One of the most idiotic self-inflicted wounds in UK political history: in a by-election that might never have been held if the SNP hadn’t campaigned for it, Yousaf suffers crushing defeat that calls his future as leader into question

I’m sometimes accused of being robotically hostile towards Humza Yousaf and never giving him credit where it is due, but I can honestly say that at the start of the night, when the gossip was about a narrowish Labour victory margin of around seven or eight points, my planned title for this blogpost was “Damp squib for Labour: they win Rutherglen but with underwhelming swing”.  When it started looking as if the margin might be more like fifteen points, I was going to say it was the nightmare outcome, because the result was bad enough for the SNP to suggest that they were on course for defeat at the general election, but not quite bad enough to shock them into rethinking the leadership question.  But I can only react to the numbers that are actually in front of us, and they are truly shocking for Yousaf.  Very few people saw a 30+ point Labour victory coming.

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