In line with the clear Jacqueline Bijster precedent, Chris McEleny should now be stripped of his emailing privileges after exploiting them by sending out a lengthy auto-hagiography in an attempt to change the trajectory of the leadership election

I think it may be worth reminding ourselves that in the autumn of 2023, Jacqueline Bijster, the incumbent Membership Support Convener of the Alba Party, sent out an extremely short and relatively innocuous email giving generalised information about the party's upcoming internal elections, and stressing that she would play no part herself in running them.  The Alba leadership, including Chris McEleny, flew into a blind rage, accusing Ms Bijster of "trying it on" in the hope of giving herself an unfair advantage in her bid for re-election - even though the email did not contain any sort of election pitch.  The only way it could possibly have given her an advantage was by reminding Alba members of her existence and her name - but that, apparently, was exactly what the Alba leadership (who were hellbent on replacing her with Daniel Jack) were so furious about.  Mr McEleny wrote to Alba members to say that Ms Bijster had been stripped of her right to send out emails, and to provide supposedly 'remedial' action by listing the names of the three candidates standing against her (of whom I was one) but without listing her own name.  It didn't end there - the three of us were also invited to submit a short election pitch which would be emailed to Alba members, but without Ms Bijster being given the same opportunity.

Chris McEleny's extraordinary self-indulgence today in sending out an email to Alba members which is several times the length of the one Ms Bijster sent, which shamelessly extols his own virtues and stresses how wonderful Alex Salmond thought he was (thank heavens Mr Salmond still has someone to speak on his behalf, if only to say how marvellous Chris McEleny is!) and which repeatedly references the forthcoming leadership election and his own role in running it, must be seen in the light of the Bijster precedent.  We know that Mr McEleny will not be neutral in the forthcoming leadership election and will be Ash Regan's unofficial running mate, so it can be reasonably assumed that today's auto-hagiography is an attempt to exploit his right to email members in order to alter the trajectory of the contest.  It probably betrays a concern that his own deep personal unpopularity will be a drag on Ms Regan's support and is an attempt to neutralise that problem at an early stage.

Ostensibly the purpose of the email is to announce that Mr McEleny will be "resigning as General Secretary" once the election is over, but that's a complete and utter nonsense because it was announced only a week or two ago that the position of General Secretary is being abolished completely anyway.  Indeed, arguably the best evidence that Mr McEleny is "trying it on" is that he doesn't even mention the fact that the post he is "resigning from" is being abolished - no doubt because that would raise question marks in members' minds about whether this "resignation announcement" is rather superfluous and redundant and whether something else is going on.

The implications of the Bijster precedent are, I would suggest, crystal-clear - having misused his privileges as General Secretary in a shameless exercise of self-promotion during an internal election process, Mr McEleny should now be stripped of his rights to email members until the elections are over, and must also be stripped of his role as Returning Officer for those elections.  

The acting leader Kenny MacAskill has the power to take that remedial action, just as Mr Salmond did after the Bijster email.  Will he now do so?

I must just note an unintentionally funny part of the "let me speak on behalf of the late Alex Salmond to explain why he thought I was the greatest guy in the world" section of the email.  Mr McEleny claims he was "telepathically linked" to Mr Salmond "in terms of carrying out his instructions".  It's very difficult to read those words in any other way than that Mr McEleny was carrying out "instructions" that he had not actually been given, and was then getting Mr Salmond to okay his actions retrospectively.

Incidentally, in case anyone is wondering, this wasn't simply Mr McEleny's "turn" to write the weekly Alba email.  The weekly email is always sent out on Friday afternoons, and this is Thursday morning.  Mr McEleny was very much acting on his own initiative here.

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