As I've previously mentioned, I was told by an informed source prior to Alba's creation in spring 2021 that Alex Salmond planned to model the organisation of his new party on the Brexit Party. His intention was apparently not to have party members, but a sort of fan club of 'registered supporters'. The reason for this was to guarantee that he, his family and his close friends would always keep total control of Alba, and that they could never even theoretically be replaced by a rival faction, as had happened in the SNP.
And yet when the Alba Party actually appeared on the scene, its original constitution was if anything somewhat more democratic - at least on paper - than the SNP's. So what had changed? Was my source just simply wrong? In retrospect I don't think he was. I believe Mr Salmond belatedly realised that he would pay too high a price for setting up an ostensibly progressive party with himself as dictator-for-life. The look would have been terrible. So instead he convinced himself that he could achieve exactly the same effect by different means. Alba would nominally have an internal democracy, but Mr Salmond would retain total control in practice through sheer force of personality. After all, the vast majority of Alba members would indeed be his 'fans', or less pejoratively his keenest supporters, and it was unlikely that they would ever vote against his wishes if he expressed or indicated a clear view on how an internal election or conference vote should go.
But the key question remained - what would actually happen if force of personality proved not to be enough, and party members voted in a way that he strongly disagreed with? Would he uphold, however reluctantly, the party's internal democracy as set out in the constitution? Or would that democracy be exposed as a sham, with Mr Salmond reverting to the role of dictator and overturning the members' decisions? We found out the answer to that question in the latter months of 2023.
Something very strange had happened in the summer of 2023. Three senior female Alba office bearers, who had all previously been close allies of Mr Salmond, suddenly and dramatically fell out of the leadership's favour. Those three were Denise Findlay (Organisation Convener), Jacqui Bijster (Membership Support Convener) and Eva Comrie (Equalities Convener). I have spoken to several people who were in the know about the sequence of events, and they all agree that the sudden hostility towards those three was largely inexplicable with no obvious trigger-event, although a chaotic group trip to London was often cited as an apparent turning point. By far the most common guess for what had suddenly changed is "Tasmina's jealousy" - in other words, Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh couldn't cope with other strong women having Mr Salmond's attention, and she started dripping poison into his ear about them. Denise Findlay in particular had become invaluable to Mr Salmond for a prolonged period - she had been his own choice to become Organisation Convener (he directly appointed her on an interim basis after her predecessor stepped down), she had proved extremely active and effective in the role, and at her own expense had often driven Mr Salmond across Scotland for Alba events. A number of people have suggested this was simply too much for Tasmina to bear.
Whatever the exact reasons, though, Mr Salmond and the wider leadership made a firm decision that Ms Findlay and Ms Bijster had to be replaced. (With Ms Comrie the position was less clear-cut, perhaps because the Equalities role carried less direct power.) The snag was that their positions were directly elected, they both fully intended to stand for re-election, and as incumbents it was highly likely they would win. But the leadership meant business about getting rid of them, so a strategy was devised.
A 'big-hitter' preferred successor was identified to both Ms Findlay and Ms Bijster and persuaded to stand against them. In Ms Bijster's case it was the retired civil servant Daniel Jack, and in Ms Findlay's case it was Alba's former Local Government Convener Leigh Wilson. Pro-active steps were taken by the leadership to boost the profile of both Mr Jack and Mr Wilson as the vote approached. A one-off newspaper column was secured for Mr Jack, and the Alba website hyped it to the max.
But naturally Ms Bijster and Ms Findlay, who by then were only too well aware of what the leadership was doing to them, had no interest in just rolling over and letting it happen. As incumbents, they had perfectly legitimate ways of boosting their own profiles. Ms Bijster was able, for example, to email the full party membership with answers to frequently asked questions about how the elections would work - a matter that was entirely within her remit as incumbent Membership Support Convener.
Ms Bijster's email, which was very short and to the point and contained no electioneering whatsoever, coincided with the fanfare over Daniel Jack's newspaper article. In other words, the leadership's cunning plan to make Mr Jack better known to Alba members than Ms Bijster had been completely foiled, as it probably deserved to be.
Mr Salmond and Chris "Disgruntled Employee" McEleny hit the roof. Ms Bijster was immediately stripped of her right to email members, and McEleny publicly announced this was happening as a punishment. I was one of the candidates standing against both Ms Bijster and Mr Jack, and I received a phone call from Mr Salmond (as it turned out, the last I received from him before he died). He was fizzing with anger. He insisted that Ms Bijster was clearly "at it", and had been "put up to it by Denise". He sarcastically claimed that Ms Bijster had been totally invisible during her year as Membership Support Convener, and that it was very convenient timing for her to "suddenly start emailing members now".
