What would the UK Labour government do if it really cared about the Palestinians?

 

Given that this country is bombing the living daylights out of them anyway, it seems rather redundant to grapple with moral questions relating to the Houthis, but what does interest me is what the UK Labour government would do if it really cared about the Palestinians.  Here are a few suggestions...

* It would recognise the sovereign independence of the State of Palestine within the pre-1967 boundaries - as Spain, Norway, Sweden and Ireland have already done, and as apparently even France is seriously considering doing within a few months.

* It would recognise that Israel has no "right to self-defence" against an occupied people - although of course that would mean admitting that Starmer was wrong when he said that Israel had such a right and that it even extended to the right to commit war crimes such as the cutting off of water and electricity to Gaza.

* It would recognise that Palestine and individual Palestinians do have a legal right to self-defence against the Israeli occupiers and aggressors.

* It would end all arm sales from this country to Israel.

* It would commit to arresting wanted Israeli war criminals such as Benjamin Netanyahu if they set foot on British territory, and would urge all other ICC signatories to do the same.

* It would accept that Israel has been committing genocide against the Palestinian people, rather than persist with the genocide denial that Starmer has shamefully engaged in.

* It would stop British military planes flying from the colonial air bases in Cyprus to collect intelligence for Israel to assist in the carrying out of the genocide.

* It would come clean about the details of the intelligence gathering flights to date.

* Given the long history of British governments carrying out military strikes on supposedly humanitarian grounds, it would for the sake of consistency carry out air strikes against Israeli military targets, thus degrading Netanyahu's ability to continue with the genocide.

* It would take a stand in favour of Israel's banning from Eurovision and all international sport.

*. *. *

Most Prime Ministers would respond to these local elections with the same old excuses.

My response is simple: I get it.

We’re moving in the right direction, but people must feel the benefits of change.

I will go further and faster to make that happen.https://t.co/ptLSswSjEx

— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) May 3, 2025

Keir isn't like other Prime Ministers. His response is: "I hear what you say, but you're wrong. I'm right. I'm going to continue doing all the things you've just told me you hate, and guess what? I'm going to shove it down your throat even faster." https://t.co/3plj42vtzr

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) May 3, 2025

The Alba Party implodes as Alex Salmond's closest "telepathic confidante" Chris McEleny is ruthlessly EXPELLED FROM THE PARTY - so will Ash Regan now leave in protest?

This just goes to show that once a political party has a culture of arbitrary, summary execution, that culture doesn't really change - or not without huge difficulty.  You might look at Kenny MacAskill and think he's a likeable, mild-mannered sort of chap (and for what it's worth, that's my own personal experience of him), but once he identified Chris "Mad Dog" McEleny as a personal enemy, he proved just as ruthless and unscrupulous as McEleny himself had always been in dealing with his own personal enemies.  It's like learned behaviour - once the culture is there, you just don't know how else to behave, and you'd probably be astonished to learn that external observers think what you're doing is downright odd and are looking on in a state of bemusement and disbelief.

This might be a surprising thing for me to say, but I personally think this is yet another day of shame for the Alba Party.  It's not that I don't think Chris McEleny was guilty of gross misconduct - he absolutely was.  It's not that I don't think he deserved to be expelled - he absolutely did.  But the gross misconduct he should actually have been expelled for was as follows...

* His role in the blatant rigging of the 2023 Alba internal elections.  The best-documented part of that was his removal of Jacqui Bijster's name from the list of candidates for Ordinary Members of the NEC, even though she had been properly nominated and hadn't expressed any wish to withdraw.

* His cynical certification of countless Alba members as having "publicly resigned from the party", even though in many cases they had done no such thing.  This had the effect of bypassing the proper disciplinary process and insta-expelling them.

* His abuse of his role as General Secretary to get people he disliked expelled.  The most blatant example of this was the extreme pressure he put on the Disciplinary Committee to expel Colin Alexander, who had made an irreverent joke about him on Twitter.  He even lied to the committee and told us that Mr Alexander had expressed no wish to attend his disciplinary hearing, which was absolutely untrue.

But apparently, according to Alba, the above behaviour is all totally normal and fine.  The gross misconduct that McEleny has instead been expelled for is making a few mildly critical comments about Kenny MacAskill.  That tells you all you need to know about Alba - it's a Stalinist party that is sick to its core.

