I'm going to offer some more analysis, probably tomorrow, of the fateful decision the SNP have made on independence strategy. But if you'll bear with me, given that conference delegates have only a few short hours left to vote in the SNP internal elections, I think my priority for now should be to give one last plug to my own candidacy in those elections. I know from my own experience that with so much going on at conference, the internal elections completely went out of my head for quite a while on Saturday, and when I eventually remembered them I had to set aside some time to vote. So I'd be willing to bet that there are still quite a few delegates who have been meaning to vote but have so far forgotten to do it.
All delegates, regardless of where they come from in Scotland, can if they wish vote for me in the Conferences Committee election - that's a nationwide vote. And if you happen to be a delegate from the Central Scotland region (or Central Scotland & Lothians West as it's now become under the new boundaries), you can also vote for me in the NEC election. I'm also standing for the Policy Development Committee. You can watch my pitch for the elections HERE.
I actually had a really good second day at conference. I skipped lunch to go to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign fringe meeting, which had one speech in particular that I think everyone in the room found truly remarkable. I can't remember what the name of the speaker was, but she was a young woman from Al-Haq, which is described on Wikipedia as a "Palestinian non-governmental human rights organisation based in the city of Ramallah in the West Bank". She explained how difficult they had found it to operate after Israel baselessly branded them a "terrorist" group, with banks dropping them out of fright and problems like that, and how there was recently a repeat performance after they were informed by Marco Rubio that the US was sanctioning them for so-called "lawfare", defined as engaging with the International Criminal Court without Israeli permission!
About half an hour after the fringe meeting ended, I was back in the main conference hall to hear the historic speech from the State of Palestine's newly-upgraded Ambassador to the UK, Husam Zomlot. And as you can see below, I even found some time late in the day to do some impromptu sightseeing and then go to the beach. I have actually been known to stick my feet in the sea as late as October, but I thought better of it today.
As you may have seen, there was a tribute to Alex Salmond as part of the "In Memoriam" segment in the morning, and it included the famous clip of him announcing "I heard a rumour, I think we won the election" in 2007. That was a classy thing to do, and it was the right thing to do, and it was very much appreciated by many people in the hall, who burst into spontaneous applause when he appeared on screen. There used to be complaints that the SNP were editing Mr Salmond out of their history, but that certainly hasn't been the case since he died. As I always point out, the Scottish National Party has existed for ninety-one years, and Mr Salmond was leader of the party for no fewer than twenty of those years, so regardless of what happened in the final years of his life, he's very much woven into the party's story.
