Here is the *minimum* that Alba members should be demanding from the constitution review process, in my view

The weekly Alba email to members, this time written by Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, has announced among other things that a National Assembly of the party will be held in Perth on 1st December to discuss the proposals of the Constitution Review Group.  This is the first news of any type I've heard about the constitution review process since I was suddenly informed by Chris McEleny around ten days ago that I had been removed from my elected position on the Constitution Review Group - a decision which I am reliably informed by those with legal expertise that the leadership quite simply had no right under the existing constitution to take.  (The General Secretary can certainly temporarily suspend someone's party membership pending a disciplinary hearing, but there's no provision for someone to be removed or suspended on an 'a la carte' basis from their elected position on a specific committee or group.)  I've no idea whether today's announcement means that a meeting of the group has already been held in my absence.

I would urge all Alba members who believe in the type of thoroughgoing constitutional reform that would make the party fit for purpose to attend the National Assembly and to insist as best they can on real change.  I intend to be there and to make a pro-reform contribution, although obviously that will be contingent on the truth or otherwise of Yvonne Ridley's boast of having inside knowledge that a decision has been taken to expel me from the party on baseless, trumped-up charges about a breach of confidentiality rules.

December could well be the last chance for the rank-and-file membership to seize back control over the reform process.  It's a statement of the obvious that my own unconstitutional removal was part - perhaps a small part, but nevertheless a part - of a set of tactics intended to ensure that any reform package is as superficial and limited in scale as possible.  Unless members put up a real fight at National Assembly and then at conference, the opportunity to make the needed changes will be lost and may never come round again.

Regardless of what the Constitution Review Group proposes (and remember that group now has a majority of leadership-appointed members, with elected members firmly in a minority), I would suggest the minimum that the Alba membership should be insisting upon is the following:

1) All members of the National Executive Committee (NEC), with the exception of Ash Regan as leader of the parliamentary group, should be directly elected by the whole membership on a one member, one vote basis.  During the Blair/Brown government, I saw a Labour minister on TV making an atrocious defence of an unelected House of Lords.  He argued that in a democracy, it's not necessary for every position to be elected - for example, in some American jurisdictions, judges are elected.  We don't do that here but we're still a democracy, he said.  Well, OK, it may not be necessary in a parliamentary democracy for judges to be elected, but it surely is necessary for parliament to be elected.  The same principle applies to Alba.  The NEC is the governing body of the party, and if the membership doesn't elect it, the party doesn't have a fully-fledged internal democracy.  At present around 95% of the members are in practice deprived of the right to elect ordinary members of the NEC due to the discredited 'pay-per-vote' system.  

I suspect the main reason that the leadership prefer a restricted franchise is that it ensures that a far greater percentage of those able to vote in NEC elections are the equivalent of a 'pay-roll vote', ie. not actually paid employees but people firmly under the leadership's influence. Anecdotally, I've been left in no doubt that people were told who to vote for last year. The system maximises the chances of the leadership getting a pliant NEC that will mostly do as it's told and not challenge anything or ask awkward questions.

But the even bigger danger is that the pay-per-vote system turns Alba into "the best democracy money can buy", ie. it potentially allows wealthy individuals to purchase a place on the NEC by buying voting rights for lots of people and then telling them to vote as a bloc.  Whether this has already happened in past years is something that can only be speculated about.

2) Other key committees, such as the Conference Committee and the Disciplinary Committee, should also be elected by the whole membership on a one member, one vote basis.  The main pushback I've heard against this is that it would somehow be 'overkill'.  People have said things like "I support the NEC being fully elected, but can't you have too much of a good thing?"  Well, it might not be the end of the world if the Finance & Audit Committee is not directly elected, but in many ways the other committees are more powerful than the NEC itself (in practice), and if they're not elected, the democratisation process will be hopelessly incomplete.  The Conference Committee is the gatekeeper of what can and cannot be debated at conference, so if the members don't control the Conference Committee, they have no ability to determine party policy.  At present the leadership appear to maintain control of the Conference Committee by swamping its meetings with people whose right to be there is highly dubious even under the existing constitution.  And if an increasingly authoritarian leadership is taking more and more disciplinary action against rank-and-file members, those members need protection against arbitrary treatment, and the most effective protection of all is for members to choose for themselves the composition of the Disciplinary and Appeals Committees.

3) Committees should select their own conveners, rather than have conveners imposed on them by the leadership.  The Alba constitution is closely modelled on the SNP constitution, so in the places where the Alba constitution is actually less democratic than the SNP, it raises a red flag for me and makes me wonder why.  As I understand it, the SNP's Conduct and Appeals Committees are independent from the NEC in their composition, but that is not the case in Alba, where the NEC (in reality the leadership using the NEC as a rubberstamp) appoints two members to the Disciplinary Committee and designates one of them as convener.  And even though nobody on the NEC is allowed to be a member of the Appeals Committee, the NEC still appoints the convener of the Appeals Committee, which is a ludicrous contradiction.  And in case you're wondering, no, the NEC did not appoint a convener from within the Appeals Committee's own ranks, they appointed a convener from outside who was not elected by anyone. That hopelessly compromises the committee's independence.  All committees should be trusted to choose their own chairs.

4) The "Enabling Act" should be removed. Like the SNP constitution, the Alba constitution permits rules to be drawn up that have the same force as if they were in the constitution itself.  But the SNP constitution adds the caveat that this is only the case insofar as the rules do not conflict with the text of the constitution. That caveat appears to be missing from Alba's constitution.  Why?  In theory, this is a weakness which could be exploited as a sort of 'Enabling Act' allowing the constitution to be overridden.  That's got to be sorted.

