Humza Yousaf: continuity candidate taking over as Scottish first minister

He observed that Yousaf, who has served alongside Swinney as health, justice and transport secretary, would “strengthen the SNP as a force for progressive change in Scottish politics”.

Being attacked so vigorously by Forbes, a conservative Christian critical of many of Sturgeon’s most popular gender-equality policies, reinforced Yousaf’s status as their flag-carrier, too.

– video profileHe is the grandson of a Punjabi immigrant who worked at a Singer sewing-machine factory in Clydebank in the 1960s, and his father became a successful accountant and SNP activist in south Glasgow, putting his son into the city’s Hutchesons’ Grammar private school.

He was accused of missing the final vote on same-sex marriage in 2014 after facing pressure from Muslim leaders, a charge that Yousaf denies.

He is prone to gaffes: perhaps exhausted by the relentless pace of the leadership campaign, in which he also openly declared himself as a republican, he jokingly asked a group of newly exiled Ukrainian women living in Scotland: “Where are all the men?”

But being the continuity candidate will be to his advantage, too: the ministers and advisers who built Sturgeon’s election-winning government are now likely to swing behind him and may already have planned out his first 100 days.