Humza Yousaf is, by the narrowest of margins and with the unenthusiastic backing of fewer than 30,000 people, now leader of the SNP and First Minster of Scotland. In both cases the word “for now” should be added. Continuity has been chosen over competence.

If things run as they did in the UK last year Mr Yousaf should be out on his ear by late May and Kate Forbes brought back from the Highlands to restore order.

People who join political parties are, by their nature, those who tend to have strong views. The electorate, however, sit in the middle, in the ground when elections are won. Leaders endorsed by party members tend to pull towards the edges, where elections are lost.

There are exceptions; the Conservative Party loved Boris Johnson and, to the surprise and horror of many, so did the electorate. Liz Truss was not an exception and was disposed of by her party in weeks and competence restored.

Mr Yousaf and the SNP are different. The evidence suggests that, unlike Rishi Sunak, he is not very good. A short time working in a call centre as his only real job is not ideal preparation for leading a country.

Trumpeting the successful completion of a bridge over the Forth as though he had built it himself, when in reality he had virtually nothing to do with it, suggests a rather depressing search down the back of the sofa to find good things to say about himself. The difference with the SNP is that it is not really a political party but a movement or, to its detractors, a cult.

When we look back in 20 years' time I suspect we will wonder how such a mediocre bunch of people managed to convince a sizeable minority of Scottish voters, for some time, that a result – Scotland leaving the UK – which would actually do them considerable harm was a good idea when it plainly wasn’t.

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The usual ingredients are all there. Stir up people's unhappiness with their lot, tell them their problems are not their doing but the fault of outsiders, in this case the UK Government, come up with a simplistic and superficially appealing solution – in this case separating from the rest of a country you have been working with rather well for over 300 years – and install strong single personality leadership and vicious internal party discipline. This has all been done before and regularly ends badly.

The SNP’s actual record as the Government of Scotland is absolutely woeful. Nicola Sturgeon claimed in her valedictory speech that she was proud of her party’s (and above all her own) achievements in Government. A simply dazzling detachment with the reality which is that almost everything is worse than when they took office – the economy, the level of taxation, health, education, roads, railways, ferries, drug deaths. The list is endless.

The Conservative Party’s great strength, which those who don’t understand it mistake as a weakness, is that it does not believe violently in anything and never has, Yes, those who are part of it tend to believe instinctively that individuals and families are the key elements of society rather than the state, that freedom is important and defence, law and order and economic competence also matter but beyond these core principles there are many views. The Conservative Party is a coalition not a cult.

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Sometimes this is awkward, such as when a Conservative member of a Select Committee asks very difficult questions of Boris Johnson, a former Conservative Prime Minister, whereas SNP members of any committee of the Scottish Parliament mistakenly believe their duty is to their leader and not Parliament or the people and do no such thing.

The pluses of the Conservative coalition is that it can flex, change, clean out the stables when necessary, embrace different views and include a broad spectrum of people.

The SNP has shown it can do none of these things. The patently more competent leadership candidate was overlooked because she held minority but still perfectly respectable social views. The party has coalesced around Mr Yousaf because it prefers a bad but comfortable choice to the better but difficult one. The appointment of a depressingly unimpressive Cabinet inspires no confidence.

The people of Scotland want the UK and Scottish governments to work together to impact positively on their daily lives. Separation is an issue Scots care much less about than health, education and transport. The UK Government wants devolution to work, the SNP wants it to fail and, so blinded by the imaginary boost this might give to its independence dream, cannot bring itself to do the right thing. Internal challenge has been stifled, Mr Yousaf will see us through. He won’t, the cult holds him prisoner.

Slowly – though recently rather more quickly – the people of Scotland have been getting fed up with the SNP’s incompetence and turn increasingly elsewhere.