Since my own time on the Disciplinary Committee, it has been renamed the Conduct Committee, but as far as I know it hasn't yet been re-elected, so its membership is unlikely to have changed much, except possibly for the NEC appointments (I vaguely heard on the grapevine that Josh Robertson, aka "JoshBot 6000", may have stepped down as chair).  That means Chris Cullen, mired in his own corruption scandal as I outlined in the previous blogpost, is likely to have played a role in McEleny's expulsion, as is Jackie Reid, mum of Alba HQ's wonderbairn Robert Reid, and also Christina "of Salmond blood" Hendry, who is Reid's girlfriend.  During meetings of the committee I attended last year, Hendry, Cullen and Reid all strongly expressed their support for a Stalinist system in which all rank-and-file Alba members have a duty never to express personal views that the leadership disapprove of, except possibly behind closed doors and not necessarily even then.

The big question now is what Ash Regan will do.  She has gone out of her way to publicly associate herself with McEleny, and even went as far as adding him to her paid Holyrood staff while the disciplinary action against him was already underway.  It is hard to see how her position within Alba is now tenable.  If she does leave, MacAskill, Ahmed-Sheikh and the Corri Nostra will pay a heavy price for upholding the culture of Mafia-style vengeance and bloodletting within Alba, because they will quickly discover that without their only MSP, they don't really have a party at all.

I follow the Moskva

Down to Gorky Park

Listening to the wind of CHA-ANGE

An August summer night

Soldiers passing by

Listening to the wind of CHA-ANGE

Take me 

To the magic of the moment

On a glory night

Where the children of tomorrow dream away (dream away)

In the wind of CHANGE

Mmmmm

 

"And it's goodnight from him."

Alba's controversial Ayrshire councillor finally breaks his silence on the latest corruption scandal - but his boilerplate statement raises more questions than answers as he fails to provide clarity on any dealings or contact he may have had with disgraced former council chief Martin Dowey

A few days ago, I blogged about the mounting pressure on Chris Cullen, who is one of Alba's two local councillors due to having been elected as an SNP councillor before switching parties.  Cullen has become popularly known as "the Crossmaglen Columbo" due to his thick Armagh accent and his unintentional impersonation of Peter Falk's beloved TV character when he was pre-briefed to attempt a "Gotcha" on one of the victims of the McEleny Purges at a disciplinary hearing last year.

There have been increasing calls in recent days for Cullen to explain any dealings or contact he may have had with the disgraced former South Ayrshire Council leader, Martin Dowey of the Tories, who was forced to resign after a recording emerged of him promising multi-million pound contracts to his "pals".  It's thought by many that at the very least there must have been some sort of informal deal between Cullen (who owns a local joinery business) and Dowey, because around six months ago the ruling Tory group on the council randomly appointed Cullen as the chair of a key committee.  To state the bleedin' obvious, the Tories do not do favours to small pro-indy parties out of the kindness of their hearts, so the assumption is that Cullen must have agreed to do something in return - with one plausible possibility being that he privately committed himself to voting with the Tories on key council votes.

Extraordinarily, the councillor who was previously chair of the committee before the Tories replaced him with Cullen, asked recently for Dowey to name the members of the administration - with the clear implication being that he suspects that Cullen is now regarded as a full part of the administration, and that South Ayrshire is now run by a Tory-Alba coalition, but that this information is being kept secret from the public due to obvious 'presentational' difficulties.

I know many Alba members felt from the start that the apparent Tory-Alba deal was always unacceptable, but their patience has well and truly snapped now that the council administration is engulfed in the corruption scandal.  They want Cullen to break off the deal, and if he is not willing to do that, they at least want him to come clean on what the nature of the deal is, why he agreed to it, whether he is now effectively accepting the Tory whip, and whether Alba is getting anything at all out of it.  Is it really nothing more than the personal status and title Cullen gets from being a committee chair?

He has at long last broken his silence on the scandal in a newspaper interview, but in a classic deflection tactic that will be all too familiar to those of us who have dealt with him in Alba's internal structures, he hasn't commented on his own responsibility or involvement, but has instead attempted to self-righteously tone-police his fellow councillors, accusing them of "in-fighting over appointments" and "trading immature barbs across the chamber".  I'm afraid, Chris, that voters are actually far more interested  in the nature of those appointments and the grubby deals that lie behind them.

