Alex Salmond has always been the master of surprise, and the Rutherglen episode has proved to be no exception. It was obvious that the choreography of the last few weeks was preparing the ground for some sort of predetermined outcome. I had assumed there were two serious possibilities of what that outcome might be - either that Mr Salmond himself would be standing as the Alba candidate in the by-election (which I thought would potentially be a good idea), or that a little-known Alba candidate would be standing for experience (which I thought would be a bad idea). Instead he's surprised us all by announcing that Alba won't be standing at all.
In the short-term I'd have to say common sense has prevailed, because as I've pointed out repeatedly, if Mr Salmond didn't want to be the candidate for whatever reason, there was nothing to be gained for Alba in standing in Rutherglen. A lesser known candidate probably would only have taken a small vote, which wouldn't have moved the dial for Alba at all, except in the negative sense that Alba might have been blamed for worsening the SNP's likely defeat at the hands of Labour.
But the flipside of the coin is that Mr Salmond is making clear that Alba are only standing aside to give the SNP "one last chance" to agree a Scotland United electoral pact, and that if they don't, Alba will be making a widespread intervention at the general election. That worries me greatly. As I've said for two years, Alba have got to be extraordinarily cautious about standing in first-past-the-post elections. The irony is that if I had been forced to make a straight choice between an Alba intervention in Rutherglen and a widespread Alba intervention at the general election, I'd have chosen Rutherglen like a shot, because the SNP's chances of winning there are so slim that there's little danger that a split pro-indy vote will do very much harm. But at a general election in which John Curtice has suggested practically every Scottish seat will be a marginal seat, it's not hard to see what harm a split vote will do. And remember the harm would not only be to the independence cause - it would extend to Alba themselves, because a mythology would grow that Alba are "the unionists' little helpers", thus undermining the party's chances in the Holyrood list vote in 2026, which is where the real opportunity lies.
So we come back to a modified form of the original question - what is the predetermined outcome in this extended choreography? Does Alex Salmond just want a pretext to stand lots and lots of Alba candidates at the general election? "We left no stone unturned, we even stood aside at the Rutherglen by-election when no-one could reasonably have expected us to, yet still the door was slammed in our face, leaving us with no choice." If that's the plan, then the whole objective is wrong, and Alba are travelling down completely the wrong path. On the other hand, it could be that Mr Salmond genuinely wants to force the SNP's hand and get them to accept the Scotland United offer, because he recognises the importance of Alba retaining elected representatives and thinks Neale Hanvey and Kenny MacAskill would have a fighting chance of holding their seats with SNP support. That line of thinking would make much more strategic sense, but I don't see how the moral high ground of standing aside in Rutherglen generates - or even helps to generate - the bargaining power required to get the SNP to seriously consider Scotland United, even if they are demonstrated to have failed hopelessly with a solo campaign. By contrast, Alex Salmond standing as an Alba candidate in Rutherglen and winning 15-20% of the vote might just have given the SNP some pause for thought for the first time.
So pretty much any way you look at it, today's statement looks like a misstep and possibly a major missed opportunity that will be rued for years to come. But time will tell.
* * *
My blogpost on Thursday, about the difficulty of keeping Scot Goes Pop going for much longer due to lack of funds, produced a substantial response. Not all of it is visible on the fundraiser page itself because around half the donations were made directly via Paypal, but over £600 has been raised since I posted. The fundraiser remains well short of its target, but I'll certainly keep going for as long as I possibly can, and there's still some sort of chance I may be able to keep going indefinitely, depending on what happens over the next few weeks. Many thanks to everyone who has donated, and if anyone else would like to contribute, the fundraiser page can be found HERE. Alternatively, direct payments can be made via Paypal - my Paypal email address is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk
FIrstly, Alex knows that if Alba stood it would make no material difference to the outcome but it would allow the SNP to blame Alba for their failure. Secondly, Alba have precisely zero bargaining power with the SNP and never will. Alex knows this too.
ReplyDelete*Never* will? That would only make sense if you're saying Alba will never have any electoral success at all?
DeleteInterested to see your position. My view is that SNP would not ever join a Scotland United strategy in the future. It looks weak for Albs not to stand in Rutherglen. It is generally in my view best to stand everywhere even if results are poor in some of those places.
ReplyDeleteTotally agree. They should take every opportunity to stand in elections, especially one as high profile as this. They have diminished the Alba brand IMO.
DeleteAs disgusting and reprehensible an example as it is, UKIP kept going for everything and gained a high and some some representation followed by Brexit.
It has to make sense to have only one independence supporting party standing.
ReplyDeleteLet’s face it, there’s probably going to be quite a bit of tactical voting amongst unionists in this by election. I can see Tory and LD voters voting Labour here in decent numbers.
