Thursday, March 12, 2026

This election is not a game. As yet another fringe pro-indy party starts brutally tearing itself apart, here's a constructive suggestion: why not try to win independence via the mainstream SNP route? At this stage, you really have nothing left to lose.

Until today, when he suddenly left the party after an angry tirade, Allan Petrie was the designated Nominating Officer of the "Alliance to Liberate Scotland".  (Indeed he technically still is, because any change takes time to go through.)  That is one of the three key party officer positions officially registered with the Electoral Commission, and is the same one that in Alba was held by Chris McEleny, including for several months after his expulsion.

And yet just two days ago, Petrie - who I have never met and have barely interacted with online - was bombarding me with tweets of the following ilk:

"Oh dear wee jeemie I see your research skills haven't improved much possibly because you don't get out of your bedroom much, tell us why you are in a party responsible for putting rapists in female prisons wee man"

Leaving aside the obvious immaturity and childishness of his tweets, does that look to you like someone in a leadership position within a party that should be taken seriously - not only one that can win seats but that in fact will lead Scotland to independence?  However preposterous that boast may sound, it's what Liberate Scotland claim to believe about themselves and certainly want other people to believe about them.  Even if in their heart of hearts they know it's not true, they'd presumably at least want to project an image of seriousness and credibility that would look congruous with their mission statement, and you really do have to wonder whether they have the self-awareness to understand just how far short of it they're falling.  Alba was a complete and utter shambles, and yet anyone who moves from Alba to Liberate will quickly realise they've just suffered a massive downgrade.

So what triggered Petrie so much that he forgot he was supposed to be a leading figure within a "national liberation movement", and then instantly reduced him to chucking puerile insults at me like a random drunk bloke in a pub?  It was simply because I had pointed out in a blogpost that his party is in an electoral pact with a far-right party called Sovereignty, and that as yet nobody has a credible answer as to why that's OK.  Liberate clearly have an agreed position that if anyone asks them about Sovereignty's extremist policies, they will refuse to answer substantively and will just trot out vacuous slogans like "independence nothing else nothing less".  The most you'll get out of them is an explanation that independence is the only thing that matters for now and that discussion of the merits and demerits of all other policies, including Sovereignty's extremist ones, will have to wait until after independence.  In other words, an independent Scotland established by Liberate might be a fascist ethnostate, but there again it might not be, we'll just have to wait and see, and what an exciting magical mystery tour that will be.  Yup, that sounds like a totally credible position, one that will be easily defensible in the heat of an election campaign.

But rather deliciously, Petrie's stated reason for flouncing out of Liberate today exposes the whole holding position of "independence nothing else, no other policies matter" as having always been a complete sham anyway.  He can't accept the fact that Craig Murray, who does not share his gender critical views, has been newly taken on as a Liberate parliamentary candidate.  It crosses a red line for him, apparently, even though the trans issue has got nothing to do with independence, the one and only thing that is supposed to matter.  Now I hold gender critical views too, and I don't doubt that it's an important issue, but I don't think it's any more important than opposing Sovereignty's policies on banning all economic migration, or on having an ethnically-based Scottish citizenship, or on withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights.  If I and others are not allowed to regard fascist policies as a red line or to even ask about them, it's hard to see how Petrie can justify getting a special opt-out from the general "independence nothing else" principle that allows him to have a red line for his own personal hobby horse.

My suspicion is that Petrie and the others have been caught in their own bubble for so long that they can't even see the contradiction.  The independence issue and the gender issue have become weirdly fused inside their heads and they've literally forgotten that the two things are actually separate.

Meanwhile, as expected, Tommy Sheridan and his wife Gail were today also unveiled as defectors to (and candidates for) Liberate.  As I pointed out in my blogpost the other day, that will trigger a civil war within the party, because even those who don't immediately follow Petrie out of the door will soon find themselves in a battle for control with Sheridan, who always seeks to be the dominant force in any party or political project he is part of.  And although I don't believe in the 'horseshoe' theory of politics (that the further you go to the left, the closer you get to the far-right), Sheridan the Trotskyist is not exactly doing much to dispel it by going into alliance with Sovereignty without a second thought.

A week or two ago, our old friend Stew said as a 'joke' that he was almost tempted to endorse the SNP for the Holyrood election after all, because if they won an overall majority that would put John Swinney on the spot and require him to try to deliver the independence referendum that he has promised would follow in those circumstances.  Like a lot of Stew's intended jokes, that's a lot more significant and revealing than he realised when he said it, because the logic is actually watertight.  Even if you genuinely believe that there is only a 10% chance of Swinney doing what he's promised, the rational thing to do is vote SNP and at least give that 10% chance an opportunity to play out.  

After all, what brilliant alternative independence strategy would you be giving up by doing that?  None.  If you vote Liberate, you'll be voting for a party that has not only become an embarrassing circus, but that will probably get only 0.1% or 0.2% of the list vote.  That's a complete and utter waste of time that cannot possibly achieve anything.  Alex Salmond only got 1.5% of the vote with Alba, and he had the sort of charisma and strategic nous that Barrhead Boy can only dream of.  The only charismatic potential leader Liberate have got in its ranks is Sheridan himself, but if he takes over it will become the Tommy Sheridan Party, ie. Solidarity Mark II, and we all remember how Solidarity Mark I fared in repeated Holyrood elections.

Give independence a chance.  Vote for an independence party that the general public will actually vote for.  And yes, that means the SNP, or if there's some particular reason why you can't bring yourself to vote for them, the Greens are also a pro-indy party that will win seats.  No other pro-indy party will even get close.

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My latest Holyrood constituency profile for The National is Clydebank & Milngavie, which you can read HERE.

Posted by James Kelly at 9:23 PM

3 comments:

  1. AnonymousMarch 12, 2026 at 10:27 PM

    Hells bells, how many fringe parties are there?m

    ReplyDelete
  2. yesindyref2March 12, 2026 at 11:40 PM

    I think they're all gathering nuts in May.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousMarch 12, 2026 at 11:54 PM

    The UK head of state must be a practising Anglican Protestant - Catholics and Presbyterians etc are not acceptable. Must be Windsor DNA too. So genetic and religious discrimination. MPs and MSPs all swear fealty to this - for the money.

    ReplyDelete

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