So why did he do it?  In my own personal opinion, based on my limited but unpleasant past experience of the man, I'd say it was sheer careerism.  As regular readers of this blog know, Cullen has a track record in Alba's internal politics of taking a "whatever it takes to get me the committee role" approach.  He abused his position on a working group reviewing the Alba constitution, and indeed his partner Shannon Donoghue's position on the same group, to quietly change the rules to guarantee himself an appointed position on Alba's ruling National Executive Committee (NEC).  He then stood for election (unsuccessfully) to two separate positions on the NEC, without bothering to mention to people that it didn't actually matter whether they voted for him or not, because he and Shannon had already "sorted it".  A man prepared to act as cynically as that in his own self-interest would not, I'd suggest, think twice about entering into a grubby backroom deal with the Tories just to bag himself a title as a committee chair.

Incidentally, if you live in the Ayr East ward and are 'lucky' enough to be represented by Cullen, you can catch up with his tireless work on your behalf at his official website, which was updated as recently as five years ago, when in chronological order he was within just one party of his current one.  There's also some copied-and-pasted information about local history - gripping stuff.

If Kemi Badenoch is replaced as a result of the Tory disaster in the local elections, would that work in favour of the Scottish independence movement?

Keir Starmer is undoubtedly in trouble as a result of Labour's local elections disaster, but of course there's one party leader who is now in even greater danger, and that person is Kemi Badenoch.  She's not going to easily brush off the all-time worst Tory showing in local elections, which saw her party slip to fourth place behind Reform, Labour and the Lib Dems.

I had a look at the latest betting to see if Robert Jenrick is still the favourite to succeed her, and indeed he is - but he's not an odds-on favourite.

Robert Jenrick 3.2

James Cleverly 5.7

Boris Johnson 8.8

Nigel Farage 13

Farage as fourth favourite is completely nuts.  Now that Reform have overtaken the Tories, there's no way on earth the Tories are going to co-opt Farage - at most he might become leader of a merged party, but presumably that would be irrelevant under the terms of the betting market, because he still wouldn't be leader of the Tory party.  Laying him is probably as close to free money as you'd ever get - although I'm not remotely tempted myself, because the stake might be tied up for a very long time and the rate of return would be poor.

James Cleverly is the name who concerns me the most, because he might improve Tory fortunes but without necessarily making Scottish independence any more likely.  By contrast, a return for Boris Johnson would be Christmas for the independence movement because he's as loathed in Scotland as Donald Trump (and for similar reasons).  And Robert Jenrick as leader would make it considerably more likely that Britain would leave the European Convention on Human Rights, because by that point you'd have both main opposition parties totally committed to leaving.  That in turn would, I think, bring independence closer, because it would be such a jolt to the system for many liberal No voters.

*  *  *

You can read my analysis of the local elections for The National HERE.

Apocalypse Now for Starmer, as Reform defeat Labour in the local elections by TEN percentage points, opening up the possibility that the opinion polls have actually been flattering Labour

As we awaited the annual ritual of the reveal of the BBC's projected national vote share from the English local elections, these were the benchmarks I was looking out for -

* Would Labour underperform Jeremy Corbyn's worst ever projected vote share of 27% from 2017?

* Would Reform match the recent opinion poll average by finishing ahead of Labour, in spite of the handicap of having no real tradition in local government?

* Was there any way Labour could suffer the traditional fate of an unpopular government by ending up with a substantial deficit in the projected vote, bearing in mind that opinion polls suggested the split in the right-wing vote might get them off the hook to some extent?

* Would there be any sign of Reform shaking off the Tories to become unambiguously the leading right-wing challenger to Labour?

All of the above points have been checked off in a way that I don't think anyone really anticipated.

BBC projected national vote shares:

Reform UK 30%

Labour 20%

Liberal Democrats 17%

Conservatives 15%

Greens 11%

20% is worse than Labour's post-election low in any opinion poll, and 30% is higher than Reform's all-time opinion poll high, so even bearing in mind that voting trends can be different in local elections, this has to open up the serious possibility that the opinion polls have been somehow getting it wrong by overstating Labour and understating Reform.  It's also hard to see how Reform could end up with double the Tory vote unless opinion polls had been underestimating the gap between those two parties.

