Humza Yousaf’s decision to end the SNP’s powersharing deal with the Scottish Greens was “catastrophic” and "wrong", former first minister Nicola Sturgeon has said.
Ms Sturgeon brought the Greens into government for the first time anywhere in the UK with the Bute House Agreement in August 2021.
But Mr Yousaf, who succeeded her as both First Minister and SNP leader, ended it dramatically in April 2024 – a decision that rapidly brought about his own resignation.
Speaking about his decision, Ms Sturgeon told the Institute for Government think tank: "After the 2021 election, we were one short of a majority. We would have been able to govern effectively with that. But I felt it would be more stable, lead to less horse trading and be a better use of public money, if we had a partnership agreement with the Greens, rather than having them hold us to ransom for hundreds of millions of pounds at every single budget.
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"We did an overall agreement and I think that was the right thing to do. I think crashing that agreement was catastrophic and – politics aside – totally the wrong thing to do for stable government. I think that's been played out."
Her comments came as Mr Yousaf spoke about his own “real regret” at the speed at which he ended the deal.
He told the Institute for Government he wished he had “taken more time to speak it through and come to some kind of almost mutual agreement” with Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater, the co-leaders of the Greens who were both junior ministers under the deal.
However with Scottish Green Party members due to hold a vote on the future of the arrangement, Mr Yousaf said he had taken the decision to end things himself before being “dumped by the Greens”.
Mr Yousaf recalled his phone had been “burning hot” with calls for him to end the deal after “a really difficult interview” in which Mr Harvie failed to adhere to the Scottish Government’s “collective responsibility line” on the Cass Review into gender identity services.
He said people who had been “absolute supporters of the Bute House Agreement in the past” had urged Mr Yousaf to end the deal at that point, adding such calls came from those he “would describe as moderates and sensible”, with some even having been “architects of the Bute House Agreement”.
Adding that “all of the intelligence” indicated the deal was “going to be dumped by the Greens”, Mr Yousaf said he was then left with the decision to make.
Ross Greer, the Scottish Greens MSP, who was one of his party's chief negotiators on the Bute House Agreement, has disputed that Greens members would have vote to ended the deal.
He told The Herald last year that while some activists thought the arrangement should end, most did not believing it was to the benefit of the party being in government.
But looking back on the decision over whether to “take the initiative and end the Bute House Agreement” or “wait to get dumped by our junior partner”, the former SNP leader said: “Ultimately I took the decision to do it, and my real regret is not taking more time over that decision.”
He added: “I made my mind up on the Tuesday night that week that I was going to end the Bute House Agreement and did so on the Thursday morning.”
But Mr Yousaf, who has confirmed he will not stand for Holyrood in the 2026 Scottish Parliament election, said: “I wish I’d taken more time to speak it through and come to some kind of almost mutual agreement with Patrick and Lorna, which probably wasn’t possible.
“But at least if I’d taken some more time and had some more conversation, it might have softened the blow somewhat.”
However he added: “Ultimately, it may not have changed the outcome.”
Ms Slater meanwhile described the ending of the agreement as being “quite sudden”, telling the think tank: “I think even up to two days beforehand he was saying the agreement was worth its weight in gold.”
Adding she was “very sad that it ended”, the Green MSP said of Mr Yousaf: “I still think there was a bit of a miscalculation there, because he was then subject to the threat of a vote of no confidence. He had just collapsed a confidence and supply agreement.”
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