5) The General Secretary's veto powers over the disciplinary process should be abolished.  As Alan Harris' guest post set out, under the current system, the General Secretary can simply veto all complaints he doesn't approve of, and the Disciplinary Committee is not even made aware that those complaints ever existed.  But for complaints that the General Secretary allows through or sets in train himself, he is free to go all in, and demand certain outcomes and penalties.  That is not a fair, just or independent system, and unsurprisingly it is not producing fair, just or independent results. The Disciplinary Committee must be an independent, fully elected body that investigates all complaints without interference from the General Secretary or the party chair.

6) Something has to be done about the unelected nature of the party chair and General Secretary positions.  We have the weird paradox that most national office bearer roles are directly elected, but by far the two most powerful office bearers are not elected by anyone.  Presumably the leadership must be worried about those positions falling into the "wrong" hands, but given the huge power these two people wield over party members, I believe it is unsustainable for party members to have no say at all.  My suggestion is a compromise by which the leader would propose their preferred party chair and General Secretary, and the party membership would then either accept or reject those nominations via affirmative ballots.  However in an ideal world I do believe both positions should be directly elected.

Additionally, although it's not something I've personally prioritised, I know the biggest concern for many members is Alba's unsatisfactory approach to policy formation, which could potentially be addressed by the creation of a Policy Development Committee, or an elected Policy Development Convener.

Keith Brown's statement is not a long-overdue sign of realism - it's a sign of abject surrender to Westminster

Well, what a bind we're in as a movement.  Yesterday's Opinium poll was better than anyone could really have dreamed of at this stage and offered huge grounds for optimism that the SNP might well win a fifth consecutive term in government - which, if it happens, is going to be an almighty jolt to a political and journalistic establishment that had convinced itself that the tide has gone out decisively on the SNP and that a Sarwar-led government at Holyrood is a racing certainty.  And make no mistake, an SNP win would be a huge boost for independence, if only in the sense that if it didn't happen, the setback for independence would be enormous.  But there just doesn't seem to be any direct way forward from an SNP win to independence, because the SNP leadership are hoisting the flag of surrender, and they're doing it in plain sight.

A few people welcomed the depute leader Keith Brown's admission that Westminster will never grant another Section 30 order, as if it was a long-overdue sign of some realism creeping in.  But it's actually the total opposite, because he went on to clarify that independence can never be won without a referendum.  By "not playing by Westminster's rules", what Brown really appears to mean is that we have to totally surrender to Westminster's rigged rules, ie. we have to accept that something as prosaic as mere electoral mandates for a referendum or for independence are no longer sufficient and that we'll need ridiculously overwhelming levels of public support that simply aren't attainable in the real world.

In truth, if we really did stop playing by Westminster's rules, it would mean saying "sorry, but we don't need an unattainable supermajority, actually, in a democracy we just need a simple majority, and we're going to seek an outright mandate for independence via a scheduled election, which is something that you have no power to stop us doing".  That is so obviously the best and only way forward that it's surely inevitable that the SNP will have to embrace it sooner or later, but at the moment it looks very much like "later".   It's as if we're all left twiddling our thumbs until it happens.  Goodness only knows how many more years and leadership changes it will take for the penny to finally drop.

In the meantime, we do have a party in Alba that "gets it" and that will be offering voters a chance to vote for independence outright on the Holyrood list.  But the problem is that there seems to be quite a low ceiling on potential support for any radical independence party, and Alba will need to max that support out if they are to win any list seats at all and thus be in a position to do anything to move us forward.  In order to get that maximum support they'll need to be as broad a church as possible, they'll need to be welcoming, tolerant and inclusive.  They'll need to be a 'shining village on a hill' that everyone looks up to longingly and can't wait to visit.  

I don't think it should be controversial to point out that Alba are actually doing the opposite of that.  They're becoming an ever more narrow sect that lives inside a forbidding fortress.  Freedom of speech and dissenting views are being cracked down on, both by direct means and by fostering a climate of fear in which people feel they have to self-censor.  No attempts are being made to build bridges with the significant number of people who have already felt they had no choice but to leave the party, including Eva Comrie, who was probably the most popular figure in Alba other than Alex Salmond himself.  Other people who wanted to stay in Alba have been expelled, and that will presumably continue to happen.  (Indeed if Yvonne Ridley's boast has any truth to it, I could be next in line, although I'm no closer to finding out, because - as I predicted last week - Alba are deliberately "throwing a deefie" and totally ignoring my emails, even though I copied them to the General Secretary, the Deputy General Secretary, the party chair and the party leader.)  

On their current trajectory, Alba are likely to get between 1% and 3% of the list vote and to win no seats at all, which will simply be of no use to anyone.

If there was fundamental change in either the SNP or Alba, we might start to get somewhere, but how is that going to happen?  I've made no secret of the fact that I would welcome Kate Forbes as SNP leader, not least because I think she's the most electable person they've got, but I can't see any evidence at all that she would abandon the do nothing approach on independence.

And are there any signs of life outside the SNP and Alba?  Not that I can see.  The ISP have apparently gone down a very peculiar path by adopting abstentionism for Holyrood as well for Westminster, which rules them out of serious consideration as a vehicle for independence.  I was tickled to discover that Peter A Bell has set up his own political party, although perhaps I shouldn't be too dismissive, because if Alba do expel me, I could be needing a bolthole before too long.  (I know, I know, he'd never let me in!)  I suppose as a last resort some people might consider setting up yet another new party, but by God, that would be a long and hard road and might be wholly counter-productive.  It would be much better to get the existing parties into some kind of shape, but how to even begin achieving that is a massive conundrum.

SNP become clear favourites to win a fifth term in 2026 as stunning new Opinium survey gives them a significant lead over Labour

It's rather fitting that the day that marks the passing of a generation since the independence referendum has brought word of what could turn out to be a landmark polling moment that puts the SNP firmly back on track to win a fifth term in power at the Holyrood election of 2026.

