How can the Alba Party ask for the trust of the public when it has shafted its own members as cynically as this?

After yesterday's blogpost, an Alba member was kind enough to send me the full text of the relatively minor changes to the Alba constitution that were put to the party conference on Friday.  He also confirmed my guess that the new text was offered on a strictly "take it or leave it" basis.  Afterwards I spoke to another Alba member who explicitly confirmed that no amendments were permitted.

That is simply astounding.  Some people were scathing in the comments section of this blog when I was strongly advised that the SNP constitutional conference in Perth that I attended as a delegate nine days ago was a private session and that I therefore wouldn't be able to say anything about what happened there.  But whatever you think about that confidentiality rule, at least the SNP constitutional conference was a serious affair which debated and voted on multiple alternative options over a period of many hours.  By contrast, the tokenistic culmination of Alba's year-and-a-bit long "constitution review" process was an absolute joke that brings shame upon everyone involved.  It was a classic exercise in top-down control freakery that left Alba members totally frozen out.

Just to recap, in late 2023 Alex Salmond sent out an email to all Alba members in the midst of the outrage over the party's rigged internal elections.  He announced the constitutional review and specifically added that this would be an opportunity for members, if they wished, to introduce one member, one vote for NEC elections, thus abolishing the discredited pay-per-vote system.  Long-term readers of this blog may remember that I posted about that email, and that I interpreted it as victory for the one member, one vote campaign, because I didn't think Mr Salmond would have raised expectations unless he had reconciled himself to the fact that the vote-rigging had made the pay-per-vote system untenable.  In retrospect I was completely wrong about that, and what Mr Salmond was actually embarking on was an archetypal "make the issue go away by having a snail's pace review" wheeze.

Let's look at this constitution review process step by step to see whether Alba members have *ever* had a chance to influence the decision (let alone make the decision themselves) on whether one member, one vote should be introduced.

Step 1) An eight-member Constitution Review Group was set up, but it was *not* elected by the rank-and-file membership.  Four members of the group were directly appointed by the leadership, and all of those appointees were viscerally opposed to reform.  The other four were 'elected', but only by the tiny selectorate of the few dozen people who attend National Council.  In spite of the limited franchise, though, three of the four elected members were pro-reform.

Step 2) Almost immediately, the leadership set about trying to 'solve' the 'problem' of a substantial minority of the group being pro-reform.  Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh sent an email making vague - and ultimately baseless - threats of disciplinary action against two of the reformers (myself and Alan Harris), presumably in the hope that we would feel pressurised into resigning from the party and thus getting rid of us from the group.  Alan Harris did resign shortly afterwards, albeit not because of Tasmina's threats but in protest at repeated breaches of the existing Alba constitution.  I stood my ground and continued pressing in the group's meetings for one member, one vote - a stance which led a few months later to me being unconstitutionally removed from my elected position on the group, and eventually to my outright expulsion from the party.  Alan was replaced by an anti-reform 'lucky loser' from the election at National Council (Shannon Donoghue), which meant that after my expulsion there was an entirely artificial 6-1 anti-reform majority on the group.

Step 3) After faffing around for over a year, the anti-reformers on the group finally deigned to "involve the party members", but this was a purely consultative in-person session at which no votes were held, and which from the look of the photos was attended by a couple of dozen people at most.

Step 4) The group then went away to "interpret the wishes of members", and by an absolutely astonishing coincidence that interpretation was that the members wanted exactly the same thing as the group - ie. no substantive reform and no democratisation.

Step 5) The group's proposed constitutional text was then presented to conference as a fait accompli and no amendments from members were permitted.

I defy anyone to look at that process and identify the stage at which it would have been possible for a membership that wants one member, one vote to even get it onto the agenda, let alone to insist on its introduction.  It was absolutely impossible.  The Alba leadership have done what they always do - stitch up the process from beginning to end, and they didn't care who got trampled on along the way (and by God were some of us trampled on).

I've mentioned a couple of times that prior to my expulsion, I was subjected to low-level bullying attempts by Chris Cullen and his immature partner Shannon Donoghue at in-person meetings of the group in Alba's ramshackle "headquarters" in Glasgow's Southside.  One thing in particular that kept happening was that Cullen tried to make me look like Dumbo answering questions about Michelangelo on Mastermind by constantly interrupting me to demand in a mocking tone that I give him exact names of Alba members who supported one member, one vote, because according to him nobody at all wants it and anyone with a brain knows that.  Whenever I gave him a couple of names off the top of my head, he would then just sneer and demand more names.  Eventually I said to him: "Look.  A few weeks ago, I stood for Membership Support Convener of this party.  The main part of the platform I stood on was the introduction of one member, one vote.  I topped the poll on first preferences, and then only lost on the second count by 50.5% to 49.5%.  I'm not saying I quite had majority support but it's very clear that there is widespread backing in the party for one member, one vote.  The result was certainly not consistent with your claim that 'no-one at all' wants it."

