As rumours mount that Ash Regan may be on the brink of leaving the Alba party, Shannon Donoghue intervenes to demand that Regan must come to heel - but could such a petulant outburst backfire catastrophically?

I think by this stage it's fair to say that something is definitely afoot with Ash Regan, although probably only a tiny handful of people know exactly what's going on.  Even the best-informed people I know are unsure and are only able to speculate.  But here's what we do know.  Firstly, she refused to make any concession comments after her defeat to Kenny MacAskill.  That's highly unusual in any political party - remember that in spite of the anger and bitterness between the Kate Forbes and Humza Yousaf camps in the 2023 SNP leadership election, Forbes was extremely gracious and generous towards Yousaf in the immediate moments after the result was announced.

Secondly, yesterday many people independently noticed that Regan has suddenly removed the word "ALBA" from her Twitter handle.  It's extremely hard to see why she would have done that unless there was at least a question mark over her continued membership of the party.  There are various possibilities - perhaps she's already decided to leave and is preparing the ground for it.  Perhaps she just intends to quietly remain in a sort of limbo state, half-in, half-out, until McEleny's legal action is concluded, and only then make a decision about whether to leave for good.  Or perhaps she's trying to send a signal to the Alba leadership to see if they will make major concessions to keep her inside the tent.

Whatever her precise intention, there's no doubt that the Alba leadership have picked up on her signals.  Their tactic in response has not been to offer substantive concessions but instead to take presentational steps that they hope will make Regan look like the bad guy if she leaves.

It's pretty clear what they're doing here.  First of all they're making a big show of publicly love-bombing her as a valued member of the team to try to make her worry that any decision to leave will look inexplicable.  And secondly they've carefully selected a quote from her about unity to try to make her panic that they'll be able to portray her as a hypocrite if she walks away.

Which may sound like quite a cunning plan until you remember the Shannon Donoghue factor.  Shannon doesn't really do subtlety, it has to be said.

Shannon always thinks she's being really enigmatic and elliptical, but given her long track record of publicly attacking Regan (in flagrant breach of Alba's Code of Conduct, which apparently doesn't apply to Shannon), nobody is going to mistake the meaning of the tweet - she's saying that Regan has only talked about unity but hasn't put it into practice.  She's saying that Regan must now change her behaviour and come to heel.  

And because everyone knows Shannon is part of the leadership faction and will be in the loop on tactical thinking, it's also going to be obvious that Shannon's words are reflective of the leadership's intention in posting Regan's quotes on Twitter.  It shows that they were not genuine about presenting Regan as a valued part of the team and were instead threatening her.  That's not likely, I'd have thought, to produce a positive response.

This could be a very costly blunder on Shannon's part.  The brutal fact is that without Ash Regan the Alba leadership don't really have a party.  It's only Regan's seat at Holyrood that keeps them looking like a national party of any significance - if she walks away they'll be instantly reduced to fringe status on a par with the likes of the Scottish Libertarian Party, the Scottish Family Party or ISP.  There's not much point in Kenny MacAskill, Tas and the Corri Nostra having taken control of an organisation if five minutes later it turns into an empty shell.