My response was that when I had first seen Ms Bijster's email, I realised that it probably would give her an advantage over me and the other candidates, but it was the type of advantage that any incumbent would unavoidably have, and I therefore didn't think it was that big a deal. Mr Salmond replied by saying "oh it's OK for you to say that, James, you have a platform and people know who you are, but the other candidates aren't so lucky".
Supposedly as remedial action to make the election "fair", McEleny sent out an email listing the names of three of the candidates for Membership Support Convener (myself, Mr Jack and the young activist Scott Fallon) but excluding the fourth (Ms Bijster). Subsequently, Alba members were sent yet another email containing election pitches from myself, Mr Jack and Mr Fallon, but once again excluding Ms Bijster. (Mine was initially regarded as slightly too long, so I received stern instructions from Mr Salmond and Corri Wilson to shorten it. I couldn't go stealing the chosen one's thunder, now could I?!)
But these superhuman efforts to scupper Ms Bijster and Ms Findlay failed. In the case of Ms Findlay, that failure was almost inevitable, because not only was she wildly popular in her own right, but she was also closely associated with Mr Salmond. Alba members hadn't received the memo about Mr Salmond suddenly turning against her, and they probably wouldn't have believed that memo even if they had received it.
The election software being used allowed the leadership to monitor the votes in real time. Mr Salmond and McEleny almost certainly did that and knew that Ms Findlay and Ms Bijster had been comfortably re-elected. After the ballot closed, Mr Salmond had a huge decision to make. Would he do the right and natural thing, accept the results and allow them to be announced at conference as scheduled? Or would he stop the announcement, hush up the results and then nullify them - something he had no moral or ethical right to do, and certainly no power to do under the party constitution? Extraordinarily, he chose the latter course of action, but it was plainly fraught with immense danger for him. I literally cannot think of any precedent for what Mr Salmond did in any other UK party of significance, at least in modern times.
The chosen excuse was that the elections supposedly hadn't been fair because people had been making uncomplimentary comments about Mr Salmond's family and party staff on chat rooms while the vote was taking place. This was clearly a preposterous explanation which was unlikely to be regarded by reasonable people as sufficient, so again, a strategy was devised to save face.
Firstly, the announcement would be made at conference in closed session. The live stream would be switched off, and no non-members (ie. journalists) would be allowed into the hall to hear what was going on. Secondly, the waters would be muddied by starting the announcement with a long, meandering discussion about unrelated and essentially irrelevant complaints that members had raised about the voting process. In retrospect, these were just the totally routine niggles that would occur during any election process, but the hope was that talking about them in so much depth would plant the misleading notion in members' heads that these elections were unusually troubled and contentious, and would soften people up to accept the otherwise ridiculous claim that Mr Salmond had to overturn the election results because people had been saying things he didn't like on chat rooms. It was a reasonably effective tactic, albeit a very cynical one.
I have managed to obtain an audio recording of most of Mr Salmond's "secret speech" and I have transcribed it below. There are a few words missing from both the start and the finish, but this is the meat of what he said -
"...of complaints surfacing about the conduct of the office bearer elections, these were in a variety of chat rooms that the party wishes to use, but they also surfaced in the NEC chat group and among NEC members. I wanted to examine this to establish for myself whether there was a technical issue, and what the quantity of that technical issue might be, to satisfy myself of the integrity of the election process. However, during yesterday, there was widespread questioning of the ballot, and that included in a WhatsApp message [from] one of the candidates for office to another candidate for office. You may wonder why I know that - eh, they put it on the wrong WhatsApp group. There was also a letter in from Aberdeenshire LACU group which [word unclear] the interest because I am a member of Aberdeenshire LACU. So I took it on myself to investigate, and this is what I've got to report to you.
In total, there were fifteen complaints, and remember we're talking here about an electorate of many thousands, there were fifteen complaints of people who couldn't vote because their link wasn't working. We think we know the technical reason for that, it's about transfer of our membership [word unclear] on the electorate. There were a number of complaints, we have four but I think there were probably more than that, about the review section of the voting - not being able to change your vote. It says you're able to review the vote, some people interpreted that as you're able to change the vote. No. Once you put your paper in the ballot box, ye cannae get it back oot again. Right? So review just means you can check how you voted and how you voted, but I do accept that is a...that could cause some misunderstanding.
There was one complaint, a person didn't receive a vote because of using a shared email address. This is another technical issue we've got to deal with. As you'll understand, I mean I can't imagine using the same email address as Mrs Salmond, that would cause us both great consternation, but some people do with their partners or with their spouses. And of course our systems only allow to go to one email, once you vote once, and therefore somebody in that position has to request another ballot paper.
