What exactly is "real Yes" when it's at home?

I still intend to take pre-moderation back off at some point, because it's a right pain in the neck for all of us, but at the moment it's not possible because the levels of abuse in some of the submitted comments is just too high - probably because the Stew Fan Club haven't had time to de-frenzy themselves quite yet.  But at least it means that I don't have to constantly deal with the regular allegations that I am an "enemy of independence" because I do not support "real Yes alternatives".

What in God's name is a "real Yes alternative" when it's at home?  It seems to be code for "any pro-independence party that is not the SNP", ie. the idea is that the SNP is no longer 'really' a Yes party, thus giving Liberate Scotland a valid excuse for splitting the Yes vote on the constituency ballot next year, etc, etc.  Well, I can tell you this: I've been to all but one of the local SNP branch meetings since rejoining the party in mid-January.  At first I wasn't quite sure what to expect, because if you listen to some people you'd think the SNP have been completely taken over at every level by identity politics entryists, but that hasn't been my experience at all.  Pretty much everyone at the meetings seems to have joined the party because of independence.  They also care about social justice issues, and some talk about subjects they have particular professional expertise about, but independence is the number one priority for one and all.  

So a question: how can a party composed of literally tens of thousands of genuine independence supporters not be a "real Yes" party?  I suppose the argument might be that there's a disconnect between the "real Yes" members and a "fake Yes" leadership, but even if that was the case, it's surely a statement of the obvious that the party containing the overwhelming majority of the independence movement has the potential to transform itself into a vehicle for independence.  If all else fails, one way that could happen is via the next SNP leadership election, whenever it comes up.

As for the much smaller parties that have been designated as "real Yes", it's a matter of record that I was not only supportive of Alba, I was in fact a card-carrying member of the party for well over three years.  Towards the end I was not at all happy with Alba's direction of travel and I thought the scale of the party's intervention in a first-past-the-post general election was a dreadful error.  But I took the view that this in not America, and in this country you don't (to misquote Katy Perry) "change parties like a girl changes clothes".  If you join a party, you've made a commitment, and if that party goes astray, you don't walk away unless there's a very good reason - you instead roll up your sleeves and try to fix the problems, or at the very least try to push for change.  That's exactly what I did - I got stuck in, stood in the Alba internal elections, got elected to several committees, and did my absolute level best to insist on due process in the Disciplinary Committee and to give the party a real internal democracy via the Constitution Review Group.  All I got for my efforts was to be unceremoniously thrown out of the party on gibberish trumped-up charges that no speaker of any known version of the English language has been able to make head nor tail of.  So it's redundant and bordering on offensive to say with a sense of entitlement that I am not living up to some kind of 'duty' to support the Alba Party.  The Alba Party made abundantly clear that it did not want my support, and it sent exactly the same message to countless other good independence supporters.  

There are two things that Alba is definitely not and never has been.  It is not a participative "member-led" party, and it is not a vehicle for delivering independence.  It is simply a fan club set up to give status, funding and a platform to a small and exceedingly nasty clique centred around Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh.  If you're an independence supporter, do not waste a further second of your time on Alba.  It's never going to deliver what you want.  It's never going to deliver anything worth having.

As for Liberate Scotland, they've disqualified themselves from the off by bringing the nativist party Sovereignty into the fold, complete with far-right policies on withholding citizenship rights from "non-Scots" on some sort of ill-defined ethnicity criteria, a total ban on "economic migration", and withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights.  I don't buy the argument that you shouldn't judge people by the company they keep, because it seems highly unlikely that Barrhead Boy would ever have been so comfortable with an electoral pact with Sovereignty unless he agreed with a fair number of their dodgier policies.  Even during his Alba days, one of his hobby-horses was withdrawing voting rights from English people living in Scotland. When I disagreed with him publicly about that, Alex Salmond phoned me up to say he couldn't have two members of "his NEC" in open conflict with each other (funny that - I thought the NEC was an elected body representing Alba members, but apparently not), but he stressed that he vehemently disagreed with Barrhead Boy about narrowing the franchise and asked me to trust him to "sort it out quietly" in some sort of unspecified way.  Perhaps in a roundabout sense he actually kept his word on that, judging by the fact that the hard core of blood and soil nutters now seem to be in Liberate Scotland rather than Alba.

