Whatever else happens, the SNP *must* avoid triggering an unnecessary by-election in Stephen Flynn's seat - that's priority number one

I agree with a lot of the comments that have been made about Stephen Flynn's attempt to get a seat at Holyrood.  There's an obvious double standard in forbidding dual mandates simply to put a spanner in the works for one SNP faction, and then suddenly deciding dual mandates are absolutely fine when it suits the interests of the ruling faction.  And while in principle there's nothing wrong with standing against an incumbent constituency MSP in a party selection (internal party democracy dictates that nobody should have a guaranteed seat for life), the optics are terrible because it's such an obvious case of punching downwards - the challenger is far more powerful and influential than the person he is challenging, and he's essentially trampling all over her in the service of raw ambition, much as Douglas Ross did to David Duguid.  I don't really agree that this has got anything to do with "men" and "women", though, because ultimately Flynn's factional advantages can be traced back to Nicola Sturgeon.

Flynn's justifications have been almost comically insincere at every step along the way.  In the immediate aftermath of the general election he said that the possibility of switching to Holyrood was not uppermost in his thoughts, when in reality he must have already been plotting in some detail how he was going to do it.  Then when he made the announcement, he insisted he was only doing it because there was so much interest from others in what he might do - nothing to do with the fact that there was a deadline to put himself forward and he could scarcely challenge a sitting MSP in conditions of total secrecy.  Most ludicrously of all, he claimed the reason for his decision was to avoid "sitting out" an important electoral contest for Aberdeen, as if the only conceivable alternative to muscling in and seeking a dual mandate was to let voters down by being a passive bystander.  Well, why end there, Stephen?  Why not seek a perpetual triple mandate by standing in every single local election, Scottish Parliament election and Westminster election?  If you don't, you're bound to let the people of Aberdeen down by being a bystander at least two-thirds of the time, and that would be a frightful, beastly, caddish thing to do.

I know we like our politicians to be confident and to have the gift of the gab, but when the self-serving insincerity is quite so transparent, I wonder if it does more harm than good.  My biggest concern now is that because the backlash against Flynn's antics has been so severe, there may be pressure on him to do a partial U-turn and accept the same rule that applied to Joanna Cherry.  That would be the worst of all worlds, because it would lead to a by-election that the SNP could easily lose.  The best solution to this problem would be for Flynn to accept that he already has an important job as leader of the fourth largest group at Westminster (bigger than Reform UK, bigger than the Greens, bigger than Jeremy Corbyn's group of independents) and to dedicate himself to it.  But if he insists on switching to Holyrood, the least worst outcome is for others to accept his dual mandate for a couple of years, albeit perhaps with a disapproving frown.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - after the Rutherglen debacle, the SNP have got to learn to stop chucking away parliamentary seats like confetti.  They've lost quite enough seats already, so whatever else happens they must avoid being reduced from nine to eight.