SNP leadership challenger pulls out of race to succeed Humza Yousaf

John Swinney is to become the new SNP leader on Monday after he persuaded an activist who threatened to derail his coronation to abandon his leadership bid.

Graeme McCormick, a long-standing SNP member, had threatened to plunge the SNP into a costly and divisive leadership contest after he claimed he had secured enough support to force a leadership election.

However, he revealed on Sunday night that he had held “lengthy and fruitful talks” with Mr Swinney and had decided to support his candidacy instead.

It means Mr Swinney is expected to be the only candidate for SNP leader when nominations close at midday on Monday, and is set to become the new first minister on Tuesday.

While Mr Swinney would have been certain to win any leadership election, a contest would have prolonged Humza Yousaf’s disastrous tenure until the end of the month and cost the cast-strapped SNP tens of thousands of pounds in an election year.

Mr McCormick, who was seen collecting nominations at an independence march in Glasgow on Saturday, said he had met the threshold to stand in the contest.

Under SNP rules, only 100 nominations are needed from 20 separate branches to make it onto the ballot.

Senior SNP sources were nervous on Sunday that Mr McCormick would ruin the party’s hopes to quickly move on from Mr Yousaf.

However, he agreed to stand down following discussions with Mr Swinney, after apparently being convinced by Nicola Sturgeon’s former deputy that he would push strongly for independence.

“I’d also like to put on record my thanks to John Swinney MSP with whom I had a lengthy and fruitful conversation,” he added.

“John and I agreed the challenges which the SNP, our Government and our people face, and explored new thinking on a range of issues which I am confident, as they are advanced, will inspire activists both within the SNP and wider independence movement in the following weeks and months.

“This is a fresh start for our members and our politicians, and I’m sure that John’s determination to deliver independence will be rewarded at the forthcoming general election.

“I have therefore concluded that I shall not proceed with my nomination for party leader but instead support John Swinney’s nomination for party leader and first minister of Scotland”.

Mr Swinney and his allies believed they had all but secured the SNP leadership when Kate Forbes, his only viable challenger, announced she would not be standing on Thursday, hours after he promised her a top government job at his campaign launch.

Ms Forbes also decided not to run after one-on-one talks with Mr Swinney, who has received a string of high-profile endorsements from senior party figures.

However, Mr McCormick, a retired lawyer who has regularly criticised SNP strategy, indicated on Saturday as he attempted to find supporters at an independence march in Glasgow, that he believed he would make the ballot.

On Sunday, Mr Swinney issued a thinly-veiled public plea for Mr McCormick to stand down, a call echoed by other senior party figures.

Gavin Newlands, an SNP MP, branded Mr McCormick’s leadership bid a “self-indulgent waste of time which is being egged-on by folk from other parties and seized on by the media with great glee.”

Pete Wishart, the SNP’s longest serving MP, warned party members that unionists, members of Alex’s Salmond’s Alba Party and the media were “cheering on” a leadership contest.

The internal election could have embarrassed the SNP, as Mr McCormick holds radical positions and would temporarily have been handed a national platform.

At last year’s SNP conference he branded the party’s independence policy “flatulence in a trance” and he has argued devolved taxation powers could be used to pay for universal free energy for Scots.

At an SNP independence convention last summer, he claimed that should Scots back the party manifesto at an election, its MPs should “walk out of Westminster, declare the dissolution of the Union and set up a provisional government in Edinburgh”.

Mr Swinney had earlier told Sky News: “I think the SNP has got a chance to start rebuilding from the difficult period that we have had.

“Bluntly, I’d just like to get on with that as quickly as I possibly can, because every day that we spend in an internal contest, which I think we all probably know the outcome of, we delay the ability for the SNP to start its rebuilding.”