The psychological impact of this will be immense, and in combination with the Runcorn by-election result may produce a snowball effect that could push Reform into a substantial poll lead over the coming months.  And as something approaching the worst-case scenario for Starmer, it could also bring the possibility of a change of Labour leader into play.

*. *. *

You can read my analysis of the local elections for The National HERE.

Analysis of the English local elections - and the tightest by-election result in modern history

Just a quick note to let you know I have a new analysis piece at The National about the English local elections results and also the Runcorn by-election, which broke all records as the closest by-election result in modern history, and thus brought back memories of Stephen Gethins' two-vote, multi-recount victory in North-East Fife in the 2017 general election (although naturally the English media forgot all about that, so were instead harking back to a different example from February 1974!).  You can read the article HERE.

SNP have staggering FOURTEEN POINT lead over Labour in latest Holyrood poll from Survation

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot voting intentions (Survation / Diffley Partnership):

SNP 36% (+2)

Labour 22% (-1)

Reform UK 14% (-3)

Conservatives 13% (+1)

Liberal Democrats 9% (+1)

Greens 5% (+1)

Alba 1% (-)

Regional list ballot:

SNP 28% (-1)

Labour 22% (+2)

Conservatives 16% (+3)

Reform UK 12% (-4)

Greens 10% (+2)

Liberal Democrats 9% (-)

Alba 2% (-1)

The setback for Reform UK in this poll may look surprising, but the previous Survation poll did stick out like a sort thumb as unusually favourable for Reform, so the new figures may just be a case of margin of error noise rectifying itself.

From memory, I think the previous Survation poll was the one for which the Diffley Partnership did a seats projection that raised a lot of eyebrows, because it had Alba somehow winning a seat despite being on only 3% of the list vote.  As far as I can see there's no seats projection attached to today's poll, but as Alba are only on 2% this time I can't believe that any projection model would have them winning any seats at all.  This is what the most popular online predictor suggests the poll would translate into - 

SNP 57, Labour 25, Conservatives 17, Reform UK 12, Greens 10, Liberal Democrats 8 

That would put the SNP and Greens in combination on 67 seats, slightly higher than the 65 seat target for an overall majority.  Admittedly that's still a bit close for comfort as far as retaining the pro-indy majority is concerned, but it wasn't that long ago that this kind of projection would have looked like dreamland territory.

Should Scotland be an independent country?

Yes 49%

No 51%

For my money, that's a pretty decent result on independence, because at least in recent times Survation haven't been particularly known as a Yes-friendly pollster.  And the data tables are really interesting, because (and this is not the norm) the turnout filter is flattering the No side.  Before likelihood to vote is taken into account, 418 respondents say they would vote Yes to independence and 419 say they would vote No - an almost perfect tie.

*  *  *

More details and analysis will follow soon, but in the meantime you can read my preview of the English local elections at The National.

Alba's latest shambles descends into farce as Josh Robertson directly contradicts the "vote SNP in the constituencies" strategy set out by his party leader Kenny MacAskill only NINE DAYS AGO

On Monday, I blogged about the extraordinary confusion that had been thrown up by Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh's angry denial that Alba will be asking people to vote SNP in the constituencies and Alba on the list in next year's Holyrood election.  That appeared to directly contradict Kenny MacAskill's repeated statements that Alba would be reverting to Alex Salmond's 2021 strategy, which was indeed to advise people to vote "SNP constituency, Alba list".  I wondered if perhaps we hadn't been given the whole picture, and whether this time Alba would be combining a list-only strategy with a destructive recommendation for a unionist/Reform vote in the constituencies, the latter of which is precisely what Alba's foul-mouthed spiritual godfather Stew Campbell is very unsubtly angling for at present.  

However, a couple of people later pointed out to me that Kenny MacAskill had already addressed that point in an article for The National published on 21st April, just nine days ago - 

"Ahead of the election, Alba will be building on the strategy our founder bequeathed us and which our conference overwhelmingly approved – contesting the list only while advising people to vote for other independence-supporting parties in the constituency. That will almost invariably be the SNP."

