Schadenfreude might not be an attractive sentiment but it is an inescapably human one. There is something delicious about watching one’s opponents experience extreme discomfort. We may wish that we didn’t feel that way, but it can be almost impossible to resist. A great many Scottish politicians are today enjoying the sweet but slightly grubby sensation that schadenfreude can illicit.
Napoleon once said that the quality he most admired in his generals was ‘luck’. Napoleon wouldn’t have liked Humza Yousaf very much. His brief (so far) tenure as First Minister of Scotland has been characterised by an off-putting combination of sanctimony and haplessness. Be it the ferries that don’t float or the deposit return scheme that has recycled zero bottles; the SNP under Yousaf has achieved very little. The decision to flush money down the drain pursuing legal action against the Westminster Government over self ID delivered nothing. The admission this week that the Scottish Government’s climate commitments were unachievable – a stunt rather than a strategy, if you like – reinforced the impression of the current SNP as a deeply unserious project. And the party, whilst still leading in most polls, is haemorrhaging support to its left and its right. Some of this is Yousaf’s fault. A lot of it is not. But luck is, by its nature, not fairly distributed.