Scottish voting intentions for the next UK general election (Opinium, 5th-11th September 2024):

SNP 32%

Labour 25%

Conservatives 14%

Reform UK 11%

Liberal Democrats 8%

Greens 7%

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot:

SNP 32%

Labour 25%

Conservatives 12%

Liberal Democrats 8%

Scottish Parliament regional list ballot:

SNP 30%

Greens 25%

Labour 25%

Conservatives 12%

Liberal Democrats 8%

I know the Green figure on the list looks wildly implausible, and it probably is wrong, but at the moment the only place I can find the Holyrood numbers is on John Curtice's What Scotland Thinks site, and 25% for the Greens is what it says.  I can't see any sign of the numbers in the Opinium datasets or on social media, so if anyone can point me in the right direction, please do.  It may in reality be a combined figure of 25% for the Greens and the assorted 'others'.  But even if that is the case, there doesn't appear to be any reason to doubt that the SNP are several points ahead of Labour across the board, which is an extraordinary achievement at a stage of the electoral cycle when Labour should be still enjoying their honeymoon with the electorate.  I've said this before, but if this is as good as it gets for Labour, they've got a major problem on their hands.

So when, you might wonder, was there last a poll as good as this one for the SNP?  On paper the answer is as recently as January, when the Ipsos / STV poll gave the SNP a Westminster lead over Labour of 39% to 32%.  However, that's not really comparable, because Ipsos telephone polls have tended to be more favourable for both Yes and the SNP than most polls from online firms.  For the most recent online poll as good as today's, you'd have to go all the way back to September of last year when another Opinium poll had the SNP nine points clear.  And in case you're wondering, it's doubtful that there's an Opinium house effect at play here, because the Opinium poll during the general election campaign had Labour ahead, albeit admittedly not by quite as much as in the election result itself.

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UPDATE: If Wikipedia is to be believed, the What Scotland Thinks version of the numbers is indeed wrong, and the real figures on the list are: SNP 30%, Labour 25%, Reform UK 12%, Conservatives 12%, Greens 8%, Liberal Democrats 8%.  It appears that Reform UK also have a remarkable 12% of the constituency vote.  That means the seats projection works out as SNP 47, Labour 33, Reform UK 16, Conservatives 16, Greens 9, Liberal Democrats 8.  The pro-independence parties would be well short of a majority between them, but it's a struggle to imagine Labour forming a government from such a distant second place.  You'd imagine they'd want to limit any full coalition to just themselves and the Liberal Democrats, with the two right-wing unionist parties providing deniable support from outside.  But the problem is that a Labour - Lib Dem coalition would still have fewer MSPs than the SNP, so it would just look all wrong and I doubt it would happen in the real world.

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Ten years on, some personal recollections of the referendum

It's exactly a generation ago today that the independence referendum took place, and as everyone and their auntie seems to be publishing mini-memoirs of their own experiences during the campaign, I thought I might as well briefly join in the fun.

There were three main aspects to my own involvement.  One was Scot Goes Pop itself, which exploded in popularity as people searched for polling news and analysis.  I always thought it was really interesting that there was no big increase in Scot Goes Pop's traffic levels during the 2011 Holyrood election campaign, even though that was one of the most important and dramatic elections in Scottish history and I was constantly blogging about polls throughout it.  And yet even in autumn 2013, a whole year before the referendum, I was already seeing an exponential increase in reader numbers.  People were really hungry to know whether there was a chance Scotland might become an independent country.

Secondly, there was the syndication on Yahoo of some of my columns for the International Business Times, which as I always point out, probably means I was the most-read pro-independence blogger during the indyref campaign, albeit just through the sheer luck of being in the right place at the right time.  I have a friend who is rarely impressed by anything I do, but she actually did look momentarily impressed when she glanced at the Yahoo homepage and saw one of my articles staring back at her!

And thirdly, there were my two appearances on BBC Breakfast during referendum week, one before the referendum, and one after.  For obvious reasons the one beforehand was much more nerve-wracking, because there was the slight danger that if I had said or done something really stupid, it might have had a detrimental effect.  But it went OK in the end.  When I was asked by Naga Munchetty why I thought Scotland should be independent, I made a point of starting by saying "well, Scotland is a country", which was something I thought hadn't been said enough on TV and radio during the campaign.

I did feel very slightly stitched up, though, because the item was supposed to be two bloggers, one Yes and one No, giving their own personal views about independence.  In practice, Dunc "don't call me Dunc" Hothersall was always inevitably going to be my opponent because he was the only unionist blogger in the known universe, and he was there as a de facto Better Together spokesman.  He had obviously been thoroughly briefed on exactly what to say, and indeed he was deep in conversation with Kezia Dugdale when I arrived.  Whereas I genuinely was there independently and hadn't been briefed by the Yes campaign at all. But I did my best. The irony is that I had made up my mind in advance that the one thing I definitely wasn't going to do was criticise the BBC live on air, but Duncan effectively forced me into it, because Better Together had clearly instructed him to make a song and dance about the "mob" protesting outside the BBC Scotland building in Glasgow.  I replied that it was a peaceful protest from people who had a legitimate complaint because "the BBC, not BBC Scotland but the BBC in London, haven't exactly covered themselves in glory over the last week". When I said the words "in London", Duncan started beaming and pointing at Naga Munchetty, as if to say "yeah, he's talking about you, hun".

It wasn't even remotely premeditated, but looking back I'm glad I said what I did, because it at least flagged up for viewers that the concerns were there. And arguably there's not much point complaining retrospectively about the BBC's bias during the campaign if you didn't raise the issue at the time when you had the golden chance.