So that's extremely clear.  It's a slight adjustment from the 2021 strategy which called without caveat for an SNP constituency vote, and doubtless the Salmond Purists will be furious with MacAskill for mucking around with perfection by tinkering in even the smallest way with a tactic devised by an infallible strategic genius.  Nevertheless, it's a distinction without a difference, because as MacAskill himself spells out, Alba will be recommending an SNP constituency vote in almost all cases.  And for the avoidance of doubt, that would be a very sensible thing for them to do.

But, alas, the story doesn't end there, because John Cowie later challenged Josh Robertson (known to Alba members as "JoshBot 6000" for his boundless willingness to follow even the most squalid and morally dubious orders from the party leadership, and to do so in a soul-crushing monotone voice) on why Alba were reverting to urging an SNP constituency vote.  Extraordinarily, Josh followed Ahmed-Sheikh's example by flatly denying that Alba are doing that.

I’m not asking you to vote SNP. I’m asking you to vote for independence on your constituency and regional ballot.

— josh robertson (@JR4Indy) April 21, 2025

Mr Cowie then sent Josh the link to the article in which MacAskill says Alba will be "invariably" advising an SNP constituency vote, and Josh simply didn't reply, which is logical enough because any well-programmed bot (especially of the 6000 series) will temporarily shut down if it's given contradictory orders, and if there is no prime directive about which one should be given priority.  

With the best will in the world, and leaving aside metaphysical questions about what "voting for independence on the constituency and regional ballot" is actually supposed to mean, there is simply no way of reconciling MacAskill's statement that Alba will be "almost invariably" advising a vote for the SNP in the constituencies, and Josh's statement that "I'm not asking you to vote SNP".  They are directly contradictory.  So what on earth is going on here?  Without having an inside source it's impossible to be sure, but my instinct is that Ahmed-Sheikh's anger issues are rearing their ugly head yet again.  She may well have flown off the handle when she saw how explicit MacAskill had been about the strategy in his article, and is perhaps now demanding that the strategy should be "re-framed" or "reimagined" for public consumption.

But whatever the explanation, we plainly do need some clarity about what the strategy actually is, as of this week.  Perhaps Slanszh Media could set aside a slot in the next episode of their little-watched YouTube show Tas Is Talking to put the matter beyond dispute.  And if it turns out that the definitive strategy falls somewhat short of what MacAskill announced in The National, it will essentially confirm what so many people have pointed out - that while MacAskill may nominally 'lead' the Alba party, Ahmed-Sheikh is the party's owner.

From Liz With Love: Kendall's non-masterstroke puts Reform into their biggest post-election lead in a YouGov poll - and the SNP have a huge 15-point lead in the Scottish subsample

GB-wide voting intentions (28th April 2025):

Reform UK 26% (+1)

Labour 23% (-)

Conservatives 20% (-)

Liberal Democrats 15% (-1)

Greens 9% (-)

SNP 3% (-)

Plaid Cymru 1% (-)

Scottish subsample: SNP 35%, Labour 20%, Reform UK 17%, Liberal Democrats 12%, Greens 8%, Conservatives 8%

This means Labour remain stuck on their post-election low with YouGov of 23%, but are behind Reform by more than has previously been the case: since the general election all the previous Reform leads in YouGov polls have been either one point or two points.  However, technically a three-point lead is not an all-time best for Reform, who are a legal continuation of the Brexit Party, which had a bigger lead with YouGov during their brief purple patch of mid-2019.

This week's Scottish subsample result looks a bit more realistic than last week's, which had Labour nine points behind Reform.  But what does remain constant is the very poor Tory showing, and I'm wondering if that might be significant.  Are the Tories suffering from the Reform surge even more in Scotland than they are elsewhere?  Certainly there have been a string of atrocious by-election results for the Scottish Tories in recent months.

Canada and the narcissism of small differences

I stayed up for a few hours last night watching the YouTube stream of CBC's live coverage of the Canadian election results, and as on previous occasions, I just could not wrap my head around this concept the Canadian broadcasters insist on adhering to of "projecting a Liberal minority government" or "projecting a Conservative minority government".  It's fine to project that one particular party is going to form a majority government, because that's a concrete election outcome, but if a minority government is formed, that will always be partly as a result of decisions made after an election.

