Two-fifths of SNP members on first preferences were convinced by a candidate who was highly critical of Nicola Sturgeon’s record, challenging the outgoing first minister’s model of progressive taxation and the speed of transition away from oil and gas exploration.

The resignation of the SNP chief executive, Peter Murrell – Sturgeon’s husband – in a damaging transparency row over membership figures brought other concerns into the open about imposition of HQ-approved candidates, poor handling of harassment complaints and member consultation.

There is now a clamour for reform, which Yousaf must heed alongside an overflowing in-tray in government – including huge pressure on the first minister’s £60bn annual budget, record NHS waiting lists and looming emissions targets.

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Rishi Sunak’s proposed bill – which hopes to fulfil his promise to “stop the boats” – is part of a significant gamble which aims to pull off an unexpected Conservative win at the next general election.

Even if the plan fails, Sunak’s allies say, voters in crucial “red wall” seats and beyond will remember that the Conservatives were willing to take a hard line on immigration in the face of Labour opposition.

It faced criticism from both wings of Sunak’s own party in the hours before being debated on Monday, with MPs from the right receiving reassurances that the European courts will not be able to intervene to stop flights to Rwanda in future.

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The first act of Humza Yousaf’s leadership of the SNP was to fire off a letter to Rishi Sunak demanding a section 30 order which, if granted, would trigger the mechanism to allow a second Scottish independence referendum to go ahead.

He has warned that the independence movement should not become stuck in a “quagmire” of process, but instead the party has to talk about policy, effectively restarting the yes campaign, pounding the pavements to try to win more undecided or novoters over.

Allies suggest that Yousaf, the first Scottish Asian and Muslim to become first minister, understands that to win over new voters, when most already hold fairly entrenched positions, he first has to convince them of the economic case.

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The party’s embrace of hyper-globalisation, a hangover from Thatcherism, mass immigration and the hollowing out of national democracy as power drifted away to distant institutions has chimed with the graduate minority but alienated a larger majority of non-graduates, workers and pensioners.

By prioritising the new graduate elite, as Jeremy Corbyn learned in 2019, Labour was left heavily dependent on voters who are simply too narrowly concentrated in the cities and university towns to win large majorities in a first-past-the-post system.

As recent events in Scotland underline, pushing aggressively for policies such as the gender recognition reform bill (which, by December, only one in five voters supported and thought the Westminster government was wrong to block) can seriously backfire and have far-reaching consequences.

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Steered by a person of colour, the SNP can make the case that it champions a pro-immigrant civic nationalism more eloquently than the Tories, who, despite being led by Rishi Sunak, stir ethnic nativism when it electorally suits them.

But Mr Yousaf wisely reached out to Ms Forbes in his victory speech, displaying in public an understanding that the SNP’s success rests on being a broad church that can straddle Scotland’s divides.

It is sobering to note that the pollster Sir John Curtice thinks that the SNP will eventually get a referendum: “If you want to save the union, you have to change public opinion, but making the case means explaining why Brexit is to Scotland’s advantage.” Good luck with that.

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In a statement, the UNHCR said: “The legislation, if passed, would amount to an asylum ban – extinguishing the right to seek refugee protection in the United Kingdom for those who arrive irregularly, no matter how genuine and compelling their claim may be, and with no consideration of their individual circumstances.”

During a two-day visit to the country’s capital, Kigali, Suella Braverman told a selected group of government-friendly papers that she was “encouraged” by the government’s “constructive” talks with Strasbourg to overhaul court injunctions.

But legal experts have questioned whether the Strasbourg court would weaken a mechanism intended to protect people facing an “imminent risk of irreparable harm”, with one saying an apparent plan to ignore ECHR injunctions would be a “significant and dark turning point in [the UK’s] history”.

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