When I made the return appearance two days after the referendum, Duncan was supposed to be there again, but for some reason he was replaced by the Tories' Mark Brown, who actually struck me as a decent bloke. I chatted to him before the filming started, and he seemed as genuinely keen as any Yes supporter that the promise made in The Vow of a more powerful Scottish Parliament was kept.  And after the interview, he gave me a bearhug and bellowed "WE ARE BETTER TOGETHER JAMES".

Incidentally, when I was first contacted by the BBC producer about the second appearance, probably at about 3pm on Friday 19th September, he asked me if I could help to put him in touch with anyone senior from the Yes campaign, because he had been baffled to discover that the entire Yes Scotland organisation seemed to have already disappeared in a puff of smoke.  The significance of what he said didn't really register with me at the time, but it's arguably something we've been suffering from ever since.

It was a "festival of democracy", not a trauma: ten years on, YouGov poll shows the Scottish public resoundingly believe holding the independence referendum was the right thing to do, and that they want another referendum to be held within the next ten years

Unsurprisingly, this week's tenth anniversary of the indyref has brought about a flurry of polls on independence, which is quite helpful because for the last two months we've had relatively limited information on the impact of the general election on Yes support.  Of the three new polls I'm aware of, two are positive for Yes and suggest that there is a higher level of support for independence now than there was on referendum day a generation ago.  The exception is YouGov, which is quite like old times, really, because during the long indyref campaign YouGov were consistently the least favourable online polling firm for Yes due to the notorious 'Kellner Correction' that was artificially imposed on the headline numbers because Peter Kellner refused to believe the evidence of his own eyes and insisted there had to be some sort of bug that meant No was further ahead than the raw results suggested.

I'm not aware of any similar 'correction' that YouGov are making now that would suppress the Yes vote in their polls, although it can't be completely ruled out that something is going on that we don't know about.  Their new poll has No ahead by 56% to 44%, which would be the first sign of what I feared at the time of the general election, ie. that there would be a temporary drop in Yes support due to a Labour honeymoon effect.  Frankly, though, I don't take that notion too seriously anymore, because the other two polls suggest that Yes support has held up admirably.  More in Common appear to have No ahead by around 52% to 48%, although that's my own rough recalculation from the figures with Don't Knows left in - I can't find the definitive numbers in the data tables.  With Opinium the No lead appears to be a wafer-thin 51% to 49%.

Although the YouGov poll is on the whole disappointing, there are a couple of really encouraging results within it.  You might remember that during the indyref campaign, most people were finding it such an exhilarating experience (it led, after all, to the highest voter turnout since the introduction of universal suffrage!) that unionist politicians and commentators felt compelled to embrace the holding of a referendum as an overwhelmingly positive thing, and the campaign itself as a "festival of democracy" (Tom Holland's words on the eve of polling day) that the rest of the UK needed to learn from.  But within a year or two, the exact same people were shamelessly gaslighting us by trying to implant false memories that the campaign had instead been a national trauma on the scale of a small war and that families and friendships had been torn apart by it.  The YouGov poll suggests the gaslighting has deservedly failed, and that by a resounding margin of 52% to 33%, respondents feel that holding the referendum was the right thing to do.  They also, by a narrower margin of 43% to 40%, want a second referendum to be held within the next ten years, although there's more hostility than in some previous polls to the idea of holding it within the next year or the next five years.

The poll also shows that voters would overwhelmingly back independence (the Yes advantage would be 56% to 32%, or roughly 64% to 36% without Don't Knows) if it meant Scotland would rejoin the EU - which, let's be honest, it probably would.  This suggests that, contrary to John Swinney's dismal claims in the Salmond/Sturgeon documentary, the SNP missed a trick by not bringing the independence question to a head after the EU referendum.  The mistake was not, as Swinney believes, to push too hard but to not push anything like hard enough, and to back off at the first sign of any resistance from 'Tyrannical Theresa'.  Even now, it appears the window of opportunity to use voters' horror at Brexit to win independence has not yet closed, but clearly there is no prospect whatever of taking advantage of that opportunity for as long as Swinney remains SNP leader.

Also of interest is that a greater proportion of people who support independence say they feel strongly about their views (90%) than those who oppose independence (78%).  That leaves open the possibility of a significant future net swing to Yes.

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A guest post by Alan Harris, former elected member of Alba's Disciplinary Committee and Constitution Review Group, on why he was left with "no alternative" but to leave the Alba Party

(Editorial note from James Kelly: I have been asked by Alan Harris to publish his guest post, and the letter within it, in full and unabridged form.  I have agreed to do so.  It is important that Alan has the opportunity to set out the real facts in his own words and without interference from anyone.  However, if anybody from the Alba leadership happens to be passing by, please note that 'full and unabridged' means *exactly* what it says.  What you are about to read are 100% Alan's words, not mine.  The topics and information referred to have been decided upon by Alan, not by me.  Any objections the Alba leadership may have to the contents are therefore not a matter for me and should not be addressed to me.  Many thanks.)

In his blog on Monday, September 9, 2024, under the heading 'A personal statement on the Alba leadership's bizarre and unconstitutional decision to remove me from a directly elected party role' James Kelly wrote:

“The candidate who topped the poll (for the Constitution New Review Group) was within a few weeks effectively forced out of the party by some of the most disgraceful behaviour I've ever witnessed.” That person was me. Whilst I don’t completely agree with that statement, I did feel that I was left with no alternative, as I set out in my resignation letter below. James went on to say that “Without that person it was always going to be a much more uphill struggle”. That may have overstated the case, since the prime proponent of the Review Group procedure, Mike Baldry, was still onboard, with James. However, without James as well, and the NEC appointees and others ranged against him, the task Mike Baldry faces becomes Herculean, in my opinion.

