MacAskill spells it out: Alba will not be standing in any Holyrood constituencies next year, which means (barring U-turns) that Christina Hendry's bizarre masterplan to help the Tories gain Banffshire & Buchan Coast has been foiled

Alba have put out a brief statement on Twitter confirming that they will not be standing in the forthcoming by-election in Christina McKelvie's old seat.  That's not a major surprise, because they've been regularly sitting out the vast majority of local council by-elections, presumably due to a lack of funds and a shrinking, demoralised, demotivated and generally scunnered membership.  However, what is interesting in the statement is the crystal-clear assurance that Alba will only be standing on the list in next year's Holyrood election, meaning they will be very sensibly sitting out every single constituency contest.

That's a rare piece of good news from the direction of Alba.  Although opinion polls show that it's highly unlikely that Alba will win any seats on the list, they could still have had an impact on the election (and a very negative one) if they had intervened in the constituencies, because they could have split the Yes vote and gifted some marginal SNP seats to unionist parties.  For some bizarre reason (actually her incomprehensible stated reason was "being of Salmond blood"), Christina Hendry seemed hellbent on doing just that by standing as an Alba candidate in the ultra-marginal SNP seat of Banffshire & Buchan Coast, where the Tories will start from a very close second place.  Her self-indulgent and destructive plan has been deservedly foiled - unless of course MacAskill backtracks on his decision.  Some people suspect he may still U-turn, but I think that's become a lot harder for him to do now that he's set out the position so unambiguously.  

The chances of retaining the pro-independence majority at Holyrood next year have just increased.  Maybe only slightly, but as the Brit Nat ultras at Tesco would say, "every little helps".

Oh come off it, Chris.  We all understand why you're making desperate attempts to play to the gallery in the wake of your long-overdue sacking, but there really is no point playing the innocent here.  As the disgraced former General Secretary of Alba, you know as well as anyone that the Alba Party does not make decisions by means of "votes".  A quaint notion, but nope.  You've directly rigged a fair few internal votes yourself over the years, let's not forget.

If all the bad, mad and weird decisions in Alba are made by leadership diktat, it's probably fitting enough that one of the few sensible decisions has been taken in the same manner.