrood but it came under strain in recent days after the Greens said they would put the future of the deal to a vote by their members.
Some in the Greens were unhappy at the Scottish Government’s recent dropping of 2030 climate targets and the decision to pause the prescription of new puberty blockers at Scotland’s only gender clinic.
Mr Yousaf rubbed salt in the wound by making his newly-sacked ex-colleagues do a walk of shame in full view of cameras.
In the lead-up to his decision to reportedly quit, Mr Yousaf had been desperately trying to secure his survival with an extra vote.
It is understood that letters were sent to Alba Party, Scottish Conservatives, Scottish Labour and the Scottish Greens over the weekend.
First Minister at the time Nicola Sturgeon (centre) and Scottish Green Party co-leaders Patrick Harvie (left) and Lorna Slater (right) announce the signing of their coalition deal, which became known as the Bute House agreement, in Edinburgh on August 20, 2021
Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross (pictured in parliament on Thursday) said: ‘This is a humiliating and embarrassing letter, in which Humza Yousaf is begging to be allowed to keep his job’
Labour leader Anas Sarwar (pictured on Thursday) replied that Mr Yousaf was ‘out of time’
However opposition parties appeared to be unmoved by Mr Yousaf’s impassioned plea for support, with the dumped Greens, the Tories, Labour and Lib Dems yet to confirm if they will meet with the SNP leader.
On Saturday night, Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross, who has written back to Mr Yousaf but not said if he will accept his invitation to Bute House, said: ‘This is a humiliating and embarrassing letter, in which Humza Yousaf is begging to be allowed to keep his job.
Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, replied that Mr Yousaf was ‘out of time’.
While Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton said the first minister had ‘run out of road’.
