The SNP Digital Divide Election

A guest post from Alex Thorburn, a Steering Committee Member of the Scottish National Congress.

The SNP Digital Divide Election

I note that the election for Leader of the SNP and probable First Minister is to be solely an “electronic vote”, and this effectively disenfranchises a large number of members.

Did the SNP take nothing from the vast amounts of research and information regarding the “Digital Divide” that has always been with us but became even more apparent during the first years of the COVID pandemic?

Without repeating too much detail, older people, disabled people, and those whose incomes prevented them from buying devices or entering into broadband contracts were isolated from the information being provided by the NHS and the governments at both Holyrood and Westminster.

With the more recent “cost of living” increases, this Digital Divide has grown as more and more people have to make hard choices between feeding themselves and their children or heating their homes.  So, where does paying for a digital connection rank in importance between staying alive and being able to contact others, or simply keeping up with the news so that you can be told how hard others are finding it?

Therefore, if we take a direct inference from the general population, how many SNP members will be unable to register their vote for the new Leader.  After all, this is not a vote to select a local celebrity for an award, but for the First Minister of Scotland.

So, I ask myself the question, who would benefit from a smaller, more affluent and younger electorate and to minimise the impact of older, poorer and disabled members of the SNP?

Older people are much less likely to be digitally connected for a number of reasons that include but are not exclusive to; poverty; disability; lack of technical knowledge; or simply because they don’t want to be engaging with others via a digital device.  Many older people have a digital phone, probably to keep in touch with their children and their friends but cannot, or do not, use it for any other purpose.

It is strange to think that older people may be more radical than younger people but as far as the SNP and independence is concerned, I believe that to be true.  Most of the older members joined at a time when “independence” was the main purpose of the SNP and many, like myself, originally joined when it was the ONLY purpose!

I do realise that the SNP (in conjunction with the Green Party) now form the Scottish government and have other issues to deal with but their Prime Objective has not only changed, it has all but disappeared from view!

As many thousands of those older people who joined to further the cause of independence have already left the SNP for other parties and none, there is a much smaller number of them left within the party to choose the next Leader.

So, that brings down the average age of the SNP membership.

Members who live on low incomes, and in some cases in poverty, are more in need of independence than any other member and they are not all that keen to wait around until 2050 for that to happen!  However, if they cannot afford to purchase and maintain a digital connection, they will have no vote in the election for their new Leader.

We all know that Westminster has deliberately impoverished Scotland and its people for hundreds of years, and that is not hard to prove, but that impoverishment is now working in Westminster’s favour by creating and expanding the Digital Divide.

The above illustrates how digital exclusion of SNP members will impact on the result of the leadership election.  However, I have not even mentioned the tens of thousands of independence supporters who have already left the SNP in disgust at the antics of their party and Leader since Alex Salmond handed over the reigns of power to Nicola Sturgeon.

The removal of member-control of the party was the first step to ensure democracy within the SNP was minimised and this was achieved by abolishing the National Council, where members, through the Branches could hold the leadership to account.

Marginalising anyone who disagreed in any way with the Leader and her small group of chosen yes men, yes women and others, consolidated Sturgeon’s control and left them (and her) free to introduce policies intended to alienate both Members of the SNP and the vast majority of the people of Scotland.  

This is where a much smaller electorate for the leadership election comes into play.

The Tories were quite rightly heavily criticised for choosing a new Prime Minister via their members (that included children aged 13 and over).  The replacement for Boris Johnson was selected by a maximum of 0.0189% of the UK population.  I cannot find percentage figures for Scotland, but we know that they are much lower than in England.

Therefore, how many people in Scotland are eligible to vote in the election to choose whoever will be the next SNP Leader and probable First Minister?

Giving the SNP the benefit of any doubt, and taking the latest HoC figures in August 2022 of 104,000 SNP members, (we know that the true figure is significantly lower), and a population of 5.5 million, the number eligible to vote is 1.89% of the population of Scotland.

Of course, not all members of the SNP will vote, and now we know that a large number will be unable to vote. Therefore, the percentage figure of how many members actually cast their vote in the Leadership Election will be extremely small.  This makes the result very unrepresentative of the huge number of the population that do believe in self-determination and independence and leaves the SNP open to similar criticism as that of the Tories in replacing Boris Johnson.

So, back to the question – “who benefits from a much-reduced SNP membership?”

The exodus of tens of thousands, the removal of democratic decision-making processes and the disillusionment and disgust of huge numbers of members left the way open for small factions with little, if any, interest in the independence of Scotland to become members and push their own agendas .  Those agendas are not only hindering any progress whatever towards the SNP achieving its stated Prime Aim but actively works against that goal.

At a time when the political weather was so favourable, for the last few years the SNP has been hiding under an umbrella of their own construction.

To put it into terms used by the UN, since Nicola Sturgeon assumed the positions of SNP Leader and First Minister, we have seen zero progression and a massive amount of regression from the stated purpose of the Scottish National Party.

We all desperately need to break away from this toxic union with England as quickly as possible, by using ALL possible legal methods and the only way to effect that result is by unifying the whole of the Yes Movement. Unfortunately, unification has been deliberately shunned by the SNP and the Yes Movement fractured by the small number of people in control of the party and in particular by its Leader.

Of the 3 candidates, the only one who fits the description of a unifier is Ash Regan and my only regret is that as a non-member of the SNP, I will not be able to provide my support via the ballot.

Apart from the misgivings that I have about who is now eligible to vote in the leadership election, I am absolutely amazed that Peter Murrell is in charge of the process – including the counting of votes!

This perfectly illustrates the lack of any accountability within the SNP nowadays.  Is there no-one left on the “National Executive” that can see the problem and that there may just be a hint of a conflict of interest here?

We now not only have a Continuity Candidate standing but also a Continuity Party, that intends to “Carry on Regardless”!