Some free advice to the Alba Party

So 24 hours late, here's what I was planning to post last night before Robert Reid, Robert Reid came riding through the glen.  As a result of my article the other day about returning to the SNP and my reasons for doing so, there has been a sharp increase in online attacks on me from the McEleny Militants (or should that be Christopher's Commandos?), and most of those attacks fall within a small number of broad themes.  One of those themes strikes me as very odd indeed.

The gist of it is "So you're a Devo Nat now, are you, James?  A Do Nothing Nat? A keep begging Westminster for an indyref Nat?"  What I would say here, very gently, is that if you see it that way, and if you feel so terribly strongly about it, and if you wanted me to keep on supporting Alba on the list vote instead, it does beg one rather obvious question.  And that question is...

So why did you expel me, then?

I haven't seen anyone even attempt to address that question, let alone come up with a credible answer.  It's very easy, chaps, to pretend that my return to the SNP was some sort of totally inexplicable bolt from the blue, rather than the direct outcome of a downright nasty process that the Alba leadership initiated, and that they retained total agency over throughout.  As recently as twelve days ago, my appeal against expulsion was still active, and the situation could still have been resolved.  Instead, the Alba leadership made very, very sure that my expulsion was upheld and that the bridges were permanently burnt.  If you think that was a mistake, take it up with them, because it was no choice of mine.

But even though the bridges have been burnt with me, there are still many Alba members who are just about hanging on within the party, even though they have been shabbily treated, or are deeply unhappy with the party's direction.  Instead of ranting at me, I would suggest you get your thinking caps on and work out what you're going to do to prevent those other people filing through the exit door in the not too distant future.  Here are three very simple suggestions - 

1) For the love of God, stop expelling and suspending people on trumped up charges.  I know there's always a temptation to say to yourselves "yeah, but she's only one person, and we particularly dislike her nose, so there's no harm in getting rid of her, surely".  The problem is that the member with the objectionable nose is likely to have a few friends in the party who will walk out in solidarity, creating a ripple effect.  And even if she doesn't have any friends within the party, once you abuse your power in that way a few times, people will start to notice the pattern and will be deeply disturbed by it.

2) Offer people who disagree with the Alba leadership's policies and strategies some hope that they can bring about change if their arguments are persuasive enough.  Only that way will they feel they have a stake within the party.  And yes, that does mean replacing Alba's sham internal democracy with a real democracy.  It means, at a minimum, introducing one member, one vote for NEC and Conference Committee elections.  As Churchill said, democracy is the worst system of governance until you've tried all of the others.

3) Put an end to the toxic culture of bullying within Alba.  Unlike with steps 1 and 2, there's no easy button that can be pushed to instantly make this happen.  The Shannon Donoghues of this world will always exist, and will always exist in all parties.  But what can be done is to ensure that bullies do not have special protection just because they happen to be the daughter of the Deputy General Secretary, for example.  There are far too many people within Alba who get to act with total impunity because of who they know, or who they are related to, or because they bring funding or media contacts to the table.

One of the other themes of the attacks on me is to mock the idea that I was a "senior" member of Alba.  Now, to be absolutely clear, that isn't a word I used about myself. The National described me in that way, presumably because I was an elected member of the Alba NEC in 2021-22.  If you want to quibble about the word, that's absolutely fine, but bear in mind that what you're saying is that being an elected member of the NEC is not a position of much significance - which frankly says far more about Alba's sham internal democracy than it does about me.  And you may well have a valid point, because the Alba NEC is indeed mostly a rubberstamp body.  As I've mentioned a few times, there was just one occasion in my year on the NEC when I insisted on a formal vote about something rather than allowing the leadership's wishes to go through on the nod (it was about Alba's choice of ballot description for the 2022 local elections).  Tasmina allowed the vote to take place, but not before looking momentarily stunned that the rubberstamp process wasn't functioning as normal.

It's also been repeatedly suggested that the SNP must have "offered" or "promised" me something to get me back.  If you really believe that, you don't have a clue about the nature of the SNP or the way it operates.  The SNP is an enormous organisation, and the idea that it would be bothered enough about one blogger to start "promising" things is just silly beyond words.

Even more fanciful have been the suggestions that I went back to the SNP for career reasons, ie. to get a BBC pundit slot or something like that.  Again, the idea that the BBC are queueing up to put SNP bloggers on TV is just barking mad.  As a political blogger over the last seventeen years, I have been interviewed on the BBC just twice, and both times were before I first joined the SNP in 2014.  I was of no more interest to the BBC in the SNP than I was in Alba.