If you're an Alba member and have registered for the inaugural annual conference, which takes place tomorrow and Sunday, you'll be able to vote online in the ballots for the female and male ordinary members of the National Executive Committee. I'll be a candidate on the male ballot, along with fifteen other excellent candidates, so welcome along to my little pitch for you to give me, James Kelly, your first preference vote. (The ballot is being conducted by Single Transferable Vote, which means you'll be ranking the candidates in order of preference. If for some inexplicable reason you decide not to give me your first preference, I'd be equally grateful for your second preference, or your third preference, or any preference at all, really.)
A lot of the things I believe in would be quite radical and daring if I was standing for the SNP's NEC, but are very much mainstream views within Alba. Nevertheless, they're still worth emphasising because we've all seen how quickly parties can lose touch with their founding values if members are not vigilant. I support maximum internal democracy within the Alba Party, and transparency of all decision-making processes. Alba is already superior to the SNP in that the main office bearer positions are directly elected by the whole membership. When the NEC nominations began, a couple of people wrote to me to express their disquiet that this election was only open to conference delegates and not to all members, and I do have sympathy with that view - I see no reason why all positions shouldn't be elected by the members. However, at this stage we probably should look at where we are in a glass half full sort of way.
Freedom of speech and freedom to dissent are also vitally important. Every political party, large or small, is a coalition of views - we'll all agree on most things, but I doubt if there's anyone who will agree with absolutely every dot and comma of the policy programme decided by the majority. I never, ever want to see a Joanna Cherry-style scenario arise within Alba whereby someone is sidelined, ostracised or treated as a "bigot" simply because they have a principled disagreement with one particular policy.
Which brings me onto the subject of disciplinary proceedings. Every party needs to have rules and to enforce them, but that enforcement must be fair. I would always err on the side of giving people the benefit of the doubt if the alleged wrongdoing is open to differing interpretations (as it was, for example, in the case of Neale Hanvey when he was suspended by the SNP). Nobody should be bounced into enforced "resignations". And certainly if there's to be any question of expulsions, there should be genuine, objective proof of wrongdoing. My concern is that it's far too easy for the disciplinary process to be used as a weapon by one faction of a party against another faction - something that has undoubtedly been happening in both the SNP and Labour.
I believe that Alba is a different sort of political party in that it exists to bring about the sovereign independence of Scotland at the earliest possible opportunity and date. You have my assurance that if I'm elected to the NEC, and if there's ever any conflict between what might be perceived as the interests of the party and the interests of the wider cause of independence, I would always choose the latter. To give an example, it's vitally important that Alba candidates at next year's local elections urge voters to give their lower preferences to other pro-independence parties. That will perhaps be a painful thing to do given how disparaging and often downright abusive many within the SNP and Greens have been towards Alba, but we're here to win our country's independence, not to settle old scores.
In my view there is no future for Alba as an "ethnic" Scottish party, a kind of tartan UKIP. We must hold true to the progressive ideal of what it means to be Scottish - namely that if you choose to make this country your home, no matter where you come from or when you arrived, you belong here and you have the same rights as any other citizen, including the right to vote in a second independence referendum. That's strategically wise as well as morally right, because many EU citizens have swung behind Yes as a result of Brexit.
I know some Alba members believe that independence will only come about if and when Alba does to the SNP what Sinn Féin did to the Irish Parliamentary Party in the 1918 general election, by taking over as the majority party. It may yet come to that, but the irony is that if it does, it'll be a sign of our own failure - because Plan A has to be to win independence before there is even any opportunity for the SNP to be displaced, in other words before the 2026 Holyrood election. That means independence will have to be delivered by an SNP-led government, and Alba's role will be to challenge and harry the SNP into keeping their promises. I think a good benchmark of whether we're doing that job well enough will be if Alba looks like a credible home for any SNP MSP who might be tempted to defect next year or the year after - because above all else, it's the threat of defections that may help to keep the SNP leadership honest. To do that, we don't need to be at 40% in the polls, but we may need to be at 5% in the polls and to have some council candidates elected next year. That may sound like a modest target, but it's actually an ambitious target that will require a great deal of work to achieve.
