The SNP was already clouded by failure – under Humza Yousaf it could lose power altogether | Dani Garavelli

Humza Yousaf – who has billed himself as the continuity candidate, the torchbearer for Nicola Sturgeon’s liberal agenda – came through in the end, although by a tighter margin than any new leader of a party would want.

Those members for whom Kate Forbes’s views on sexual and LGBTQ+ equality were a red line – and who had pledged to tear up their membership cards if she was victorious – can breathe a sigh of relief.

Yousaf inherits a party where most of the big figures of the Sturgeon era – John Swinney, Jeane Freeman and chief executive, Peter Murrell – have departed, and one which faces a barrage of internal and external questions over its integrity and transparency.

The clamour for answers has become louder in recent weeks, thanks to the Holyrood public audit committee’s damning report into the CalMac ferries scandal – which revealed the waste of taxpayers’ money running into the millions – and the revelation that the party had misled the media over a 30,000 drop in membership figures.

That Yousaf was at the heart of the SNP as its culture of complacency grew – that he either failed to notice or turned a blind eye to it – makes it harder for him to convincingly promise a reset.

Meanwhile, his predisposition to fight the UK government on its section 35 obstruction of the SNP’s gender recognition reform bill may be exactly what the progressives who voted for him want; but it will also rekindle the divisions that helped force his predecessor’s exit.