Over the past week James has faced a barrage of personal messages and posts on X from Yvonne Ridley. I make no comment on these exchanges, but they have influenced my decision to publish my resignation letter now.

My resignation letter was sent to the Chair who responded by “thanking me for my service to the party, and indeed to our national cause”. Tasmina also thanked me “for so diligently serving our members and myself as Chair, in your additional role as steward at various party events.” I publish those comments not as an exercise in self-aggrandisement; but solely in case anything otherwise is suggested now. When I joined ALBA, I made a personal decision not to use social media for political purposes. I did share my resignation with a few selected friends but I did not publish the letter anywhere at the time, because I regarded it as an internal matter, though I have been falsely accused of a public resignation.

At the Disciplinary Meeting in March that I refer to in my resignation, the then Chair, Marjorie Ellis Thompson, used an unconstitutional procedure and unreasonably, in my opinion, postponed a case against Denise Somerville, which prejudiced the outcome, when the majority (3) of us were of the opinion that she had no case to answer. I will publish a follow up blog about Denise’s unsuccessful Appeal in due course.

Now it seems that James is going to be prosecuted under the same unconstitutional procedure. I make no comment about the rights and wrongs of any potential case against James, lest it prejudice any future appeal. However, this is another reason why I consider it is important that I publish my resignation letter now.

RESIGNATION FROM THE ALBA PARTY 

Dear Tasmina, 

I have been a member of the ALBA Party since my former SNP Kirkintilloch Convener, Delia Henry, joined ALBA and ran for the UK Parliament in 2021. 

I have been Secretary and Treasurer of ALBA East Dunbartonshire since inception in September 2021.

In May 2022, I was privileged to be selected as the ALBA Party candidate for Bishopbriggs North and Campsie in the Local Government Elections. 

I was elected to the Appeals Committee in 2022 but no cases came before the Committee. I was elected to the Disciplinary Committee at Stage 1 in 2023 and I was re-elected in 2024 with the most votes of any candidate. One case was presented to the Disciplinary Committee in 2023. 

At the outset I enquired if there was a Disciplinary Procedure and on being advised that there was not, the then Convener, Hamish Vernal invited me to write one on behalf of the Disciplinary Committee. My credentials were that I had served on the Disciplinary & Membership Committees of the Financial Intermediaries, Managers and Brokers Association (FIMBRA) for 5 years under the Chairmanship of Sir Kenneth Clucas, the first Civil Service Commissioner, Permanent Secretary at two Government Departments and latterly Chairman of the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux; the Recorder (Chief Magistrate) of the City of London; and leading barristers. The procedure I wrote went through three revisions and DCv4 was presented to the NEC in May 2023. In an email on the 25 th of July 2023, Hamish advised the Committee members that “The papers that I provided on the Process are now out for consideration to an external source. I outlined our wish, as previously agreed by the Chair, that whatever results from this comes back to the DC for consideration before going to NEC for approval. Thereafter to the October Conference. This process and timescale was (sic) confirmed.” On the 18 th of August 2023 Hamish advised the Committee members that “We are unanimous in our views. I conveyed this in a telephone call to the Party Chair late yesterday afternoon. I reiterated our view, confirmed to me by the Party Chair again, that we wished all documents…..DCv4, NECV6 and Alan’s commentary which we all endorsed….to go to an external lawyer specialising in this area. I was informed that the current version was “sense checked” only (by the General Secretary) and will go to the NEC on Saturday for comment. I expressed our view that we were unanimously unhappy with the current version……we had all expressed our views in writing. Following the NEC all documents including any comment from NEC will then go external to be “legalled”. I have this assurance.” 

Eva Comrie, herself a lawyer and then member of the NEC, has advised me that she did not see this legal advice. Hamish Vernal has advised me that the explanation given to the NEC was that it was too expensive to obtain full legal advice and that he did not see any other version of the Procedure. In addition, Hamish has stated that he was given a further assurance, when remitting office as the Convener of the DC at the December 2023 meeting of the NEC, that the final version would come back to the DC for comment and thereafter the DC version would be “rubber stamped” by the NEC.

Notwithstanding all the foregoing, a new Procedure labelled NECv2 was presented to the Disciplinary Committee as fait accompli in March 2024. In an email to Morgwn Davies and other Committee members on 7 March 2024 the General Secretary said that “The disciplinary policy was approved by the National Executive Committee as they are entitled to do so under 12.1(d) of the constitution… with the requirements of 12.3 to be fulfilled but the policy being deemed constitutional drawing on the rules set out in 12.7”. Furthermore, in a second email to Morgwn on 12 March 2024, the General Secretary said “The final version of the policy was drafted by me upon commission from the NEC. The Disciplinary Policy was agreed by the NEC on 30th September 2023”. If this is true it was unknown to the then Convener of the DC, Hamish Vernal and belies the assurance that he was given by the Chair at the NEC in December 2023. 

At the meeting of the Disciplinary Committee on 20 March 2024, I raised a point of order based on - 

Constitution: 

12.3 All such Rules and Standing Orders shall be submitted to the National Council or Conference for amendment and/or adoption. 

There was a national Conference on 28 October 2023 and National Council meetings on 1 December 2023 and 27 January 2024 but the new procedure was not submitted for approval. 

The General Secretary relied on Constitution 12.7 which gives him the power to “interpret” the Constitution between meetings; but this does not apply because no such Procedure has ever been adopted by National Council or Conference and in any event under 12.5 “This Constitution may not be changed, except by a vote of at least two-thirds of the delegates present and voting at National Conference, or by National Council in relation to a specific matter that National Conference has delegated to National Council.” 