I thought that was a fairly unanswerable point, but Cullen reacted to it by leaning back into his chair and chortling to himself with a look of sheer glee, rather akin to how a school bully reacts when the target of his bullying turns up for school wearing a pink cagoule.  Hamish Vernal then made some sort of "let's move on" interjection, which in a sense was a pity, because I'd liked to have challenged Cullen on what precisely he thought was so obviously laughable about what I had said.  Does he think Alba members are morons who don't bother to check who and what they're voting for?  Or does he just think any exercise in internal democracy is worthy of contempt, and thus regards as inherently ridiculous anyone who prays in aid the actual results of a vote?

There's a pretty straightforward contradiction in Cullen's position.  If he is so confident that nobody wants one member, one vote, it's very hard to understand why he and the others needed to go to such extreme lengths to prevent the members actually being asked whether or not they want it.

In future, any suggestion that Alba is a "member-led party" should provoke nothing more than a derisive Cullen-esque chortle-in-a-chair.  Alba is member-led in the same way that the German Democratic Republic was democratic.  If you're an Alba member who still hasn't woken up to how power is exercised in your party, you may be thinking that even at this stage it would be theoretically possible to introduce one member, one vote simply by taking the idea to a future annual conference, which after all is Alba's supreme decision-making body.  But nope, that wouldn't work - nothing can be discussed or voted on at conference without the permission of the Conference Committee, and one of the key decisions of the Constitution Non-Review Group was to maintain the status quo of how the Conference Committee operates.  It will still not be elected by the membership, Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh will still automatically be the chair of it for as long as she is Party Chair, and it will still be "consensus-led", which translated into English means "no votes are ever held, instead Tasmina will express views which committee members are obliged to endorse, preferably in respectful silence".  Therefore any constitutional amendment that is proposed will be unilaterally dismissed out of hand by Tasmina with her much-loved catchphrase "THAT'S A BIG NO FROM ME!"

Actually, in a sense Alba is indeed member-led, and that member's name is Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh.

You might wonder: just *why* were the leadership so hellbent on retaining pay-per-vote that they were willing to expel people and tear the party apart over it?  From what I've been told by insiders, it ultimately boils down to Tas herself.  She feels that without pay-per-vote she can't be sure of topping the female NEC ballot every year, and that unless she tops the poll it's harder to justify her unelected position as Party Chair.  And from her point of view she 'needs' to remain Party Chair so that she has status and a title when she goes to international conferences.  Her favourite hobby is apparently cosplaying as a world leader.

In other words, what this whole tawdry process was leading up to was the announcement this very morning of the results of the latest pay-per-vote NEC elections, which of course have seen Tasmina top the female ballot for a fourth successive year.  I hope you think all the carnage you've caused was worth it, Tas, because you're certainly not impressing anyone by this stage - everyone knows Alba is the most God-awful democracy that money can buy.

Alba NEC: successful candidates from female ballot

Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh

Christina Hendry

Deborah McAlpine

Debbie Ewen

Alba NEC: successful candidates from male ballot

Angus Brendan MacNeil

Tommy Sheridan

Charlie Abel

Robert Slavin 

Inevitably the leadership have used the vote-purchasing system to mainly get loyalists elected, but there are some silver linings.  Almost everyone I know speaks very highly of Deborah McAlpine, and while Tommy Sheridan seems very close to the leadership as things stand, everyone knows he's his own man and he's no pushover.  In fact if there was a dictionary definition of "the opposite of a pushover", Tommy would be it.  Tas clearly thinks she can browbeat pretty much anyone into silence at NEC meetings - well, good luck trying to browbeat Tommy Sheridan, hun.  

And just look at who is not on the list of successful candidates.  No Shannon Donoghue.  No Chris Cullen.  No Daniel Jack.  No John Caddis.  And no Yvonne Ridley, who had a thoroughly deserved poor showing, attracting just *three* votes.

The whole 'Cullen project' which started with his belated defection from the SNP in 2023, and which was clearly intended to win him a plum spot on Alba's Holyrood list, is now looking decidedly ropey.  He obviously thought he could just use his "Councillor Cullen" title (he's practically changed his name to "Councillor" by deed poll) to waltz straight in to the NEC, but he's now failed to be elected twice.  The Holyrood list remains the real prize for him, but I'd no longer be surprised if that doesn't work out as he'd hoped either.

Incidentally, the little-known Abdul Majid mysteriously went from topping the male poll with over 60 votes last year to getting just 3 votes this year.  That's pay-per-vote for you, folks.  That's the constitution you're now stuck with.

Sometimes a woman gives a man an ultimatum ‘her or me’
And the man gives in
But the consequences of his betrayal spiral out of control.
The man always knows what he had to give up and blames the woman.
He gets angrier and angrier and sadder and sadder. 😢

— Denise Findlay 💚🤍💜 (@gracebrod1e) March 31, 2025