So if you want to lecture people on the need to support a credible pro-independence alternative to the SNP, first of all you'd have to actually create such an entity, because at the moment it simply doesn't exist.

*  *  *

The running total in the Scot Goes Pop 2025 fundraiser currently stands at £3000, meaning it is 44% of the way towards the target figure of £6800.  If you'd like to help the blog keep going, donations by card are welcome HERE, or alternatively you can cut out fees altogether (depending on which option you select from the menu) by making a direct donation via PayPal.  My PayPal email address is:  jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Will Corbyn and Sultana be spoilers for the SNP, or will they pave the way to the Promised Land?

My attitude to the prospect of a new Corbyn-led or Corbyn-founded or Corbyn-backed party of the left has been "I'll believe it when I see it", and in a strange way that hasn't changed as a result of the announcements of the last couple of days, which seem to have been more about individuals jostling for position before the launch of a party rather than getting on with the actual business of setting a party up.  However, presumably the talk has gone sufficiently far by this stage that some sort of new party, and one that will have a parliamentary presence, is highly likely to emerge in some form.  The only thing that might stop it would be if Keir Starmer is forced out of office in the near future and replaced by someone from the soft left, who then seeks reconciliation with the Corbynites.

We sometimes fall into the trap of thinking of events like this potential breakaway as taking place in another country and as being only of indirect interest to Scotland.  But in fact there was an opinion poll a couple of weeks ago that suggested the SNP was one of three parties that would suffer if a Corbyn-led party is set up, with the others being Labour and the Greens.

Hypothetical voting intentions if a Corbyn-led "populist" left party is formed (More In Common):

Reform UK 27% (-)

Labour 20% (-3)

Conservatives 20% (-)

Liberal Democrats 14% (-)

Corbyn Party 10% (n/a)

Greens 5% (-4)

SNP 2% (-1)

In this case the percentage changes are calculated from the standard voting intentions numbers in the same poll.  Now, to put it in perspective, the SNP vote in the Scottish subsample only drops from 28% to 24%, and that's based on a sample of only a couple of hundred respondents.  So the apparent appeal of Corbyn to SNP voters may just be statistical noise.  On the other hand, the Corbyn party is on 18% in the Scottish subsample, and it's hard to believe that a party of the left could perform anything like that well in Scotland without harming the SNP to at least some extent.

I'm reminded of walking around Glasgow in the days leading up to the 2017 general election and overhearing people spontaneously talking about how excited they were about Corbyn and how he was persuading them to turn back to Labour.  Those were almost certainly people who had voted SNP in 2015 and Yes in 2014.  So we'd be naive not to think that the new party could have broad appeal in Scotland, although the flipside of the coin is that Labour performed extremely poorly in Scotland under Corbyn in the 2016 Holyrood election and the 2019 general election.  Perhaps it was only when he had momentum in England that Scots thought he was worth taking a look at.

There was a write-up of the poll in the New Statesman with a very odd headline dismissing Corbyn as a "phantom" menace.  That didn't tally up with the contents of the article, and it certainly didn't tally up with the actual results of the poll, which suggest Corbyn would take one-third of the combined Labour/new party vote.  That makes him a figure of considerable significance, not the fringe irrelevance that London establishment folk like to portray him as.  And taking three percentage points off Labour could easily be enough to change the outcome of the next general election.

