Revealed: the far-right have almost totally taken over the "Alliance to Liberate Scotland" fringe party in the Highlands & Islands region

I said in my video about the far-right elements of Barrhead Boy's new fringe party "Alliance to Liberate Scotland" (aka "the Atlas") that I had spotted at least two of the party's candidates as being from the far-right Sovereignty.  But I knew that would be an underestimate, so I've now checked and it appears that a grand total of six of the party's thirty-nine candidates are from Sovereignty.  That's close to one-sixth of the total, and presumably it would have been an even higher proportion if it hadn't been for the last-minute influx of ex-Alba candidates.

The six far-right candidates are:

Alan McManus (Central Scotland & Lothians West)

Brian Nugent (Highlands & Islands)

Andrew MacDonald (Highlands & Islands)

Flora Badger (Highlands & Islands)

Kenneth MacKenzie (Highlands & Islands)

Laurie Moffat (Mid-Scotland & Fife)

As you can see, there's a particular concentration in the Highlands & Islands, where Barrhead Boy seems to have handed over the party organisation lock, stock and barrel to the far-right.  Four of the six Atlas candidates in the Highlands & Islands are from Sovereignty, including all of the top three on the list.  However, the two far-right candidates standing elsewhere in Scotland are also extremely prominent on their respective lists.  Laurie Moffat is number 2 candidate on the Mid-Scotland & Fife list, the region where Eva Comrie is number 1 (which makes me repeat my perpetual question: what on earth is Eva doing?).  And Alan McManus, who has been exposed in recent days as a regular speaker at the far-right rallies organised by arch-unionist and holocaust denier Alistair McConnachie, is number 2 in Central Scotland.

Again, all I can do is urge you to avoid Alliance to Liberate Scotland like the plague if you care about the cause of independence.  We simply cannot afford to allow our movement to become associated, even at the fringes, with these neo-fascists - it would undo the good work of decades.  Stick with the mainstream pro-indy options on both the constituency ballot and the list ballot.

Incidentally, on a more nerdish point, it looks like five of the six far-right candidates will be standing under the Sovereignty banner on the constituency ballot, and the Alliance to Liberate Scotland banner on the list ballot.  That means, to state the obvious, that people will be standing for two different parties in the same election, which brings to life as never before the danger Michael Ancram identified during the passing of the Scotland Act 1998 of "alter ego" parties standing on the two different ballots to try to cheat the system.  However, as this is all happening completely openly, and as Atlas seem to have declared their intentions to the Electoral Commission, presumably a ruling must have been made on whether any hypothetical Sovereignty constituency wins would count against Atlas when the d'Hondt calculation is done to distribute list seats.  If anyone knows for sure what the position is, please let me know.

*  *  * 

My two latest constituency profiles for The National are Eastwood and Edinburgh Central.