CBC almost came a cropper in 2008 when they "projected a Conservative minority government", and the Liberal Party then proceeded to sign a coalition deal with the New Democrats and a confidence-and-supply deal with the Bloc Québécois.  The deal then fell apart after the incumbent Tory Prime Minister did a Boris Johnson by proroguing parliament to avoid a vote of no confidence (and unlike Johnson he actually got away with the tactic), but nevertheless you'd think CBC might have learned from that episode.  Apparently not.

The other thing that got on my nerves last night was the way the setback for the Bloc Québécois was reported.  Before the Quebec results came in, the main CBC anchor actually made a number of quite reasonable points about how different provincial Quebec politics are, with the Bloc's sister party (the PQ) still leading polls for next year's provincial election.  She also pointed out that the Bloc are historically resilient and wouldn't be going anywhere even if they lost a few seats.  But as soon as the results appeared, which as far as I can see were bang in line with the pre-election polls with the Bloc suffering moderate but not catastrophic losses, it was suddenly like she was reporting on a Gallic apocalypse.  Every time the Bloc were even mentioned in passing, she went out of her way to say "OH MY GAAAD!  THE BLOC ARE GOING TO BE SO DEVASTATED BY THIS!". It was becoming almost comical.

At least during the hours I was watching, there was no Bloc representative in the studio, whereas the other three main parties were handsomely represented.  That even allowed the Liberal spokesman to utter words he should never have been able to: "all three of us here will be united in our relief that these results are good for those of us who want to keep the country together".  Maybe CBC would argue that the vast majority of Bloc supporters would have been watching their own French language coverage instead, but that's not really the point, is it?  It still leaves English-speaking viewers with a distorted and partial view of their own country's politics.

This will be a familiar pattern to anyone who watched the BBC's UK-wide coverage of last year's general election, which astoundingly managed to cover the SNP's disappointing results without hearing from a single SNP representative for at least the first seven hours or so.  Alex Salmond of Alba was actually interviewed before any SNP representative, probably because he made sure he was in London for the night - but that really shouldn't be the criteria.

By the way, isn't it a rather neat paradox that a Canadian election has just been decided partly on the issue of "sovereignty" and "independence from the US"?  English speaking Canadians have on the whole always been dismissive of any notion of Quebec wanting sovereignty or independence, and yet they culturally have more in common with the US than they do with Quebec.  Does not wanting to be ruled by the US and Donald Trump make them "narrow-minded separatists"?  Perhaps they're belatedly learning not to be quite so dismissive of the "narcissism of small differences" that the former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff used to sneer about.

Slanszh Meeja go ballistic, Tas is quite atrocious

John Cowie on Twitter: "Asking pertinent questions at the Craig Murray talk and Tasmina went ballistic."
😂

— John Cowie 'Facts are chiels that winna ding' (@joco2014) April 27, 2025

Craig Murray talk.

Tasmina and husband turned up and sat right at the front.
Not happy bunnies

— John Cowie 'Facts are chiels that winna ding' (@joco2014) April 27, 2025

So Tasmina is against the SNP 1 ALBA 2 policy ?

— Denise Findlay 💚🤍💜 (@gracebrod1e) April 27, 2025

She hotly denied it was ALBA policy Denise. Very angry & indignant. Accusing me of not being for independence & causing division.

The ALBA Failed Clique find it impossible to admit that Alba's incomprehensible 'strategy' is SNP1/ALBA2 ad nauseum.
It's illogical & sign of failure

— John Cowie 'Facts are chiels that winna ding' (@joco2014) April 27, 2025

Now naturally I strongly disagree with the main point John Cowie is making here.  Leaving aside the usual highly misleading shorthand about "1 and 2" (there are no numbers involved in the Holyrood voting system), it would obviously be extremely sensible for Alba to get behind an SNP constituency vote at next year's election.  That's what they did in 2021 (their Party Election Broadcast even displayed a graphic of a cross marked in the SNP box on the constituency ballot), and their real mistake was in ever moving away from that.