But to actually win or prosper in that general election, rather than to be just a disruptor, Corbyn will need more than 10% of the vote.  And there's one obvious way he might get it, which is by going into an electoral pact with the Greens.  Such an alliance could be greater than the sum of its parts, and might just be strong enough to overtake Labour in some polls during this parliament.  That would be a huge psychological moment, and would be difficult for centrists within the Labour party to wrap their heads around.  There's some speculation that Zack Polanski might be open to a pact if he becomes Green leader, although whether he'd be able to sell it to his party is another matter.  If he can't, the Greens and the new party might cancel each other out and leave the left in an even worse position than they currently find themselves, although it's interesting that the poll implies Corbyn could take votes away from Labour that the Greens currently can't seem to reach.

As Donald Rumsfeld might put it, here are some of the other 'known unknowns' about the new party, ie. 'things that we know that we do not know' - 

* Will other Labour MPs, with or without the whip, cross the floor and throw in their lot with Corbyn and Sultana?  It's hard to imagine Corbyn and his former Shadow Chancellor being in different parties from each other, but it might well work out that way due to John McDonnell's cultural loyalty to Labour.  But I speculated a few weeks ago that if there was even the slimmest of slim chances of an early general election before 2028, it would probably depend upon the partial disintegration of the Parliamentary Labour Party, and even a modest number of MP defections to the Corbyn party could conceivably end up looking like the first step in that process of disintegration (although it would almost certainly have to eventually involve right-wing Labour MPs searching for a very different sort of alternative political home, maybe even in Reform UK).

* Will George Galloway and the Workers Party want to join the new Corbyn project?  And perhaps more to the point, will the people around Corbyn want Galloway now that he seems to have lost the plot completely and started chasing the openly racist vote?  He always claimed he was talking about the Iraqi people, and not Saddam Hussein, when he "saluted your indefatigability", but he didn't mention at the time that he wanted the UK borders closed to all indefatigable people without pale skin.

* If Zarah Sultana foresees the new party having a conventional leadership structure with herself (or herself and Corbyn) at the top of that structure, will all the Independence Alliance MPs still be happy to join up?  They've got very used to having full parity of esteem with Corbyn in their current set-up.

* Is it possible that the new party could take a slightly more enlightened stance on Scottish independence than most London parties do?  Outright support for independence is far too much to hope for, clearly, but is there a chance of a neutral position, and perhaps no closing of the door on a referendum?  Corbyn would be personally sympathetic to at least being neutral, I suspect.  As Labour leader he indulged in plenty of Nat-bashing, and even trotted out the hoary old "you can't eat flags" line, but I suspect that was one of the compromises he felt he had to make (along with campaigning for Remain) to shore up his position.  My guess is that a London party will always revert to type and go Brit Nat.  But who knows - a Corbyn/Polanski alliance open to an indyref and polling at 15-20% might just be the sort of black swan event that unexpectedly opens the door for independence.

Incidentally, I was on Facebook last night and I saw that a friend of the family had changed his profile picture to a photo of Zarah Sultana, overlaid with a quote from her Twitter announcement yesterday.  She really has become a folk hero for a lot of people in a very short period of time, and the new party will be blessed to have her as an alternative figurehead if Corbyn, who has always seemed to be in two minds about whether he wants to be a party leader again, opts for a lesser role.  I've got to be honest, I'm a big fan of hers too, and if I was a voter in England I'm pretty sure I'd be thinking this is the most exciting thing to happen in politics for years.  Give me a Sultana over a Swinson any day of the week.

*  *  *

The running total in the Scot Goes Pop 2025 fundraiser currently stands at £3000, meaning it is 44% of the way towards the target figure of £6800.  If you'd like to help the blog keep going, donations by card are welcome HERE, or alternatively you can cut out fees altogether (depending on which option you select from the menu) by making a direct donation via PayPal.  My PayPal email address is:  jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Was Rachel Reeves weeping for the failure of her political project, or for the shame of knowing it was never worth fighting for in the first place?

