Catch up with my election pitch to represent Central Scotland & Lothians West on the SNP's National Executive Committee

Just a reminder that the SNP internal elections open for voting tomorrow morning (ie. Saturday morning), and it's conference delegates who have the right to vote.  I'm standing for three committees, and all delegates, regardless of where in Scotland they come from, will be able to vote for me if they wish for the Conferences Committee, which will be elected by a country-wide vote.  By contrast the NEC ballot is split into regions, so if you're a delegate from the Central Scotland region (or Central Scotland and Lothians West as it's now become on the new boundaries) you can also vote for me in the NEC election.  And I'm also standing for the Policy Development Committee.

You can catch up with my election pitch in the video at the bottom of this post - it's essentially about empowering party members as much as possible, moving forward to win independence by seeking an outright mandate for it at a scheduled election, maintaining a firmly left-of-centre policy course, and holding the line against any dilution of the SNP's stance in favour of the eradication of nuclear weapons.  And I don't think regular readers of this blog will be in any doubt about how staunch my support for the Palestinian cause is.

I'm still in two minds about whether or not to submit a request to speak in tomorrow afternoon's crunch debate about independence strategy, but in case I decide not to, I just want to make one more key point.  The SNP does not actually have the right, any more than any other political party does, to surrender, or to partially surrender, or to curtail in any way, Scotland's right to exercise national self-determination on an ordinary majority.  Self-determination is an inalienable right that belongs to the people themselves, not to any political party.  But although the SNP do not have the right to surrender it, they may have the power in practice to do so.  In a system where the UK Government makes up the constitutional rules as it goes on, it can hold Scotland to the SNP's words - with the classic example of that being the way in which Alex Salmond's "once in a generation" line has been weaponised against the people since 2014.

If the SNP leadership do not, for whatever reason, feel able or willing to make a serious effort to use next year's election to win independence, then I think that's highly regrettable and I think that's a mistake.  But if that's the call they've made and if nothing can dissuade them from it, the important thing is to at least do no harm, ie. to do nothing to make it harder for us to use future elections to win independence.  Setting a needless precedent of saying that a single-party SNP overall majority is required would indeed make that much harder, because the UK Government would eagerly leap on it and hold us to it until the end of time.  Above all else that's what we must avoid tomorrow afternoon.  

I will be voting for the amendment that would turn the 2026 election into a de facto independence referendum, and I very much hope it passes.  But if it doesn't pass, it's vital we get behind the second amendment which quietly removes the requirement for a single-party SNP majority.  If neither of those two amendments pass, we'll be putting the independence cause into a much weaker state than it's been for decades.