There were two complaints that the vote had actually been actively compromised, and there were six demands for a re-run of the ballot, which were articulately made. Significantly, however, none of the people who demanded a re-run of the ballot had personal experience of the difficulties they thought were arising. Now, because one complaint had come from Aberdeenshire LACU, and from the Secretary of Aberdeenshire LACU, a woman who I hold in the highest regard, I made it my business to investigate the two members who made the complaint. The first of these, a lady contacted to complain, but when contacted by headquarters transpired she had no issues herself, but had heard there were issues on a chat group and therefore thought she'd complain. The second lady said 'I provisionally completed my voting records a couple of weeks ago but did not complete the process 'til last night, but it appears to have been completed' - yes, that's because you can only vote once, and once you vote, that's it.
Now, folks, if this had just been it, and that had been all there was to it, given the low level of technical problems in a huge electorate, then I would have said I am satisfied, this is OK, let's go on. However, it's not something that comes up in isolation, I'm afraid. Two weeks ago, I was sent this [displays prop], rather old-fashioned way, through the post. It's a list of I think three, perhaps four, chat groups, WhatsApp groups circulating in the party at the present moment. In this dossier, let's call it that, a black dossier, there are attacks from party members on candidates standing for election, there are attacks on my family, there are attacks on headquarters staff, attacks on other office bearers, and plans to disrupt the proceedings of this conference. Which apparently according to the note, would be difficult for the party but all worthwhile in the end. In fact the only person in this lot who isn't attacked is me. I seem to be invulnerable from chat group attack.
Now, the point I'm going to make to you is this. The elections and the conduct of elections have to be fair, and they have to be seen to be fair, and they have to be believed by all those participating in the elections. That is absolutely essential. And before, during and afterwards, I will not accept questioning of the conduct of the elections on chat groups, and suggestions of improper behaviour by the party staff or anyone else for that matter. Therefore, it's my decision, my decision after consultation with the General Secretary, that I'm going to suspend the office bearer elections. We're going to re-run them in five weeks' time at National Council in early December in Aberdeen. It'll be exactly the same party electorate, as I'll freeze the electorate as it is now. The National Executive elections will be run from the National Council as well, again with the people who've registered for this conference, so the electorate will remain the same."
Unsurprisingly given Mr Salmond's determination to keep the above comments secret, it turned out that they were factually inaccurate or misleading in several respects. Most importantly, the "dossier" he used as a physical prop was not real, and he later admitted that himself. An Alba member quite legitimately submitted a subject access request to see if he was in the dossier, and the leadership reacted with blind panic. Mr Salmond sent an extraordinarily angry email in reply, and explicitly stated twice that no dossier existed, directly contradicting what he had said in his secret speech. These are the relevant quotes from the email -
"So let us now be absolutely clear.
There is no 'dossier' and never has been. As I explained to Conference I was copied into chat groups by concerned Party members whose contents indicated that up to a dozen people prominent in ALBA were clearly in flagrant breach of the Party’s code of conduct."
"The online pantomime of a procession of people proclaiming their 'innocence' because they get a nil subject access return from material which the Party does not hold from a dossier which does not exist could keep a team of welfare officers in guilt counselling working overtime for many years."
The dossier prop was a form of psychological warfare that Mr Salmond clearly hoped people would forget about five minutes later, but they did not, and let's be honest - he was caught out telling a direct fib. The claim in his email and the claim in his speech are utterly irreconcilable with each other. Perhaps he and McEleny hoped that making the speech in secret session would mean there would be no recordings with which the fib could be verifiably quoted - but that was very naive in this day and age.
I have spoken to several people who were on the chat groups that Mr Salmond is believed to have been referring to, and they have all confirmed that no improper attacks on his family took place. The reference to plans to "disrupt conference" seemingly referred mainly to discussions about raising legitimate points of order about whether certain NEC candidates had been properly nominated according to the rules - because the executive of Aberdeenshire LACU had apparently broken the rules by nominating candidates themselves, whereas the matter should have gone to a vote of the whole branch. Yes, a couple of those candidates were members of Mr Salmond's family, but that doesn't change the fact that the planned points of order were perfectly proper and would in no way have 'disrupted' conference. And on no planet would they even have begun to justify the overturning of the results of a properly-conducted election. (Note: the office bearer elections were separate from the election for ordinary NEC members, and therefore couldn't be affected by whether the planned points of order were upheld or rejected.)
Of course simply nullifying the results and re-running the elections were not sufficient to stop Ms Findlay and Ms Bijster from being re-elected, because they could stand again and would still have had the advantage of incumbency they started with. But that's where the leadership's second abuse of power came into play. By all accounts, wholly improper pressure was placed upon Denise Findlay to 'voluntarily' withdraw her candidacy, on the basis that the leader had to be able to work in harmony with 'his' office bearers. Now come on. If the leader has an effective veto on who can be office bearers, what the hell is the point of those positions being elected in the first place? If Mr Salmond saw the NEC as a sort of "Cabinet" with himself as "First Minister", why did he not drop the pretence and make it an appointed body?