It now appears (although we'll have to wait for people's memoirs to know for sure) that Rachel Reeves' tears at PMQs yesterday may have been triggered by something that loveable ol' Lindsay Hoyle said to her.  But when it seemed more likely that she was weeping for the political failure of both herself and the Labour government, and in particular for the gutting of the welfare reform legislation, I couldn't help but think it perfectly summed up the tragedy of the modern Labour party.  To try to transform society for the better, and to fail, as many progressive politicians have done in the past, would be something to take immense pride in.  But to be so bereft because you betrayed everything your party once was by trying to make life worse for the most vulnerable people, and were thwarted, speaks to a kind of hollowing out of the British left's soul, which will leave Reeves' generation of Labour ministers with a sense of total emptiness when they reach the end of their careers.  What they fought for wasn't worth having and they didn't get it anyway.  I suppose the flipside is that the flame of Labour values does continue to burn, albeit as no more than a dull flicker, among the wider PLP - but unfortunately the only positive practical effect of electing a Labour majority to parliament is that it might sometimes be able to resist the right-wing excesses of the very Labour government that it pointlessly sustains in office.

There was an extraordinary quote on Tuesday from an anonymous Labour loyalist, attacking the welfare rebels: "What did they think the job was? They all think they're JFK because they delivered some leaflets while Morgan McSweeney won them the election."  If the job description of Labour MPs has been revised from creating a fairer society to total unthinking loyalty to the unelected Morgan McSweeney, then I think it's high time this modern day JFK was subjected to some proper public accountability, because I'm not sure I've ever even heard the sound of his voice.  I presume he still has a southern Irish accent, which would be rather jarring given what he's come to represent.  On the face of it, he strikes me as a total political dud, for three reasons -

* He forced Labour to abandon all of its values on the premise that doing so would increase the party's popularity, but ended up with roughly the same share of the vote that Jeremy Corbyn took in 2019, and a significantly lower share of the vote than Corbyn took in 2017.

* His strategic advice has led to the Starmer government's popularity plummetting further and faster than any other newly elected government in British history.

* He purged the PLP as best he could of all free thinkers and replaced them with drones to ensure that his right-wing programme would face no substantive resistance, and yet the Starmer administration with its landslide majority has still ended up functioning like a minority government that cannot carry its business without negotiations and massive concessions.

Now that really is political failure.  To misquote Senator Lloyd Bentson: "Morgan, you're no Jack Kennedy...although let's hear what your voice sounds like just to be sure."

Ipsos poll confirms that the end is nigh for Alba

I didn't get around to giving you the party political voting intentions numbers from the Ipsos poll yesterday, so here they are...

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot:

SNP 34%

Labour 23%

Reform UK 14%

Conservatives 10%

Liberal Democrats 9%

Greens 9%

Alba 1%

Scottish Parliament list ballot:

SNP 26%

Labour 22%

Reform UK 16%

Greens 15%

Conservatives 10%

Liberal Democrats 8%

Alba 2%

Scottish voting intentions for next UK general election:

SNP 31%

Labour 22%

Reform UK 16%

Conservatives 10%

Greens 10%

Liberal Democrats 9%

Alba 1%

If the Alba vote shares are accurate, and I don't particularly doubt that they are likely to be reasonably accurate, Alba have made no progress at all since 2021 when they were light-years short of winning any seats.  One of the several dishonest points in Jim McEleny's email to party members after resigning as convener of Alba's Inverclyde branch was that he tried to make out that things had fallen apart since the good old days when his son/brother (I think it's son but I'd better cover all the options) was General Secretary - ie. that opinion polls showed the party on course for seats back then but no longer do.  In fact there has been no change in the polls at all - Alba have always been on course for zero seats and they remain on course for zero seats.  To be blunt, Alba members were cynically deceived by Chris McEleny with his ridiculous "poll after poll" catchphrase - it was a downright lie that Alba were ever on course for seats, and yet it was obvious from social media that many Alba members were successfully duped.

