ANY SNP supporters anxious that the leadership contest will be divisive for the party can relax. It’s already divisive. 

There’s no point worrying anymore.

People are making brutal personal choices. The public health minister Maree Todd yesterday threw her support behind her boss Humza Yousaf.

“I believe that Humza has the skills and experience to lead our party and our country. And that's why I'm backing him," she said of the Health Secretary on Times Radio.

What she didn’t mention was she had just rejected her work buddy. She and Kate Forbes have shared the same MSP office on Dingwall High Street since 2016. Their water cooler moments may come with icicles in future.

Leadership contests always generate bad blood. Despite the folk memory of the 2004 SNP leadership contest being all about Alex Salmond’s smooth return, his last-minute decision to run on a joint ticket with Nicola Sturgeon infuriated many others in the leadership and deputy leadership races.

However, back then, the anger was narrowly confined to that personal level. Thwarted ambitions and bruised egos were the worst of it, because the party was otherwise essentially united.

It was desperate to go from opposition to power, and people recognised, even if some teeth were gritted, that Mr Salmond and Ms Sturgeon made a good team for doing just that. It helped that they won by a landslide. 

This time around, things are not so straightforward. Far from it.

The party has power, but it doesn’t know what to do with it. Gamble on a dramatic push for independence at the general election, or plod steadily on to build support for Yes?

Ms Forbes and Mr Yousaf aren’t interested in Ms Sturgeon’s gimcrack plan to use the next general election as a ‘de facto’ referendum.

However Ash Regan, the third candidate in the race, is enthusiastic for it.
There are also big splits over policy, most noticeably gender recognition reform.

Ms Regan, who quit as a minister last year over the issue, is opposed to the GRR Bill passed by Holyrood before Christmas, and which was later stymied by Westminster.

Ms Forbes, who missed the vote while on maternity leave, is on the same page as her. 

She said yesterday that she opposed the Bill’s main plank, allowing people to self-identify in their preferred gender.

Ms Sturgeon calls Westminster’s vetoing of the Bill using a Section 35 order a “full frontal attack” on the democratically elected Scottish Parliament. A court challenge is inevitable, the first minister says.

Not so, Ms Forbes said. She wouldn't go to court. She’d talk to the Westminster government about a compromise, but it wasn’t a priority. 
The public would rather the Scottish Government focused on the NHS and the cost-of-living crisis.

But Mr Yousaf, like Ms Sturgeon, does see it as a constitutional fight.

“This is about an assault, an attack on our very democratic institutions and yes, I think we should absolutely be challenging that in court,” he said yesterday. 

As the Greens are absolutely wedded to the gender reforms, Ms Forbes and Ms Regan are implicitly saying they would be ready to say goodbye to the joint government experiment.

The SNP has governed as a minority for two full terms before, after all. However Mr Yousaf wants the arrangement with the Greens to continue.

It presents SNP members with some real choices, and the party with a mighty headache. The debate over the GRR Bill was bitter and intense. 

People took sides and dug trenches; they’re still in them. 

The war wounds are not going to be washed clean by this contest, they’re going to be inflamed. Those on the left of the party already see Ms Forbes as quasi-Tory. Now they’re going to say it. Loudly.

This is also a fight about Ms Sturgeon’s legacy. Mr Yousaf thinks she has one to defend, the others aren’t so sure and want to move on sharpish.

Despite her sing-song Sunday school delivery yesterday, Ms Forbes was vicious. The party needs “competent leadership” and someone who “inspires confidence”, she said. “We need a reset on our strategy for independence.” 

Take that Nicola and Humza. 

Her desire for a break with the past may be admirably clear, but it's risky. 

There are many, in the government and in SNP HQ, who will get behind a continuity candidate like Mr Yousaf because their jobs literally depend on it.

“The establishment are terrified of a clear-out,” said one SNP source. 

"Humza is their candidate. He'd suit some ministers and special advisers, but a lot of members dislike the Greens and would be happy to see the back of them.

“Ash in the insurgent, and Kate is a bit of insurgent and continuity. To win, Kate needs to wake up and realise just how much people want to stymie her.”

The other big difference with 2004 is that this is shaping up to be a tight race.

Fought using transfer votes, it's easy to imagine Ms Forbes picking up most of the second preferences if Ms Regan went out, meaning Mr Yousaf and his team need to go hell for leather and try to win on first preference votes alone.

This is going to be bloody.