This I fear, will happen increasingly in coming elections and the SNP/Alba/Greens really need to think seriously about the damage a split nationalist vote will do.
Only one nationalist party standing in each constituency would help counter tactical unionist voting.
There's a significant amount of tactical voting among anti-indy voters already, which has cost the SNP significant numbers of seats in every election since indyref and the tsunami of 2015. Take a look at this study by Eoghan Kelly at Queen's University which has all the numbers:
Deletehttps://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/publications/unionist-unity-strategic-voting-at-scottish-parliamentary-electio
The three Brit parties voters are very willing to move to whoever's positioned strongest in the local race, while remaining true to their own preferred party on the list. Holyrood's two simultaneous ballots make an excellent source of data for analysing this.
As ever: first past the post encourages and breeds 2-party systems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law
As this awful constitutional purgatory continues, with Scots evenly divided on the union, we may well wind up stuck in a two party system: one Brit vs. one Nationalist in every part of Scotland, as the punishment for vote splitting becomes dominant. I truly loathe this idea. Just look at how utterly powerless the voters are in 2-party systems like the USA and England. When all means to express ourselves are taken away, we are no longer democratic citizens, but just farmed for votes like the poor souls there. Every election is the same frozen showdown.
The next pivotal moment is not actually the by-election itself but the SNP conference. That will in all likelihood be the last chance the membership of the party have to gain control of the party and the direction of travel towards the party's objective - independence. That is the thinking that informed the vote of the National Council of ALBA.
ReplyDeleteHmmm. That's the official stated reason, but the blogpost is trying to tease out the real underlying reason. The SNP conference is pretty obviously not going to overrule the leadership on Scotland United and we all know that. The best hope for a change of heart would be a change of SNP leader. Could Alba standing out Rutherglen contribute to Humza being toppled by ensuring he has no alibi for a particularly poor result? I suppose it's possible, and that would be the most positive interpretation of the decision.
DeleteI don't know that there is any one reason - folk I've been in contact with who are delegates to the NC have differing "shades" as to why they voted the way they did.
DeleteDecisions like this are in practice taken by the leadership and then formally endorsed by the democratic body. In that sense Alba is not fundamentally different from the SNP. So for the real reason you'd have to ask the leadership rather than delegates.
DeleteIt has to be remembered that, shamefully, SNP and Labour have been campaigning in the are since before the recall petition, they have weeks of a start. Plus Alba campaign posters have been banned by Global who own most of the advert sites in the area. Allied to the fact that the Greens and ISP have announced they are standing, it makes sense to sit this one out. Remember there is a North Lanarkshire council by election coming up and the other parties will be "busy". A councillor is nowhere near as important as a MP, but Alba are constantly criticised for not ever winning a seat under their own name, so that might be a consideration.
ReplyDeleteAs for the GE, maybe they think at the rate SNP support (but not Yes support) is dropping, splitting the vote isn't going to be the cause of seat losses as the SNP wouldn't win anyway, but it would maintain the Yes vote???
No, that doesn't make any sense. It's a first past the post system, and last year Alba were at the forefront of trying to persuade the SNP to change their minds about making votes rather than seats the test, a call which the SNP have since heeded. With so many knife-edge seats, taking any votes at all away from the SNP is highly likely to contribute to Labour (or Tory) seat gains.
DeleteI really struggle to understand the thinking that sitting out Rutherglen makes sense, but sitting out the vast majority of seats at the general election somehow would not make sense. That's pretty much a straight contradiction.
Doesn't it make you think Alba will contest only those seats they already have at the Westminster general election?
DeleteI regret to say the answer to that question is no. I've just doublechecked the email that was sent out yesterday and it talks of a "wide scale intervention across Scotland at next year’s General Election". That language is not consistent with standing only two candidates, and it's the first time I've heard the actual leadership (as opposed to specific individual NEC members like Denise Findlay) publicly hyping up expectations of a big intervention at the general election. Even if they're still not entirely sure whether they want to do it, they may now be talking themselves into a mistake that will be hard to back down from.
DeleteThat’s a damn shame. A Wings Party in all but name is precisely the enemy the nuSNP would love to have: a bunch of frothing “woke” obsessed numpties, hell bent on damaging the push for independence. (Even if it is all talk, all troughing.)
DeleteThe SNP needs a major reset. Lab designed enemies they can relish in opposing are the precise oppose of that.
It’s not an inspiring time to be a Yesser, is it?
I think Alba were right to stand aside, and so should ISP.
ReplyDeleteIf the SNP are going to fail, let them fail on their own rather than have anyone to blame - apart from the Greens that is, I hope the Conference is after the by-election, and that if the SNP get trounced, there will be ructions. I also think the Greens are a huge negative force on the SNP, they are leading them around with a ring through the nose. So if the Greens with their splitting votes can be blamed in some way for the loss, so be it.
