MR AS

I WANNA TELL YOU A STORY

Nearly a week ago I was having a late night telephone conversation with a friend of mine, let’s call him Mr AS, and we were discussing the recent launch of a new political party in Scotland. A Party we both recognised had enormous potential and which would represent a much bigger danger to the Union than any that had went before it.

The reason we both believed it could be so potent was because it was designed to overcome the very obstacles that the designers of the electoral system had built into it to, as they thought, ensure the virtual impossibility of a single Party ever winning an overall majority. Indeed that objective was the sole reason it was selected.

So far it had worked pretty well. There was a slight blip in 2011 when through a perfect storm one Party did manage it. They won a one seat majority in the Parliament. All the electoral experts agreed it was highly unlikely to ever happen again, and anyway it could never win any sort of international recognition as a sign of overwhelming public support for Independence.One seat majority, a nonsense! For some reason Mr AS seemed to know a lot about this.

We both recognised that there would be huge opposition to this new Party from the other Parties as it threatened them all. For the Unionists it was going to be the ultimate threat, here was a pro Indy Party contesting the list only and not held down by the weight of having their success in the constituency section being used as a very effective divisor tool effectively turning hundreds of thousands of pro Indy list votes into worthless trash.

Likewise for the pro Indy Party that contested the constituency ballot it was also a threat. The threat wasn’t really electoral as their success in the constituency ballot mean’t they had little, or in the vast majority of the country, nothing to lose anyway as the electoral system had divided their huge number of votes to the extent they didn’t win a single seat in these contests. No, the potential loss was a political loss, the loss of the monopoly on Independence votes. A safe alternative pro Indy Party capable of pressurising the big Party to stay much more focussed on the ultimate prize…Independence. That represented a danger to the go slow while I build up my pension brigade. The careerist wing.

So how will they try and hold us back I asked? Mr AS thought for a moment then said “an early poll will be part of it, indeed it is probably being organised immediately after the announcement of Alba was announced”. It of course makes total sense, let’s poll a Party that was announced just over 48 hours or so before, a Party with no policies or candidates, before any prominent people or indeed many ordinary people have the opportunity to join or even know of its existence.

Now who would organise and commission such a poll? Well it didn’t take long to get that answer. David Clegg one of the architects of the Vow when he was with the Record but now edits the Courier was the man selected. Yes DC Thomson, the famous publisher of comics was first out the starting gate.

The poll showed this Party, with few candidates, no policies other than supporting Independence, that hadn’t existed more than 72 hours before, had attracted “only 3% support” Or put another way, around 120,000 Scottish electors had already decided that was who they were going to vote for on the 6th May. Not bad if you ask me, quite encouraging in fact. Thanks DC Thomson. 

Of course we both realised a lowball poll would have a purpose. If it went to plan, it would generate negative headlines, because of the overwhelming threat of Alba to the Union, pretty much guaranteed that anyway, but no, the real purpose would be to use it to stop Alba getting entry to the TV debates. By arguing they were too small to matter.

Now this is where the importance of having a household name, a Former First Minister is so important. It cannot be argued he is an irrelevance, indeed his presence would provide a huge boost to the viewing figures and would certainly enable the commercial stations to sell advertising at a premium. The BBC are a different matter, they will have to be dragged screaming and kicking to allowing Alba any TV time at all. Last night was an example they had a political round up that completely omitted the ALBA press conference, despite Glen Campbell attending it and asking a question.

I think eventually Alba will win through and get a TV slot.As the polls build it will become increasingly more difficult to keep Alba off the screens. I think delaying that happening will be the tactic. With five weeks only to go each day Alba is kept away from public view is a day gained for the Union. That is the tactic and once again it makes the SNP look bad. 

They have become the darlings of the Union, the only bulwark the Union has to stop the potentially disastrous impact Alba successes would have on unionist seats across the country. We now have the rather ridiculous position where the Unionist media have to promote the SNP and Nicola Sturgeon in the hope she can hold on to sufficient worthless SNP list votes to blunt the impact of the ALBA PARTY. 

This must be one of the strangest and bizarre political and media alliances ever. Given Nicola’s recent interest in betting I wonder what price we would have got a couple of weeks ago on the Unionist media being her biggest backers in this election? 1000-1 at least! Politics certainly creates strange alliances, few stranger than this one. Ordinary SNP members must surely be wondering what is going on within the SNP for this to be possible? If they enquire at HQ about this and don’t get an answer, I hear that happens quite a lot,  please contact me. I have a few ideas!

Anyway Mr AS was in good health and spirits and we arranged to stay in regular touch. He is gifted and has a great political brain that anticipates future political challenges and he has an uncanny ability to use that foresight to set traps for his opponents.

He likes the ALBA PARTY and is promising to do whatever he can to make sure it is successful. I trust him to keep his word on this and am happy the Alba Party have identified a role where his full talents can be properly utilised.

I am, as always

Yours for Scotland

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