FORMER SNP First Minister Humza Yousaf’s decision to ditch the coalition deal with the Greens was “catastrophic,” according to one of its architects today.

In an interview for the Institute for Government (IfG) think tank, Mr Yousaf’s predecessor Nicola Sturgeon, who brokered the coalition deal which brought the Greens into government, slammed his decision.

She said: “I think crashing that agreement was catastrophic and — politics aside — totally the wrong thing to do for stable government.”

Her views were echoed by Green co-leader Lorna Slater, who told the institute “there was a bit of a miscalculation there.”

She added: “He was then subject to the threat of a vote of no confidence. He had just collapsed a confidence-and-supply agreement.”

But Mr Yousaf told the same think tank that “all of the intelligence” indicated the deal was “going to be dumped by the Greens,” and after Green co-leader Patrick Harvie failed to adhere to collective responsibility on the Cass Review into gender identity services, he had no option.

Regretting he had not “taken more time to speak it through” with the Green co-leaders, he added: “Ultimately, it may not have changed the outcome.”