I invited the current Convener of the Disciplinary Committee, Marjorie Thompson, to take advantage of - 

Constitution: 

12.6 Should any question arise regarding the interpretation of the Constitution, Rules or Standing Orders of the Party, the convener of the meeting shall adjudicate on the question and his or her adjudication shall be final, unless a motion is passed requiring the person to vacate the Chair. 

but she made various contradictory pronouncements and the meeting proceeded on the basis of the NECv2 (witness the fact that the Clerk to the Committee, which position has been introduced by NECv2), was in attendance.

The reason for all of this is not hard to understand. The entire Disciplinary Committee in 2023 and every member who has ever expressed an opinion on the subject are unanimous in the view that ALL complaints should be submitted to the Disciplinary Committee for investigation and adjudication.

However, the Constitution [11.6] has been interpreted as meaning that the Disciplinary Committee can ONLY take disciplinary measures against a member on the proposal of the General Secretary; and that the Disciplinary Committee can only investigate a complaint on the proposal of the General Secretary. 

This is a breach of one of the key principles of natural justice which is that:

* a complainant party is entitled to have its case heard by an unbiased and impartial tribunal 

In effect the rules are being interpreted in a way that means that: 

* the General Secretary is pre-judging complaints which is a second breach of the principles of natural justice. 

Therefore, the Disciplinary Committee (Hamish Vernal, Convener proposing and Alan Harris, member, seconding) proposed to Conference 2023 that: 

A new paragraph 11.6 be inserted: 

The General Secretary will acknowledge receipt of all written or verbal complaints and send full details of the complaint and any associated documents to the party about whom the compliant has been made by email or other electronic means within 7 days of receipt. At the same time, the General Secretary will refer the complaint to the Disciplinary Committee for investigation. 

This and many other motions were not submitted to conference (see below, Constitution New Review Group). 

The NEC v2 re-defines a "complaint" solely as a "proposal by the General Secretary" and appears to exclude any other form of complaint. 

The Constitution at 11.5 demands the immediate referral of suspended members to the DC and that was ignored for 4 weeks, 3 weeks and 10 days respectively.  

In two of the three cases before the Committee last Wednesday, the General Secretary stated that complaints had been submitted against the members concerned: in one case by another member; and in another case by a LACU; but these complaints were not produced in evidence. In one of the cases the member had made a counter complaint but, contrary to precedent that both cases should be heard together, this complaint was not presented to the Committee. In two of the cases, vital evidence in the form of a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter); and emails were omitted from the evidence. In one of the cases the Clerk to the Committee said that the member had not asked to attend the hearing whereas in fact he’d made two such requests and never been given the details. 

It is small wonder that the new Convener has resigned today. 

The one case that was adjudicated by the Disciplinary Committee in May 2023 was immediately appealed despite the fact that the appellant, who was also the defendant, failed to engage with the Committee despite seven emails. The Appeal was not heard for nine months, apparently because there was no procedure; although I wrote an outline procedure which was presented to the NEC at the same time as the appeal was lodged. Not surprisingly the appeal was upheld. 

I was elected to the Constitution New Review Group with almost more first preference votes than the next three candidates put together. 

However, I now find that the powers that be have imposed an unconstitutional procedure on the Disciplinary Committee which enshrines in our rules a procedure that is contrary to natural justice and this has already been implemented to the detriment of two members. That is unacceptable to me. It is clear to me that since this procedure has been imposed there is no chance whatsoever that the leadership will accept the limitation on the General Secretary’s assumed power of veto over complaints, indeed this has now been enhanced. Not only that, but in one of the cases before the Committee last week, the General Secretary actually expressed a view that the Committee should take action against the member and in another he expressed a view on the penalty that should be imposed by the Committee, all of which is wholly improper conduct, presumably endorsed by the Party Chair to whom the General Secretary reports. 

In an email on 4 March 2024, our Leader Alex Salmond stated that "Yvonne Ridley our Women’s Convener is stepping back from her role for a time. Ash Regan MSP ......will step in to lead for the party on this issue in the meantime.  Eva Comrie publicly resigned from ALBA. I regret this and thank Eva for her considerable contribution. Our constitution and rules are clear, however, and subject to NEC approval I have asked Suzanne Blackley, a former Holyrood candidate for ALBA, to serve as our interim Equalities Convener until an election can be held at the next meeting of National Council or at our Annual Conference."

So, there is reference to an election for Equalities Convener but not Women's Convener. However, Morgwn Davies has reported that at their meeting on Wednesday 13 March 2024, Ash "said that she was acting Women's Convener until the next election for that position." And that Yvonne Ridley was free to stand in that election if she so wished. 

1. Therefore, it's clear that both positions are being treated in the same way. 

2. This is confirmed on the ALBA website: Interim National Women’s Convener - Ash Regan MSP; Interim National Equalities Convener - Suzanne Blackley. 

3. Yvonne Ridley is not an elected member of the NEC, she and all other office bearers owe their position to their national offices.

4. Since Yvonne Ridley is not currently the Women’s Convener she cannot be a member of the NEC. 

5. Since Yvonne Ridley is not a member of the NEC she cannot be an NEC delegate to the Constitution New Review Group (CNRG).

Our Constitution and Rules are indeed clear. 

However, the Convener, Hamish Vernal gave an apology for Yvonne Ridley’s absence at the CNRG meeting on 12 March 2024 and it is my understanding that the Party Chair sought to justify this at the NEC meeting on 16 March 2024. 

There is a second aspect to these resignations: 

Constitution: 

8.6 If a National Office Bearer’s post falls vacant before its term, the vacancy shall be filled by National Council in accordance with National Council Standing Orders.  

Annex C - Standing Orders of the National Executive Committee 

12.3 Should a vacancy arise for any elected position on the NEC then the vacancy shall be filled in the first instance by the candidate that finished next in the respective ballot. 