Leigh Wilson also withdrew from the re-run of the Organisation Convener election for his own reasons. The rumour is that he worked out that he had been used by the leadership to try to bring down Ms Findlay, and that to his immense credit he wanted no more to do with such a sordid process. Rob Thompson was elected instead, which apparently the leadership were happy enough with - all that really mattered to them was ousting Ms Findlay.
Jacqui Bijster apparently withdrew from her own race before the pressure needed to be applied, but she very specifically only withdrew from the Membership Convener election and did not withdraw from the election for Ordinary Members of the NEC. McEleny performed his usual stunt of pretending to have misunderstood her message, and removed her from the list of Ordinary Member candidates as well - an intentional and malicious act of election-rigging that should have resulted in his immediate resignation as General Secretary. (Just one of so many acts of malpractice that he should have resigned over long before now.)
Beyond that disgraceful incident, what is the overall picture here? A leadership breaking the rules to nullify and hush up the results of a properly-conducted election simply because the "wrong" people had won, and then making very sure by improper means that those "wrong" people weren't even candidates in the re-run of the vote. That means the people who were validly elected in the original ballot were replaced by people they had soundly defeated in a fair process. Those are Putin-style practices on the part of the Alba leadership, and yes, they entirely justify the term "election-rigging". Incidentally, in the re-run of the Membership Support Convener election, I narrowly topped the poll on first preference votes (probably because many of Ms Bijster's supporters had switched to me in her absence) and was defeated by Mr Jack by a margin of just 50.5% to 49.5% after Mr Fallon was eliminated and his votes were redistributed according to second preferences. A number of senior people I've spoken to have called into question whether that result passes the smell test. I know of absolutely no evidence that the numbers were falsified in any way, but one thing that does seem clear is that the leadership were able to monitor the progress of the vote in real time, and if Mr Jack had needed a handful of extra votes from down the sofa, they would have been able to find them for him by making some urgent phone calls. By contrast, I was flying completely blind and had no idea that the vote was so close. That in itself arguably made the election unfair.
The fiddling of the NEC elections was if anything even more extreme. Unlike office bearer elections, ordinary NEC members are only elected by the small minority of Alba members who pay to purchase a delegate pass for conference - and there is no requirement for the holders of the delegate passes to actually attend conference in person. This makes it a "pay per vote" system that is wide open to abuse, because the wealthy supporters of specific candidates can just buy up conference passes in bulk. All the indications are that the little-known Abdul Majid topped the male-only ballot by such an unrealistically massive margin that if the results had been published it would have been blindingly obvious what had happened. So, yet again, a cynical decision was taken to hush the results up, with only the names of the successful candidates being published. Candidates were allowed to see partial results that applied to themselves, but even these had inconsistencies in them. The best-known inconsistency relates to the stage of the count at which Christina Hendry was elected.
Comically, McEleny and co totally contradicted themselves with the "reasons" they came up with for keeping the results secret. The utterly risible excuse that they started out with was that candidates who received zero votes had to be protected from embarrassment, because they might stand for parliament in future! That later morphed into the nutty claim that election results were personal data belonging to the candidates, and couldn't be legally published without their permission - which plainly made no sense, because election results had been published in previous years without candidates' permission. During my time in 2024 as an elected member of the Constitution Review Group, I challenged Daniel Jack on who had actually refused permission for their data to be published. He rather pompously batted away the question by telling me to ask the people I was so close to who had already left the party (I felt like he was hinting at Alan Harris) because that's where the problem had come from. I have since been assured that is not true, and that Mr Harris and others of like mind had played no part in blocking publication. If anyone had genuinely withheld permission, it must have been a leadership-loyalist candidate and it must have been done as a wrecking tactic to spare blushes.
Incidentally, everyone I have spoken to has said that Abdul Majid is basically a nice enough guy with no real political ambitions for himself. He seems to have been an almost accidental beneficiary of a vote-buying strategy intended to benefit someone else - with by far the most popular theory being that Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh needed to lock down first place in the female-only ballot to justify her ongoing role as the appointed Party Chair.
There's a deeply squalid little postscript to this. The whistleblower Denise Somerville uncovered what may have been evidence of how the vote-buying-in-bulk strategy was implemented, with a large number of new international members being quietly added to Alba's "HQ branch" where few people would know of their existence. McEleny flew into a rage and abused the disciplinary process to get Ms Somerville suspended for six months as an act of revenge, and as a deterrent to any other Alba member who might be tempted to speak out about the vote-rigging. Even more appallingly, McEleny got Colin Alexander expelled from the party for writing this wholly reasonable guest post on the Iain Lawson blog which raised legitimate questions about the conduct of the elections. More about that in a jaw-dropping future installment of "THE ALBA FILES". Stay tuned.
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