But there are two issues about this incident.  Firstly, it's yet another demonstration of the contemptuous and often downright sinister treatment of Alba members by the party's unelected Chair, Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, who everyone knows has total dictatorial control of the party (with an elected "leader" there mainly as window-dressing).  She is utterly unable to cope with any interaction with party members that is not of the "how we adore you, our queen" variety.  

John Cowie can doubtless look forward to a tap on the shoulder from the Enforcement Team in the near future.  But remember, Alba is a "member-led party" (no sniggering at the back).

Secondly, there's the confusion the incident causes over Alba's strategy for next year's election, which we had been assured would be a "list-only" strategy.  Technically, it could be argued that Ahmed-Sheikh did not contradict that, because it's possible for Alba to stand only on the list while not urging their supporters to vote SNP on the constituency ballot.  But the problem is that we've been repeatedly told that the reason for the list-only strategy is that it's a reversion to what Alex Salmond did in 2021, and in the Alex Salmond Memorial Party it's important to walk in Salmond Footsteps at all times.  We know that actively supporting an SNP constituency vote was an indispensable part of Salmond's strategy in 2021.

Clearly some clarification is now required -

1) Is the list-only strategy still in place?

2) Will Alba be recommending an SNP constituency vote or not?

3) If not, why are you deviating from Alex Salmond's 2021 strategy?  Surely you're not saying an infallible strategic genius got it wrong?

4) If you're not going to recommend an SNP constituency vote, will you at least be recommending that Alba supporters vote for a pro-independence party?  Or will you be doing a Stuart Campbell and steering them towards unionist parties, including Reform?  Surely that would be the end for Alba if you go down that road?

*. *. *

Meanwhile, pressure is mounting this morning on Alba councillor Chris Cullen (dubbed "the Crossmaglen Columbo") after a recording emerged of the Tory leader of South Ayrshire Council, Martin Dowey, promising multi-million-pound contracts to his "pals".  Cullen is the owner of a local joinery business and is known to have controversial ties to Dowey and the ruling Tory group on the council.  He was alleged to have entered into an informal deal with the Tories (often referred to as "that grubby Tory-Alba deal") that led to him replacing a Labour councillor as chair of a key committee around six months ago.

At this time there is no hard evidence to suggest that Cullen is one of the "pals" Dowey promised a contract to, or that Cullen's partner Shannon Donoghue, or his future mother-in-law Corri Wilson (Alba's new "Director of Operations") have benefitted financially.  But questions are quite rightly being asked about what Cullen knew and when.

Keir Starmer is a hypocrite and a coward

The Scottish Government have been criticised in some quarters for "hiding behind the Supreme Court ruling" on gender ideology, but actually they have a fairly watertight excuse for behaving in the way that they are.  They have zero power to overturn or amend the Equality Act or to overrule the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Act, and their own self-ID legislation has been vetoed by London at the stroke of a pen, so it's perfectly reasonable for them to say that all they can do is operate within the very tight constraints that others have chosen for them.

But the situation is totally different for the UK Labour Government.  In fact it's the complete opposite.  As I understand it, the Supreme Court ruling had nothing whatever to do with the European Convention on Human Rights, or any other international treaty obligation, or any UK constitutional principle that is outwith the London government's control.  It was purely and simply the court's interpretation of the textual meaning of an ordinary piece of domestic legislation passed by Gordon Brown's majority Labour government in 2010.  Lord Hodge made clear that the ruling was based on a logical deduction of what the legislature (or to all intents and purposes the Labour majority within it) must have intended when it passed the law.  Effectively the court was explaining what the Labour Party's own definition of a woman is, or at least what it was fifteen years ago.

If the Labour party of today is unhappy with that definition, the Supreme Court ruling is not even a trivial obstacle for them in putting it right.  All they would have to do is use their current parliamentary majority to repeal or amend the Equality Act and legislate in crystal clear language for a new trans-inclusive definition of a woman.   If they did, For Women Scotland could go back to the Supreme Court but they would get completely the opposite result from before.  Exactly the same judges would say that equalities legislation gives trans women exactly the same rights as other women.  And that is not an exaggeration.  That is literally true, because the courts can only interpret laws in cases of ambiguity.  It is for MPs to decide what those laws say, and to remove all ambiguity if they so choose.