The fact that we're initially aiming for a relatively small share of the vote, though, has certain side-benefits - it means we can be more daring in policy terms, because we're trying to win over a niche group of radical independence supporters, rather than trying to reassure vast swathes of Middle Scotland in the way that the SNP or the next Yes campaign will have to do. When the SNP finally turned its back on its long-standing opposition to NATO membership, it did so partly because Alyn Smith claimed that the policy was making us look a bit "odd" (ahem). Alba need have no such concerns, because principled opposition to NATO will differentiate us from the SNP and help to win new converts. We may also be able to take a more radical stance on the monarchy. I've actually always been - theoretically - in favour of an elected Head of State, but until now I've regarded that as a matter that can wait until after independence.
One thing I feel very strongly about is that nuclear weapons will have to be removed from an independent Scotland as soon as practicably possible. They're not a bargaining chip, they simply have to go.
I share the concerns about the threat to women-only spaces and services, and indeed to women's sport, caused by the ideologically-driven rush to reform the GRA. As many of you know, I fundraised during the summer to commission a Scot Goes Pop poll to discover how the Scottish public really feel about GRA reform and related matters. Although not as much has been raised so far as would be needed to commission the ideal type of poll, I'll make sure it happens one way or another.
I strongly agree that Alba should be at the forefront of pressing the Scottish Government to make a decisive break from the Westminster-led 'Four Nations' approach to tackling Covid, which has led this country into calamity again and again and again.
And now a little bit about me, for those of you who don't know...
I've been writing Scot Goes Pop since 2008, and by 2013 it had become one of Scotland's most popular pro-independence blogs. In 2012 I became a columnist for the International Business Times, and in the run-up to the independence referendum many of my columns were syndicated on Yahoo, reaching a huge audience - meaning that I may well have been, almost by accident, the most-read pro-indy blogger during the indyref period. Later on, I was for a time a columnist on the TalkRadio website, and since 2017 I've been a regular columnist for iScot magazine. I've also provided occasional election and poll analysis for The National since early 2015.
I've made numerous appearances on TV and radio, including BBC Breakfast, BBC Radio Five Live, the Bauer radio network, Al Jazeera, Radio Sputnik and most recently the Alex Salmond Show on RT. I've also taken part in a huge number of New Media podcasts, films and live-streams. Perhaps most significantly, though, I've commissioned no fewer than five full-scale Scottish opinion polls - something that is usually the preserve of the mainstream media. Some of the polls have been genuine landmarks - for example, the poll in June 2020 that marked the start of the long unbroken series of Yes-majority polls was a Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll.
I'm not, however, a political insider. I've never been particularly active within a political party, and that, I think, may mean I'd bring a different sort of perspective to the NEC than someone who is steeped in SNP internal politics. (Don't get me wrong, though - there's also plenty of room for that kind of experience on the NEC.)
I'd suggest a possible advantage of electing me is that there aren't going to be any surprises about my political views. Over the years, I must have blogged about practically every political topic under the sun, so my opinions are all out there. Most of you know me well and you know exactly what you'd be getting. I'm also easy to reach - I'm very active on social media. (That mostly means Twitter rather than Facebook, for the avoidance of doubt - it's not unusual for me not to check my Facebook account for weeks, which has led now and again to sheepish apologies to people who have messaged me in the interim.)
If any or all of this strikes a chord, and if you're eligible to vote, please do consider giving your first preference vote to James Kelly (that's me!) on the male ballot for ordinary members of the Alba Party NEC. The voting hours will, as far as I know, be between 12pm on Saturday and 5pm on Sunday. Thank you.
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Scot Goes Popcast: You can watch the full videos of my recent interviews with Yvonne Ridley and William Duguid
HERE and
HERE.