Therefore, Heather McLean who was next in line at the election should have been appointed to replace Yvonne Ridley and Abdul Majid who was the only other candidate, should have been appointed to replace Eva Comrie. 

In the light of all the foregoing I find myself in a dilemma. Hamish, Heather and Daniel Jack were good enough to endorse my candidature for these Committees. And, I am deeply indebted to all the members who put their faith in me by voting me on to these Committees where they expected me to use my experience to fight for justice and constitutional change. On the other hand, how can I continue to sit on these Committees in the face of all of the above breaches of the Constitution and the likelihood of significant change is remote. I stood for good governance and proper procedures. Not only have I failed to deliver but my continued membership of these Committees appears to endorse these malpractices. 

I have concluded that I cannot continue without doing irreparable damage to my integrity and that is not something that I will sacrifice for any organisation. 

Therefore, I have no alternative other than to resign from the ALBA Party with immediate effect. 

Yours sincerely

Alan S Harris 

25 March 2024

A generation later: photos from the referendum anniversary event in George Square

I'm not going to the event at the Science Centre tonight, but don't leap to conclusions - it's not because a certain Somerset gender politics blogger will apparently be making a rare-bordering-on-unique foray into northern climes.  It's simply because I'm counting the pennies at the moment and the ticket price was a wee bit on the steep side.  However, for obvious symbolic reasons I do feel it's important that the anniversary events for the referendum held a generation ago are seen to be well-supported, so I spent a couple of hours at the Hope Over Fear event in George Square this afternoon.  I was too late to hear the former First Minister, but I did hear Tommy Sheridan speak twice.  He may be a controversial figure, but bloomin' 'eck, nobody can deny he's still a powerful orator, and I agreed with 90% of what he said.

Two other thoughts: whatever my mixed feelings about the Salvo project, I must compliment them on having a superb logo that looks amazing on flags.  And I never thought I'd watch a singer on stage performing a song that contained the genuine lyric "the SNP and Alba both think they're right", but that's something that actually happened today.

After the event was over, I suddenly got this strange notion that I'd like to look up the HMV on Argyle Street where I used to spend half my life when I was a student.  I assumed it would be long gone, but I was delighted to find it's still there and in fact it's barely even changed.

Not many people can claim to have been bullied by a former hostage of the Taliban, so there's always that

I know I said last night that I hoped not to post any further about Alba internal politics for a while, but the situation keeps escalating and escalating, and the intimidation is getting so direct and blatant now that it's almost entering into the realms of the downright comical.

This morning I received yet another direct message on Twitter from Yvonne Ridley - I no longer see much point in protecting her identity.  She was once again gloating and taunting me at great length about the fact that she claims to have inside knowledge that a decision has been taken to expel me from the Alba Party.  Her implication is that there are trumped-up charges about a breach of confidentiality rules (an allegation that I have already addressed and shown to be without foundation).

There are only really two possibilities here.  One is that Ridley is a Walter Mitty style fantasist and that none of this is true.  I take that possibility extremely seriously given what others have told me about Ridley's past behaviour.

The second possibility is that Ridley is telling the truth, but that would by definition mean the independence of Alba's disciplinary processes are a sham, because no hearings have been held, and I have heard nothing about an expulsion except from Ridley and her own boasts.

Over to you, Alba.  I await with keen interest to discover whether Ridley is telling the truth or lying.  I'm going to work on the firm assumption that it's the latter, and that Alba's internal procedures and commitment to due process are not some sort of window dressing for a Mickey Mouse organisation in which vindictive bullies wield arbitrary power. But if by any chance she's telling the truth, there will be very serious implications, and those implications will not just be for me personally.

And one final but important point.  Here is an example of the low quality of what passes for Ridley's bullying attempts - 

"If you want to elevate your wee blog, why don't you do a story on the Aye App."

Hilarious, Yvonne, hilarious.  Who needs the Morecambe and Wise Christmas special.  

I was completely oblivious to the point she was trying to make with that "joke" for about thirty minutes, and then it suddenly hit me between the eyes.  I am currently an elected member of Alba's Disciplinary Committee, and it was her little way of indirectly telling me that she knew all the details of one of the committee's hearings from earlier this year, and that she knew how I voted in that hearing.  The Disciplinary Committee is bound by confidentiality rules, and unlike the unknown person who seems to have briefed Ridley, I abide by those rules, so I will be saying nothing about it.  But if my interpretation of her little dig is correct, and I'm 99% sure that it is, it's revealing of something downright sinister.  Something appears to be seriously amiss in the upper reaches of Alba, and if the party is to emerge blinking into the light with a bright electoral future, there will have to be radical change.

Incidentally, to the very limited extent that I know Ridley, I was previously on good terms with her and had interviewed her twice for this blog's podcast.  So she has no reason for a personal grudge against me, and I suspect the motivation for her bile is that she thinks it will please the powers-that-be.  Perhaps she's hoping to be a list MSP.  I'm not sure there's anything much worse in life than the sidekick to the school bully who is only doing it because she wants to be liked by the 'in crowd'.

Thoughts on "marked cards" and "sealed fates"

I've been swithering about whether to go public with this, but I think it's probably important that Alba members are given some kind of insight into the scale of the bullying that is going on in private, because I know sometimes members express frustration that they constantly hear vague hints but are left none the wiser.  Someone who I only know very slightly, and who is either a current or a former Alba NEC member (I'm not quite sure of her present status) randomly sent me a private message on Twitter tonight seemingly just for the sheer joy of informing me that "my fate was sealed", ie. according to her I'm going to be expelled.  That's news to me, but we'll see if her prediction comes true, and if it does that will give me a little clue about whether the next taunt she went on to make had any factual basis or was just bluster.

