UNDER the FDR rule in politics it is customary to give any new administration a 100-day start in office before assessing its performance.

But that was the old days. When you have a thirtysomething in charge of the country events must surely move at a faster pace. Young man in a hurry and all that.

Last Monday marked two weeks since Humza Yousaf became SNP leader and First Minister. Take away weekends and public holidays and that gives him a mere handful of days in office. Early doors it may be, but like a removals firm on a deadline he is already trying to move us on.

Certainly, he is saying the things one would expect from a political leader whose party has been shaken to its foundations. He is using the right words and phrases - difficult days, going through a period of change and transition, etc. In therapy speak bingo that’s almost a full house. He is also confronting the past, the latest admission being that the auditors quit months ago but the party kept it quiet.

READ MORE: Party hid resignation of auditors for months

At the same time, however, he is trying to fast forward to better days. In a piece for our sister paper, The National, Mr Yousaf urged colleagues to “take heart” from how far they had come as a movement. They should also remember how much the party had going for it, including membership figures “bigger than all the [other parties] combined.” The First Minister has not yet deployed that awful seven-letter word “journey”, but before you know it we’ll be told there is nothing more to see here and we really must get on.

He is not the only one who would like the public to act as if the past two weeks, or two months if we take it from Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation, did not happen. The former First Minister herself was keen to move onwards when she appeared on her driveway last Saturday to address the waiting media. After appealing for “a little bit of privacy in my own home”, and the same for her neighbours, she concluded: “I need to get on with life and my job as you would expect me to.” Get on, move on, getting the message yet?

The party’s former Westminster leader, Ian Blackford got in on the act with his appeal for party unity. He even ventured that Mr Yousaf had got off to a roaring start. “I actually think, when I look over the course of the first few days of the leadership of Humza, he’s made a number of very positive announcements,” he told BBC’s Good Morning Scotland.

On social media supporters urge critics to remember that other scandals are available, and that it is not fair to pick on one party to the exclusion of others. The only person who seems to have a licence to be downcast about the whole mess is Mike Russell.

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Is it too soon to ask if it is too soon to move on? Any party that has been through a similar experience might say yes. Similar, but not the same. No other party, as far as I recall, has done the whole police tents at the house thing. Those images remain exclusive to the SNP.

Wiser heads in society, step forward Sir John Curtice, are rightly taking time to pause and consider the longer-term impact of events. On the party’s standing in the polls, Prof Curtice told the BBC, “We’re now asking ourselves, ‘What further damage, if any, will the scenes and news of the last few days have?’”

In politics, as with investments, past performance is no guide to future success. But if the SNP cares to look around they might learn from other parties how best to dig themselves out of a hole.

First things first: if life has become a country and western song, grab a guitar and sing along. Try some humility for size. Media getting on your nerves? Worse things happen. Remember, too, that everything is material. One day you might be joking about this in your very own Edinburgh Fringe show.

READ MORE: 'We're in a transition period'

If you really want to score high on the humility index, rename the party something jokey but frank. The Nasty Party has been taken. As has the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.

Next, try not to rush things. It took Labour (head office) 13 years to rebuild the business to a point where it could land the next big contract to govern. Even now, no one is entirely sure the right person is in charge. He runs hot and cold you see. One minute he is captain snoozefest, the next he’s dropping the poster equivalent of a stink bomb. Very unpleasant.

Try to stay positive. History is littered with Dodoesque political parties but you are a long, long way from that. There is every chance you will not become a winning answer on Pointless.

Equally, don’t overdo the positivity. This has been a horrible experience, worse even than that other horrible experience, and the one before that (unlucky, aren’t you?). Rushing too quickly to the sunny side of the street risks leaving people behind. If and when they are ready to join you, recognise and honour what they have been through. Otherwise the same fight will start again, this time on the sunny side of the street, and there will be nowhere left to go but up your own cul-de-sac.

Don’t be bitter if some seem to take pleasure in your misfortune. Schadenfreude can be hard to take, and to spell. Recall the laughs you had at others’ expense if it makes things easier.

Now this final is important. During the tricky first 100 days period various tests will come along that define you for good or ill. They may even determine if you make it to 200 days. It is here that Scotland’s new First Minister must go very carefully. One look at his Cabinet shows he has already flunked the task to be magnanimous in victory.

Now he risks repeating past mistakes, one of the biggest being gender recognition reform. The deadline to challenge the UK Government’s blocking of the bill is days away. He backed court action during the leadership contest. Question is will he now read the wider mood and let it go. Humza Yousaf the candidate is now Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s First Minister. No matter how hard a new spin doctor might try to sell it otherwise, everything has changed - has he?