You thought it could not get worse? It just did!

You thought it could not get worse? It just did!

The SNP today is a pale shadow of the SNP after the 2015 General Election. Then a United Party and Yes Movement enjoyed all the momentum and a determined electorate anxious to sort out the disappointment of the 2014 Referendum. The result was 56 out of 59 seats were won by the SNP.

Confidence was high, surely this overwhelming result was the final step to putting the SNP in a position delivering Independence. Then came the EU referendum, 62% of Scots voted remain but as usual Scots votes were irrelevant to the outcome. Still it was an opportunity, surely with 56 out of 59 of Scotland’s Westminster seats the SNP were in an unimaginable strong position to win a deal, at worst similar to Northern Ireland or even to win Independence at that point. There was a huge flaw in that thinking. The flaw was the leadership of the SNP lacked the courage, determination or inclination to make that challenge. The Leader of the SNP opted to sacrifice it all for a leading role in trying to save England’s voters from themselves! Worse was to follow.

In the next electoral contest the SNP strategy entered bizarre territory where the leader announced a vote for the SNP was not a vote for Independence. A lot of Independence supporters took her at her word and literally hundreds of thousands stayed home. The SNP lost more seats in that election than Theresa May!

The year that did the real damage however was 2018 when at a sparsely attended lunchtime slot at Conference Angus Robertson proposed the sweeping constitutional changes that allowed the Woke to takeover the entire Party and strip ordinary members of any power to reverse these changes.

Firstly the NEC awarded places to a range of minority organisations, where groups with fewer than 100 members could gain a seat. To put that in perspective ordinary members need 7500 members to elect a member of the NEC. These Woke groups worked together with the support of the Chair ( another appointed post). They then used their power on the NEC to take control of the Selection process. They also took control of the membership lists, rationing the use of the Party email, making it difficult for local organisations to keep in touch with their members and impossible for a number of branches or constituencies to work or plan together, for instance building support for a Conference motion or the like.

So at the centre you now have the power to choose the candidates you want on the shortleet to be selected, the power to keep candidates you don’t like off the shortleet, you control the election to pick the candidate and the CEO can watch the voting in real time. This is when the first reports of strange results in internal elections began. Unknown candidates beating well known members, even councillors for seats. “Asking around it is difficult to find people who voted for him” “.Turnout in this election was three times higher than in the past”. “All very strange. In one reported case a candidate who did not even complete the candidate profile papers won selection”. How can that be possible?” ( these are all quotes sent to me by SNP members about votes within their branch or constituency).

There is currently no constitutional way to recover the situation. Why? Because the NEC took the powers to alter and amend the constitution at will. Their will, as others have pointed out if the NEC does this, then there really is no constitution to talk of anyway. They already scrapped the arrangements in the original constitution in order to condense the leadership contest into a few weeks. It meant the candidates not favoured by the Party Leadership were denied any time to prepare a campaign. Just to be sure they ruled a ludicrous £5000 ceiling on spending that denied other candidates the ability to put a professional team together. In the meantime some of the payroll full time employees discovered “holidays “ that allowed them to work for Humza. Likewise one key employee had his contract suspended again allowing him to work for Humza. The First Minister’s top advisor also managed to work for Humza, only “resigning” from her job a matter of minutes after Ash Regan met the Permanent Secretary seeking clarification. Surprise surprise she claimed she was on “holiday” time as well.

Now a leadership election where the expected electorate dropped from over 100,000 to 72,000 in a week, where the company handling the election were issued with ballot papers for 78,000 members? Are things so bad 6000 members left in a week?. If so how many are left this week?

A lot of people have severe doubts about the 72k figure as well. How reliable is that? Who can even answer that question when the Party President and now acting CEO states he never knew the figures despite being on the NEC and getting the minutes every month?

I am not on the NEC, nor a Party Member but I can tell him the December 2022 NEC meeting reported membership had fallen to around 82k at that point. With respect how can I know that yet the Party President and acting CEO doesn’t?

This election stinks. Yet even after the astonishing embarrassment of the farce that has seen resignations of several senior staff and even one of the most senior Spads in the Scottish Government, we still see the battered Party Bandaid box being used to try and cover the gashing wounds all over the body.

The sight and sound of the Party President arguing that the SNP membership would find it “too confusing” to allow members who had already voted before the scandals became known, and who had voiced a desire to change their votes accordingly, lacked the skills to be able to manage that simple task without confusion was utterly pathetic. These are people interested in politics, in elections, many of them will have been involved in elections for years, that have acted as polling agents, counting agents. To suggest they are too thick to change one vote, their own vote, beggars belief!

There can be only one reason and one reason only to insist this bogus election continues unchanged and that reason is the sure knowledge that the “continuity candidate” will have benefited from the fiddles before they became known. They know what the impact would be if voters were able to amend their vote, thousands would.

Let’s look at the logic of all this. The election is already under huge suspicion, one candidate in particular sees no problem with what has happened. Let’s say he wins. What credibility will he have? Who will believe he won fair and square?

He will be damaged goods from day one. He will have no chance of success. He will have been elected at the same time, and we know this, that several other scandals are about to surface. With his own credibility shot to pieces before they do what hope is there to defend the Party? Remember he labelled himself as the Continuity Candidate which means he represents all that went before. He will be, as will the Party, in a hopeless position.

It is in the media’s and the Union’s best interests to drag this out as long as possible, especially with an election coming next year, so don’t expect it all to arrive at the one time. This will be designed to be a slow and agonising experience. A festering wound.

We need a leader with some principle leading the Yes Movement, someone with courage and determination, with a clean record and experience. Of the three candidates the Continuity Candidate is the least equipped to meet those criteria.

Members need to make clear QUICKLY that they will not accept the election result, particularly if continuity wins, in these circumstances.

We know that, even before this all happened that the Continuity Candidate had by far the worst rating amongst the Scottish public, the least favoured public support within the electorate. If he wins the impact on the SNP and Independence will be huge and not in a positive way. Mr Yousaf claimed yesterday if either of the other candidates won the SNP would lose support. He obviously thinks all the polls are wrong and that he is popular. So we can safely add delusional to all his other faults.

This is an election that should determine the next First Minister of Scotland. The Nation, the Party, the Yes Movement all deserve a clean election that allows everyone to unite behind the victor. Leave it as it is and we are looking at great division and rancour for all times ahead. Nobody that cares about Scotland and Independence should let that happen. Nobody that truly wants Independence would.

I am, as always

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