THE ALBA FILES, Part 7: What Robert Reid and Chris McEleny have previously said about the Alba leadership's plans to split the pro-independence vote in constituency seats

Just a short one this, but it's prompted by Alba HQ's resident stripling Robert Reid having one of his periodical rants about me on Twitter last night.  He obviously drops by to this blog now and again, and his rage at seeing any sort of alternative to HQ propaganda always seems to get the better of him.

However, he's more than a tad hapless in the way he lashes out.  Last time around he was feigning incredulity that anyone could possibly doubt the integrity of the process that led to my expulsion from Alba given that "ordinary Alba members" had supposedly made the decision - but all I had to do was point out that only four Alba members had voted to expel me, and exactly 50% of them were either his own girlfriend or his own mum.  He couldn't dispute that because he knows it's true and he knows it's in the minutes.

This time he was harrumphing about me supposedly "lying" when I criticised Alba for their irresponsible plans to split the pro-independence vote on the constituency ballot next year, abandoning the sensible list-only strategy from 2021. Reid insisted that no decision has been taken yet and that Alba members will ultimately decide.  But yet again, it's his own girlfriend that's the problem for him, because Christina Hendry has already announced that she intends to be the Alba candidate in the constituency seat of Banffshire and Buchan Coast.  And it has to be said she doesn't seem to be terribly interested in Alba members' thoughts on the matter - she reckons she's inheriting the candidacy from her Uncle Alex by right of "Salmond blood", to use her own bizarre Game of Thrones-style language.

When I put that point to Reid, he defensively tried to make out that what Ms Hendry had said to the press was only provisional and "pending membership approval".  To put it mildly, that does not ring true, because when Alex Salmond himself first announced his plans to stand in Banffshire and Buchan Coast, there was no deference to the ultimate sovereignty of Alba members - it was just something he had decided to do and that was an end to the matter.  His party, his decision, full stop.

Anyway, Reid's ongoing obsession with me has made me think back to my previous interactions with him.  They're extremely limited, because his election to the NEC in autumn 2022 coincided with me being voted off the body.  However, he did phone me up out of the blue once - it was a year ago, in February 2024.  Apparently Alex Salmond had got extremely upset about a newspaper article written by Conor Matchett, which suggested that polling showed Salmond was less popular in Scotland than Nigel Farage.  He wanted a sharp reply to be sent to Matchett, but neither he nor anyone else in HQ could actually find the relevant numbers in the data tables of the poll, so in desperation Reid turned to me.  (I suspect the poor lad may have been getting the hairdryer treatment all morning.)  I had to be the bearer of bad news, because the poll did basically show what Matchett had claimed it showed.

Nevertheless, Reid did his best to follow his leader's instructions, and sent an email to Matchett with a suitably indignant tone, even though the facts were stacked against him.  He forwarded the email to me, and one section stands out as particularly significant - 

"Firstly ALBA are at 3 per cent on the regional list polling question of the latest Redfield Wilton poll as shown below. This is the ONLY section of voting for which ALBA have been traditionally prompted by pollsters (ie shown on their list of parties on polling questions). That is understandable since previously ALBA only intended to stand on the regional list for Holyrood."

Never again let it be pretended that Alba hasn't mutated from its original billing as a responsible list-only party.  OK, political parties are allowed to change, but by the same token members and supporters of a party are allowed to be upset about having been sold a false prospectus.

Another intriguing titbit is that Reid once spontaneously contacted me with a "keep up the good work" message after I wrote a blogpost urging Alba to only stand in the two seats where they had incumbent MPs at the Westminster general election.  He told me that wasn't all that far away from HQ's own thinking - which surprised me, because my impression from having previously been on the NEC was that Alex Salmond wanted Alba to make a big intervention in the general election, which of course is exactly what happened in the end.

I can only speculate, but I wonder if "HQ's thinking" was code for "McEleny's thinking".  If so, that might indicate there was a difference of view between McEleny and Mr Salmond on election strategy.  In spite of the much-vaunted "telepathic link" between the two men, McEleny was sometimes surprisingly blunt in his criticisms of Mr Salmond.  When I last saw McEleny in August (only a few weeks before he arbitrarily suspended me from the party), he very directly stated that Mr Salmond was living well beyond Alba's means in terms of the hotel, travel and food expenses he was racking up, and that someone was going to need to have a word with him.  "It's fine if Alex gets a big gig like Question Time in London", but other than that, major cutbacks were going to have to be made.  

That of course is one of the issues that has caused so much hurt and upset - other Alba NEC members, and indeed Alba rank-and-file members, have been working tirelessly for the party out of their own pocket, and they haven't known what to make of a select few at the top living the high life thanks to party funds which should really have been used for campaigning purposes.

McEleny also gave a possible clue in August to the leadership's plans about standing in Holyrood constituency seats next year.  He talked of the possibility of standing in one constituency per electoral region, which would mean splitting the pro-indy vote in eight constituency seats across Scotland.  He then caught himself and said with some alarm "I'm just speaking hypothetically here, James", which led me to think he wasn't speaking hypothetically at all - although I suspect eight constituency seats may be more of a floor than a ceiling.

*  *  *

Coming up in future installments of "THE ALBA FILES"...

* Straight-Talking And Totally Unfiltered: How Shannon Donoghue and Chris Cullen explained their refusal to give rank-and-file Alba members decision-making powers, or even any basic information about decisions taken at the monthly NEC meetings 

* McEleny's campaign of "disciplinary" revenge after evidence of the 2023 election-rigging started to leak

* Tasmina Writes It All Down And Then Hits "Send"

...plus much, much more.  Stay tuned.