This is why independence supporters must ignore the siren voices, such as the controversial "Stew" blogger, which are trying to convince them to throw their list votes away on fringe parties that cannot in the real world win any list seats.  Given how evenly spread their vote is, Alba would need to at least double their support to even have an outside chance of nicking a seat somewhere.  If anyone were to say "oh of course the SNP can achieve objective X or Y, all they need to do is double their vote", Stew would be the first to mock the naivety and the dishonesty of that position - so why it should supposedly be any different with Alba or with the wilder fringe elements represented by Liberate Scotland is a complete mystery.  There are only two pro-independence parties capable of winning list seats, namely the SNP and the Greens, and frankly the task facing anyone who is serious about electing a pro-indy majority at Holyrood next year is to choose between those two parties.  Voting for anyone else increases the chances of a unionist majority without a shadow of doubt.

Incidentally, I heard an extraordinary story last week about a senior figure within Alba, possibly even one 'of Salmond blood', trying to get the police involved in her vendetta against a female NEC colleague who recently left the party.  The story was so garbled that it was hard to fully make sense of, but there's a real whiff of 'the last days in the bunker' about Alba at the moment.  NEC or other committee members who are the subject of the leadership's paranoid suspicions about "treachery" should probably just count themselves lucky if they escape the firing squad.

Stew was gloating yesterday about John Swinney's net approval rating of -17.  It's true that's unusually low by the standards of other recent polls, but nevertheless it still leaves Mr Swinney with slightly better ratings than Mr Sarwar.  There was speculation at the Holyrood Sources event last week that Labour's position might improve once voters turn their attention away from Westminster and towards Holyrood, just as there was a big swing towards the SNP in 2011 once voters actually remembered it was a Holyrood election.  But that swing in 2011 was driven by two factors - a) the fact that Alex Salmond was regarded as a far more credible leader than Iain Gray, and b) the fact that the SNP were more trusted than Labour to stand up for Scotland.  Well, in the new Ipsos poll, John Swinney is slightly more popular than Anas Sarwar, and the SNP are more trusted than Labour to stand up for Scottish interests, by a margin of 37% to 12%.  If the hypothetical Labour fightback is going to happen, what exactly will it be built on?

More analysis of the Ipsos poll showing a pro-independence majority

Just a quick note to let you know that I have an analysis piece at The National about the new Ipsos poll, which shows Yes in the lead by 52% to 48%, and a substantial SNP lead in both Westminster and Holyrood voting intentions.  You can read the article HERE.

Ipsos abandon a decades-long tradition of phone polling in Scotland - but continue to show a Yes lead on the independence question

As you'll remember from a few days ago, there was a GB-wide poll from Ipsos which used a new methodology.  Ipsos announced they were moving away from telephone polling in favour of using an online panel which had been recruited offline (making it significantly different from most online polling panels).  I wondered at the time whether there would be a similar methodological change in the next poll in the long-running Ipsos series for STV, which has always previously been conducted by phone, and which in recent years has produced much better results for Yes on the independence question than most online firms.  It didn't take long to find out - a new Ipsos / STV poll was released today, and it has indeed switched to online fieldwork, but crucially it still shows a Yes lead.

Should Scotland be an independent country? (Ipsos / STV News, 12th-18th June 2025)

Yes 52% (+1)

No 48% (-1)

More details and analysis to follow...

A question for Mandy Rhodes: who has killed the most women over the last year, Iran or Israel?

I saw a furious response on Twitter to a Mandy Rhodes article about the Israeli assault on Iran, and having taken a look I can understand where her detractor is coming from.  Ms Rhodes seems to have heartily embraced the prevailing London media narrative of "when Israel is committing a genocide, the priority is clear - we must denounce left-wing activism at Glastonbury".  Specifically she thinks activists have no right to champion Iran over Israel-Trump, given Iran's appalling human rights record.  She cites the high number of executions in Iran, and in particular the number of executions of women - although oddly the main thing she succeeds in doing is demonstrating that the number of women executed is only a very small percentage of the overall number of executions in Iran.  As in most countries with the death penalty, the people most affected, to a vastly disproportionate degree, are men - and to be clear, that does not make it any the more excusable.

