In case you missed it: Bonnie Prince Bob's excoriating video calling out leading Alba Party politicians for their support of genocide-apologist blogger Stuart "Stew" Campbell

I am extremely confident that eventually, although it may take several years, there will be an official ruling from the international court that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, and that as a result, however slowly and reluctantly, western European governments (but probably not the government of the United States) will start to accept their own complicity in one of the gravest crimes in modern human history.  If that seems implausible at present, remember that changes of government regularly occur in democratic states, and it's a lot easier to accept blame for something that occurred when a different set of politicians were in charge.  Even the Iraq War was eventually denounced as "illegal" from the government despatch box at PMQs - albeit by Nick Clegg when he was deputising for David Cameron.

I also have little doubt that once academic experts can access Gaza and examine the full range of evidence, it will be established that Israel has slaughtered (either directly, or by indirect methods such as starvation) far, far, far more Palestinians than the official death toll from what the BBC call the "Hamas-run health ministry" currently suggests, and that a very substantial percentage of the target population will therefore have been exterminated in the genocide.  Anyone who supported or defended the Israeli government's actions during this period will be permanently stained by history - and it'll be very hard for them to resort to the excuse that they didn't properly understand what was going on, given how extensive the video evidence of both Israel's war crimes and its genocidal intent has been.

Which brings us inevitably to the subject of the formerly pro-independence blogger Stuart "Stew" Campbell, who initially fully supported Netanyahu's war crimes as a legitimate response against "terrorist scum", and who more recently has settled into trivialising the genocide as a silly little squabble between two sides who are no better than each other, and that everyone else should stay out of - ie. he clearly doesn't think countries such as the UK should take any action to prevent Palestinians being exterminated on an industrial scale, because he apparently sees their lives as being of very little value, or that there should be any effort to break the Israeli blockade to stop Palestinian children being literally starved to death.  He also mocks anti-genocide protestors in the UK as "flagshaggers".

All of the great many other things that are so thoroughly objectionable about Campbell, not least his current unsubtle attempts to steer his disciples towards voting for the soft-fascist Reform UK at next year's Holyrood election, pale into insignificance compared to his disgusting apologism for Bibi and the genocide.

The well-kent figure of Bonnie Prince Bob has now posted a video criticising leading Alba Party politicians Tommy Sheridan and Neale Hanvey (but particularly Mr Sheridan) for seemingly defending Campbell and his views on the genocide.  This is a contradiction that has struck me a number of times.  Alba has made a big effort to portray itself as being on the right side of history as far as Gaza is concerned, and yet at exactly the same time it has persisted with its excruciating declarations of unrequited love for Campbell, still regarded as the party's spiritual godfather even though he continually tells his disciples to vote against Alba by backing unionist parties.  And remember it's not just Campbell himself who has some sympathy for the Netanyahu regime - if you read through the comments on Wings you'll find plenty of support for what Israel is doing.

I've had to temporarily switch pre-moderation back on in the comments section of this blog for one simple reason: I've been swamped by literally hundreds of attempted comments over the weekend containing puerile insults and abuse from the Stew Fan Club.  But there was one anonymous insult that interested me, because in a sense it made a perfectly fair point.  It simply said: "Stu > James"-- Alex.  That's actually entirely accurate.  At Slanszh Media's IMAX event not long before Salmond's death, the former First Minister went out of his way to invite Campbell to attack "the lesser internet figures" who had pointed out that Campbell no longer supports independence.  I have little doubt, given the context, that this was an indirect reference to me, and that it was intended as a coded signal of three things: a) that I was no longer "in favour" with Salmond, b) that Salmond had okayed the demand from Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh and the Corri Nostra that I be expelled from the Alba Party, and c) that the Netanyahu apologist Campbell, by contrast, was still regarded as beyond reproach and as the party's spiritual lodestar.  That strikes me as considerably more of a problem for the Alba Party than it is for me.

I don't agree with everything in Bonnie Prince Bob's video.  I personally think it's a mistake to bang on about the evils of "Zionism" too much, because it needlessly drives a wedge between anti-Zionist opponents of the genocide, and those who oppose the genocide while also supporting Israel's continued existence as a Jewish state within its legal pre-1967 boundaries.  However, the best way of being sure that the video also makes plenty of telling points is that it's really, really got under Campbell's skin.  Apart from well over a dozen tweets in the space of a few hours trying to portray Bonnie Prince Bob as "unhinged", he's even running a Twitter poll asking whether Bonnie Prince Bob or me is "winning the mental-off".  To even be mentioned in the same breath as me in the "Stew is calling you lots of synonyms for a lunatic" stakes means that BPB is almost certainly doing something very, very right.

The video has also been lauded by the critics as "more compelling than Slanszh Media's little-watched weekly YouTube show Tas Is Still Talking".

How can @citizentommy - a governing member of @KennyMacAskill’s @AlbaParty express solidarity with 🇵🇸 whilst endorsing @WingsScotland ? A man who abuses Palestinian protesters including @Lowkey0nline & claims 🇵🇸 is irrelevant to Scottish Independence. pic.twitter.com/i4DH9KCHKQ

— Bonnie Prince Bob (@VoteBPB) May 12, 2025