As political miscalculations go, this was a major one.

Of course, we know what Humza Yousaf was trying to do in scrapping his power-sharing agreement with the Scottish Green Party, not least because he told us repeatedly.

He wanted to show “leadership”. He wanted to unite his party. He wanted to strengthen his own position.

Extraordinarily, he has failed at all three and – far from renewing his leadership – scrapping the Bute House Agreement may well have fatally undermined it.

Sacking Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater was certainly courageous, although it should be noted courage is a virtue only intermittently rewarded in politics.

That this move came as such a surprise is indicative of Yousaf’s reputed guilelessness, but one does not have to look very hard to see the theoretical attraction of it.

Too much and for too long, the Scottish Green Party had held an outsized influence on SNP policy, dragging the government away from middle Scotland and into niche Scotland.

Disastrous and unpopular polices, such as income tax rises or the presumption against oil and gas, have either stemmed directly from the Scottish Green Party or have been designed in part to placate them.

By ditching the........

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