One thing that can be said to Israel's credit is that it is 'abolitionist in practice' on the death penalty - it has only executed two people in its history, and the last one was Adolf Eichmann well over half a century ago.  But how much of a virtue is that in the real world, when Israel's allies allow it to commit extra-judicial killings on an industrial scale with absolute impunity?  Who has killed the most people over the last year - Iran or Israel?  Who has killed the most women over the last year - Iran or Israel?  Who has killed the most children over the last year - Iran or Israel?  It's not even a contest.

The US, by contrast, is very much on the same page as Iran in its enthusiastic application of the death penalty against both men and women.  In fact, the three countries with the highest number of verified executions in 2023 were Iran, Saudi Arabia and the US.  The list would undoubtedly be topped by China if the number of executions there wasn't kept secret, but nevertheless the US is almost certain to be in the top seven or so.  Donald Trump has of course lifted the moratorium on the use of the federal death penalty.  If Mandy Rhodes thinks a country's retention of capital punishment means it can never be actively supported in military conflicts regardless of any other circumstances, I trust we'll find that she's been morally consistent over the years by refraining from showing any support for military action taken by the US in the aftermath of 9/11, for example.

A key point that left-wing activists who have expressed sympathy for Iran in recent weeks would make is that Iran was the victim of unprovoked aggression from Israel, and indeed aggression motivated by a desperate wish to distract the world's attention from the genocide in Gaza - a tactic of breathtaking cynicism that Ms Rhodes seems only too keen to reward Netanyahu for.  If a country's poor human rights record means that the normal sympathies can't be extended to it when it is the victim of unprovoked aggression, I trust we'll find Ms Rhodes consistently applied the same principle immediately after the Hamas attacks of 7th October 2023, and refused to express any sympathy for Israel due to its brutal occupation of Gaza and the West Bank since 1967.

As for any suggestion that the Israeli and US bombing of Iran can be justified as a pre-emptive strike against Iran's nuclear programme, don't make me laugh.  Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.  It does not possess nuclear weapons and according to America's own intelligence assessment of only a few weeks ago, it was not seeking to acquire nuclear weapons.  By contrast, Israel is one of a tiny number of countries to have refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and it has possessed nuclear weapons for decades.  If belligerent Middle Eastern countries possessing nuclear weapons is deemed to be a problem, the first step towards a solution is pretty obvious - Israel must be disarmed at all costs.

A gentle hint to the non-Sovereignty contingent within Liberate Scotland: the tactic of "slinging a deefie" at any questions about the electoral pact with a far-right nativist party is not going to work for a whole year, and especially not when the mainstream media start asking the questions

As I understand it, Liberate Scotland view the SNP as an anti-independence party, hence the decision to split the vote on the constituency ballot. Until they break out of that mindset (and I doubt if they will) it can only be a destructive exercise.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) June 29, 2025

Who is going to provide the credible plan?

— eva comrie (@mickbrick54) June 29, 2025

Certainly not Liberate Scotland. I'm astonished that you're standing for an alliance that includes a nativist party like Sovereignty. You were Alba's Equalities Convener - surely the most fundamental equality of all is equal citizenship rights?

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) June 29, 2025

Diversion James. It doesn’t work with me. Who’s providing the credible plan? #IndependenceNothingLess. BTW you don’t need to remind me of the content of my own CV.

— eva comrie (@mickbrick54) June 29, 2025

Great, you remember. So what the hell are you doing in alliance with Sovereignty? Do you have any red line? Would you go into alliance with the BNP if they were pro-indy? This is not diversion - this is fundamental. I have no interest in ushering in fascism in the name of indy.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) June 29, 2025

As I said your attempts at diversion don’t work. Who’s producing the credible plan?

