THE LEADERSHIP CAMPAIGN WEEK ONE

So the long awaited resignation of Nicola Sturgeon has created the vacancy for a new Leader of the SNP and potentially a New First Minister. Nominations close today Friday and as I write I will expect three candidates to be nominated.

The first week has been dominated in the early stages by a concerted attack from the Unionist media and the Woke element within the SNP TO INTIMIDATE KATE FORBES INTO STANDING DOWN.

It is frankly disgusting and the fact that nobody in the current leadership stepped in to call for a halt explains why many in the Yes movement are looking forward to their demotion once a new, non Woke leader is elected. It is to be noted and congratulations are due to Ash Regan for having the bravery and decency to call it out for what it was.

The fact that Kate was being asked a set up question asking her how she would have voted in a debate from twelve years before, before the time when she was even elected to Holyrood, is clear evidence they were desperate to use her religious beliefs against her. If she had refused to answer they would have run the story as her attempting to disguise her views. Thank God she had the courage and good sense to answer head on and without hedging.

It is perhaps a measure of the lunacy of politics in Scotland today that the Woke expect everyone to tolerate the biological nonsense that demands acceptance that a trans man is a woman while at the same time showing outrageous intolerance to her right to follow her personal faith. As I write it is being pointed out that the Prime Minister is a Hindu, the London Mayor is a Moslem, are they not fit to hold office because of their personal religious beliefs? It is also worth remembering that membership of the various faiths operating in Scotland dwarfs the membership of all the political parties combined. It is therefore very strange, frankly daft, to suggest to these many hundreds of thousands of people that their faith makes them unsuitable for public office! Does nobody in the SNP Leadership think about political strategy anymore?

Here is what Kate Forbes said in response to one of the questions

“My position on these matters is I will defend to the hilt everybody’s right in a pluralistic and tolerant society to live and to love free of harassment and fear.

“And in the same way I hope that others can be afforded the rights of people of faith to practice fairly mainstream teaching. And that is the nuance that we need to capture on equal marriage.

“Equal marriages is a legal right, and as a servant of democracy, rather than a dictator, I absolutely respect and defend that democratic right.”

We cannot allow us to get to a position where people are debarred from consideration of office by their personal beliefs. There must be room for a tolerance of a diversity of views especially when combined with a commitment to respect the beliefs and views of others.”

I will save those weak kneed MSP’s who ran away in the face of this intimidation by not naming the four of them ( frankly you might not know of them anyway) but I will highlight one MSP who issued this principled statement in her support. I was, and still am a friend of his father. A man of considerable talent who always had huge principle and is a great nationalist. It is wonderful to witness that his son shares those same values.

So were these attacks successful? This is the result of the first poll from YouGov measuring each candidates personal ratings

Net personal ratings:
Kate Forbes: +3
Ash Regan: -4
Humza Yousaf: -19

So the media and favoured “Woke” Continuity candidate takes it on the chin for the attempted bullying and intimidation tactics of his supporters. Fair cheers me up!

He also managed to unite the Free Church of Scotland and the Catholic Church both of whom issued strong statements condemning the bigotry on display in attacking Kate Forbes. Humza clearly is the Unity candidate…just not in the way he expected.

It was to get worse for Humza though. When the National set up their readers poll Humza raced into last place running at a mere 19%.at the end of Day1. Panic set in, something must be done…and it was, all of a sudden miraculous new supporters magically appeared and votes started piling in for the back marker as the rate of voting for him moved from 1 vote for Humza for every 98 seconds on Day 1 to a fantastic 1.6 votes per second on Day2 Suddenly after only recording 19% of the vote in day one, a miracle had happened and he was now recording as high as 77% of the new votes being lodged. For “miracle” read bots! They could have multiple votes only limited by how fast the page could be refreshed. Ludicrous! When a fellow blogger contacted the National they were insistent it wasn’t them that was responsible. The number of votes cast now greatly exceeds by many multiples the circulation of the newspaper. As Wings put it “ if Humza’s team want to fake it they are going to have to be a lot more subtle than this”

I do have a very real concern about how this election is going to be conducted of which much more in future articles.

I have intentionally not featured Ash Regan in this article for the simple reason her campaign only starts today. I will feature an article on Ash to balance once I know more.

I invite both Ash and Kate to send me their press releases or any other information they want to share. This blog attracts many thousands of readers including many SNP members and is widely read across the country. I am not a member of any Party but a member of Salvo and Liberation.Scot and support the full Independence of Scotland.

I wish all the candidates, except Humza Yousaf, the Woke continuity candidate , every success.

I am, as always

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