Now, I for one am glad that Labour are not going down that road.  I think the definition of a woman that has been arrived at is the sensible and correct one and it should be left alone.  But what I have no respect for is the Hollywood production Starmer has put on to try to convince everyone that he has no agency in this matter.  It's as if he's just been handed tablets of stone from Our Lord Jesus Christ and has a duty to obey The Truth, which is an absolute that no mere mortal can defy or resist.  That's a bit different from the reality, which is that he just doesn't much fancy amending a dodgily-drafted Gordon Brown / Harriet Harman law from a decade and a half ago.

The trans activists who Starmer led up the garden path have got every right to be furious with him, because he's simply too much of a moral coward to admit that he's changed his mind about the pro-trans comments he made a few years ago - or more likely that he never believed those comments in the first place, and only made them because he naively thought at the time they would prove to be net vote-winners.

Scotland's escape from the prison of the UK must be 100% non-violent - but it will be a prison-break just the same

Peter Hitchens has gone up in my estimation of late due to him leading the charge for the unsafe conviction of Lucy Letby to be revisited as soon as possible, but it's strangely reassuring to be reminded that he's still a hard-right Brit Nat extremist in other respects.  He's written a piece about the hypocrisy of those who oppose the principle of a "land for peace" deal in Ukraine, and it actually has a lot to commend it, but just look at this segment about Northern Ireland - 

"But the closest to home of all these events is the hardest to see. Thanks to brilliant Blairite spin-doctoring then and since, much of Britain has yet to realise that the United Kingdom surrendered to the Provisional IRA at the fabled ‘Good Friday Agreement’ in Belfast in 1998...The 1998 agreement is clear. All it will take is a referendum, and the six counties of Northern Ireland will become part of the Irish Republic. This is what our government signed, though Ukrainians might be struck by the way our cave-in followed strong pressure from the US, which abruptly dropped its supposed close ally.  The defeated must do as they are told..."

"All" it will take is a referendum?  Well, what more should it take?  Are we to assume that the principle the British government was defending in the war against the IRA was that Northern Ireland must remain part of the UK regardless of whether its people want to or not?  I don't remember that being mentioned very much at the time.  And are we to assume that "defeat to the IRA" looked like the introduction of democracy, or at least of the most fundamental democratic principle of all?  Does Hitchens actually intend to frame the IRA as pro-democracy freedom fighters, and Britain's 30-year military campaign against the IRA as being about defending a colonial possession against democracy?

This of course has implications for Scotland, because if you take it to its logical conclusion, it means that for your vote to count in a British territorial possession like Northern Ireland, Wales or Scotland, you first have to defeat the British government militarily.  Now, to be clear, if our independence movement ever became violent, which it never, ever will, I would walk away from it.  I would rather live under London rule indefinitely than be associated in even the remotest way with IRA-type violence, and thankfully I will never be faced with that dilemma.  But if a Hitchens-type mindset is prevalent in the British establishment, and it does appear to be (the pretence that the UK is anything other than a prison has fallen away in recent years), we need to start thinking about the non-violent ways in which we are going to stop playing by London's rules and bring matters to a head.

My concern is that John Swinney (assuming that the cynics who say he is a devolutionist are wrong) has this notion in his head that if we can just achieve a very large supermajority for independence, Britain will eventually accept it, as they did with devolution.  But the key difference is that one of the two main London parties was actually pro-devolution, and simply delivered its own devolution policy when elected to government.  That will never happen with independence.  Labour and the Tories (and Reform) will always be opposed to it, so we'll have to find another way of breaking the logjam, no matter how high support for Yes goes.  Remember that the Tory government of 1979-97 had no problem whatsoever continuing to resist devolution even when support for it in opinion polls reached 70-80%.

So we'll have to think about tactics like civil disobedience, non-cooperation between the Scottish Government and the UK Government, and parliamentary disruption at Westminster (although the latter will be a lot more effective if and when the SNP get their Westminster majority back).

And if the SNP leadership really are saying that 50% + 1 is no longer enough for independence, then I'm afraid there's no use being squeamish about it.  In my opinion the only way a supermajority for independence is even feasible is if a massive disruptive event occurs, and the only such event I can see potentially on the horizon is a Nigel Farage premiership.