In true Primary 4 fashion, she went on to delightedly tell me about very unflattering personal comments that her unnamed "friends", seemingly extremely senior people in the party, had been making about me in private as long ago as 2021.  Apparently my "card was marked" (whatever the hell that is supposed to mean) from the very first NEC meeting I attended three years ago, because I had been observed during that meeting and deemed to be lacking on what sounds like very crude "survival of the fittest" criteria.  The implication is that I was in some unspecified way 'blackballed' from that moment on, and that my predicted expulsion will be the natural culmination of that process.

It's reassuring to learn that I and others haven't unknowingly been living through some kind of Kafkaesque dystopia over the last three years.  If these taunts were in any way meant to dissuade me from my belief that Alba is in dire need of total root-and-branch reform, I must say they're having completely the opposite effect. I'm not naive enough to think other parties aren't just as bad, but incrementally these incidents are causing me to reflect quite a bit on how politics in this country needs to change, and change utterly, no matter whether independence happens or not.  Essentially politics needs to be humanised.

Hopefully this will be my last post about Alba internal politics for a while, but I'll keep you posted if there are any significant developments.

Do members of political parties lead best in the dark?

First of all, thank you to everyone who got in touch by email with supportive words after my unconstitutional removal from my elected role as a member of the Alba constitution review group.  The general sentiment was "shocked but not surprised".  There was one particularly interesting message from someone who actually contacted a key person in the Alba leadership a few months ago to ask for specifics about what was meant by Alba being a "member-led party", given the evidence of an increasingly top-down approach.  The reply was as follows: Alba is member-led because the members determine party policy, and they do so by electing a Conference Committee which sets the agenda for conference.

Now, that's fascinating, because in my blogpost of 21st April, one of the key points I made is that the members do not elect or control the Conference Committee.  It does have some "elected members", but those are elected by the few dozen people who attend National Council, not by the party membership as a whole.  And one of the specific complaints that has been made is that meetings of the Conference Committee have sometimes been swamped by a large number of other individuals who just somehow "appear" and are supposedly there "as of right" even though no-one can seem to quite identify the clause in the constitution that gives them that right. 

From what I've been able to deduce (although I haven't been told this by the Alba leadership, who were extremely non-specific), the blogpost of 21st April is probably what has been used as the pretext for my unconstitutional removal, due to a supposed allegation that it contained breaches of confidentiality.  I defy anyone to actually read the post and reach that conclusion - as you can see, it just contains generalised points about the arguments for and against constitutional reform, without revealing any details at all about what happened at meetings of the constitution review group or what decisions were taken.  Indeed I specifically made the point right at the outset of the post that I was bound by confidentiality rules and that I therefore wouldn't be commenting on the work of the group.  I do think it's wonderfully ironic that a post in which I simply tried to engage the members of a "member-led" party about the arguments for constitutional reform, a subject which you would expect the members of any "member-led" party to be making the final decisions on, has been regarded as a disciplinary matter because it's apparently of the gravest importance that the members of the "member-led" party are kept totally in the dark about the whole topic!  And heaven forbid that anyone explain to the members of a member-led party that they do not in fact elect the Conference Committee, when the bogus claim that they do is apparently the main basis for the notion that Alba is member-led.

The other justification for "member-led", incidentally, was that the NEC is "fully-elected".  Well, that's sort of true, but again, the point is elected by who?  You don't get to vote for the eight ordinary members of the NEC by virtue of being a party member, you have to purchase a vote by getting your chequebook out (figuratively speaking - it's 2024) and paying a premium.  It's a pay-per-vote system.  And is it therefore possible for wealthy individuals to purchase a significant number of votes on behalf of others who might then be expected to vote as a bloc?  Is there any safeguard in the system to prevent that happening, and can we be sure it hasn't already happened?  Last year, for example, when the results of the vote were mysteriously never published?  

These are the really serious questions the constitution review group should be grappling with, and getting on with sorting out, to ensure that in future the party members actually are empowered and in control.  Instead, apparently the priority is to keep them uninformed and to disenfranchise them by removing someone they've elected, because after all, how else would you go about demonstrating that the party is already member-led and that no substantive reform is required?

As for what I can personally do to get this situation resolved, obviously there are limitations because it would depend on the leadership reacting in good faith to the points I'm putting to them - nobody can force them to act like democrats or even to abide by the party constitution.  (Theoretically a court of law might be able to, but the operative word is "theoretically".)  What I've done so far is write back to the General Secretary to point out that the information he supplied me with was far too vague and raised far more questions than answers, and that not only did the NEC exceed their constitutional powers in making their decision, in one key respect they did so on the basis of completely false information.  

There has been no reply so far - which is fine, we're all busy people, but there's just something about a tweet I saw earlier from Shannon Donoghue (who as well as being a member of the review group also has family ties to the leadership) which makes me wonder if I'm going to come up against a collective line of "this is just too unimportant a matter to waste our time commenting on or replying to".  Well, I'm sorry, but the unconstitutional overturning of an election result is self-evidently a very important matter, and if I haven't heard back within a week (which I think is generally regarded as the reasonable amount of time within which a reply should be received), I'll certainly be chasing it up and looking for some proper answers.

Shannon does so adore the word "wee". "Wee gang", "wee blog", etc, etc. The only snag may be that Alba could end up as a very "wee party" if the nonsense of the last few months carries on for very much longer. So far it appears that it will. https://t.co/oLHk649Ys2

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) September 11, 2024

Just seen this reply to Shannon. I don't criticise anyone for accepting a platform that's offered, and there may be a case for going on a far-right podcast to put the alternative point of view. But when the far right podcaster then praises you and talks to you like a mate...? https://t.co/m7C0IhWH0W

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) September 11, 2024