— eva comrie (@mickbrick54) June 29, 2025

Barrhead Boy, presumably. #sarcasm

You *seriously* have no answer to what you're doing in alliance with the far right? You really think that just refusing point blank to answer is going to work for the next *year*? Good luck with that.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) June 29, 2025

I asked you who’s providing the credible plan because I genuinely want to see one. I cannot help if you cannot answer.

— eva comrie (@mickbrick54) June 29, 2025

But not only do you not have an answer to my question about what you're doing in an electoral pact with fascists, neither do you have an answer to *your own* question either. If you demand a "credible plan", who in Liberate Scotland is providing it? Barrhead Boy?

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) June 29, 2025

I understand that you desire independence and that’s why you rejoined the SNP. I’d really like to know how you think they can achieve independence. However I respect Gil’s view and wonder if you think there’s a credible plan up John Swinney’s sleeve ?

— eva comrie (@mickbrick54) June 29, 2025

If you're asking me whether I think John Swinney has a more credible plan than Barrhead Boy or the far right nativists of Sovereignty, which is the only relevant question given who you've thrown in your lot with, the answer is yes. An extremely low bar, admittedly, but yes.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) June 29, 2025

As you know, I'm far from content with the SNP leadership's current approach to independence, but the point is that pretty much any plan is superior to the Barrhead / Barcelona brew of a) uniting 0.2% of the independence movement under a "big tent", b) demonising the other 99.8% of the independence movement as "saboteurs", c) fiddling the franchise so English people living in Scotland can't vote, d) strolling effortlessly to a landslide election triumph, and e) marching on the UN to beg them to decolonise us.

This is the first time I've had any contact with Eva since she made what I can only describe as the dreadful error of joining Liberate Scotland.  If she had stayed as a genuine independent candidate and stood on the list only, I think she would have had a small outside chance of becoming an MSP, but she's blown it by associating with a brand that is likely to become as toxic as Alba (if not more so).  But as I hadn't previously spoken to her about her decision, I expected she'd have some kind of thoughtful answer to the question of what on earth had possessed her to enter into an electoral pact with Sovereignty.  Her refusal to even acknowledge the question, let alone answer it, stunned me.

I was on the Alba NEC with Eva for a year in 2021-22, and two things stood out for me about her.  One was her absolute commitment to the equalities role - she was extremely passionate about aspects of it that have been neglected by others, most notably justice for Scotland's Travellers community, which is an issue that has been in the news very recently.  It's hard to believe that someone who feels so strongly about equality for one of the most marginalised segments of our society would have much truck with the idea that some residents of Scotland should be denied citizenship after independence on arbitrary ethnic grounds, but that appears to be the Sovereignty position.

The second thing that stood out was Eva's hardheaded realism about electoral strategy.  When she was concerned about the deficiencies in Alba's preparations for the 2022 local elections, she spoke up volubly and identified exactly what she thought the shortcomings were.  She was nobody's yes-woman - she cared about independence and about the party above all else, and if she thought that Alex Salmond and Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh needed a forceful dose of reality, she was more than willing to provide it.  I find it very hard to believe that she's naive enough to think that the questions about Sovereignty and its nativist policies will go away if they're just studiously ignored.  It's one thing fobbing off fellow independence supporters on social media, but when the mainstream media start asking the same questions, Liberate Scotland are going to be absolutely crucified if they can't find a more convincing and respectful way of answering.  (That's assuming the mainstream media pay them any attention at all - and if not, all of this becomes totally academic because Liberate will be lucky to get 0.1% of the vote.)

To me, the obstinacy of just repeatedly ignoring the questions has more of a "made in Barrhead" or "made in Barcelona" feel to it than "made in Clackmannanshire".  Barrhead Boy is by all accounts the de facto leader of Liberate, and Eva may be reluctantly going along with the dubious wisdom of a "just sling a deefie" directive imposed by HQ in sunny Catalonia.