As it stands I will be spoiling my ballot sheet in 2024 with the word "INDEPENDENCE" written diagonally across it, unless the SNP make huge moves and drop all the nonsense. Change is needed.
What will be achieved by writing “independence “ diagonally across the ballot paper?
DeleteI’ve seen other people saying the same thing, but just don’t get it.
The agents for the candidates get to inspect the spoilt ballots, so they will know if a lot of spoilt ballots are spoilt with "Independence" diagonally across them. The SNP might finally get the message that people are hacked off with their "progressive" evasion of Indy. Or not in which case they're doomed in 2024. As are we.
DeleteAnonymous at 4.20pm. What will be achieved by voting for a British party?
DeleteAnon didn't suggest voting for a British party. I would assume he/she feels people should be voting for a pro-indy party. Writing 'independence' on the ballot paper will just be recorded as a spoiled ballot, no other distinction will be made. It's like any other way of abstaining and achieves nothing.
DeleteJames, you can only vote for a pro - Indy party if one is standing for election in your constituency and in my opinion a pro Indy party candidate is not always standing for election. So should you 1. vote for a party that does not want independence,
Delete2 not turn up to vote or
3. spoil your paper by writing Scottish independence ( making sure you do not touch any of the boxes).
I choose option 3 in these circumstances.
Voting SNP, Labour, Tory, Lib Dems does not achieve independence. If Alba or ISP stand I will vote for them. I will NEVER vote for Oswald.
As a footnote I find myself in the strange and uncomfortable situation of agreeing in part with the Bathtub Admiral. However, unlike the Admiral I see no situation in which the current SNP leadership will progress independence. I listened to every one of Yousaf's leadership hustings and he could have been a Labour candidate for all the interest he showed in independence.
Thanks James, spot on. That was precisely the point I was making. Maybe I should have elaborated a bit.
DeleteYesindyref2 seems to think it would send a message to the SNP, but if as you say, it would just be recorded as a spoiled ballot paper, then it’s a pointless exercise and if anything would do more harm than good.
Anonymous at 4.39 pm. Voting SNP is a pointless exercise if you want Scottish independence and believe in self determination. All the harm has already been done by the ********* SNP leadership. Care to elaborate on what harm you think it will do that the SNP leadership have not already done.
Delete"(3) The returning officer shall endorse the word “rejected” on any ballot paper which under this article is not to be counted, and shall add to the endorsement the words “rejection objected to” if any objection is made by a counting agent to his or her decision. "
Delete"if any objection is made by a counting agent to his or her decision"
which means any agent can inspect ALL spoilt ballots, and as far as I can see, there's nothing to stop them counting the ones that say "INDEPENDENCE", though they might want to check whether they can make that public or not (perhaps by asking the ERO).
The SNP agents could do it - and so could ISP if someone asks them nicely :-)
But so what? It's not going to be recorded as anything other than a spoilt ballot.
DeleteBut the agents get to see them, not just at the end of the count, but throughout the whole process. So if one agent afterwards says that of the 1,200 rejected for uncertainty, 1,110 were marked "INDEPENDENCE", it sends a clear message - considering the normal average per constituency is perhaps 150 spoilt ballots and 0.3%. The turnout in Rutherglen and Hamilton West in 2019 was 52,000 so 1,100 would be over 2% of the turnout - far greater than normal. And perhaps that could be even higher if Alba, ISP and disaffected SNP supporters campaigned for "Don't abstain, spoil your ballot with INDEPENDENCE written diagonally across it".
Deletehttps://votingcounts.org.uk/spoilt-ballot
And if the SNP candidate (Loudon) lost by just 500 votes then the message would be complete. The campaign should have been on Independence, not trying to send Starmer a "message in a ballot"!
Agents will "see things" which will be cheerfully forgotten about within a week. Only things that are actually recorded will "send a clear message".
DeleteMmm, from the national:
ReplyDelete"UK Government wants portraits of King hanging in Scottish schools"
Apparently, they are also issuing unlimited "Pin the tail on the donkey" kits to go with it. And I'm not even a republican (or a monarchist).
If this is the same person who posts on WGD as yesindyref2 ( also know as the Bathtub Admiral ) I can only assume you see yourself as a royalist rather than a monarchist. A kind of lesser groveller.
Delete36 inches.
Delete36 inches - that'll be your height when you are on your knees grovelling before your king.
DeleteYou're so easy to manipulate. Are you Hamish 100's younger brother - Joe 90?
DeleteAye right - at heart you are still a WGD numpty.
Delete