Do we like them?

Do we like Humza Yousaf?

Our score: 7 out of 10. Consistent on LGBTQ+ and trans protections in office, with a contested 2014 absence and a few political stoushes keeping him off the top shelf.

Humza Yousaf is a Glasgow-raised politician who became Scotland's First Minister in March 2023, after winning the SNP leadership, and was the first from a minority ethnic background to hold the job. He quit in 2024 after his power-sharing deal with the Greens collapsed and no-confidence votes loomed. That made his stint very short, though the full details are beyond what we could open for this column.

On trans rights he put his name to things that cost him politically. In the 2023 SNP leadership race he pledged to fight the UK government's block on Scotland's gender recognition reforms and said he wouldn't “stand for transphobia or any hatred of any sort”. He also promised to ban conversion therapy and to cut the long waits at the Sandyford gender clinic.

The black mark people raise is the 2014 same-sex marriage vote. During the 2023 leadership race, Alex Salmond said his own assumption was that Yousaf missed the final vote because of religious pressure. Yousaf denied it and said he was at a meeting about a prisoner in Pakistan, and he has said he backs equal marriage. Nobody has settled it, so it stays an asterisk, not a fail.

The good-person side is thinner because we couldn't open the coverage of the Aamer Anwar friendship row, where MSPs asked in late 2025 why a friendship wasn't declared when the Sheku Bayoh inquiry was called. We read about it only in summaries, so we're not drawing a conclusion from it. Nothing we could open shows him mistreating staff or anyone else.

He told us he's leaving Holyrood after the 2026 election to make way for the next generation. He has hinted at working on conflict resolution and has kept speaking on Gaza. We haven't confirmed a new job, so that's where the story stops.