This is the second time Wings Over Scotland has asked Police Scotland a question through the proper official channels, only to read the response in the tabloid press before we’d heard it firsthand (which we still haven’t, incidentally, several days after the 28-day deadline expired).
But the sidebar piece in today’s Sunday Mail raises more questions than it answers.
Wait what now?
And how would he know that, exactly?
According to SNP President and acting CEO Mike Russell, SNP members are too thick to understand the concept of changing their vote, and integrity is “disruptive”.
We’re not very clear on why a revote would be susceptible to “hacking” in any way that the original vote isn’t, but we’re sure there’s a great explanation.
There can surely be no credible disputing that the SNP leadership election – and therefore that of Scotland’s next First Minister – is, to put it very mildly, under a cloud.
The list of let’s call them “irregularities” is almost endless. The artificial truncation of the contest, against the SNP constitution; the packing of the hustings with Humza Yousaf supporters; candidates being denied any knowledge about the size of the membership until voting was under way, and then the party’s press chief and CEO both resigning over lying about it; the apparent existence of 6000 more ballot papers than the party has members; one of the Scottish Government’s most senior officers being improperly seconded to the Yousaf campaign (and then also resigning as a result); numerous documented examples of non-members being given votes while fully-paid-up members weren’t; we could, frankly, go on and on.
As things stand, whoever wins will be forever tainted by the process – easy meat for the Unionist opposition in the Holyrood chamber and the media and a potential legal challenge could cause untold further damage to the party.
With six days still left for voting, the case for a reballot – an administratively fairly trivial task in an election being conducted almost entirely online – is now unanswerable, and needn’t even involve a delay.
Only one person stands in the way.
The SNP having a fondness for lying about their membership wouldn’t have come as quite such a shock to the Scottish press if they paid a little more attention to this website. Because we were pointing it out two and a half years ago.
It was in October 2020 that we told you how the SNP’s 2019 accounts revealed the party’s true membership figures weren’t the claimed 126,000 but more like 87,000.
We’ve just been leaked this footage, apparently taken by an alert traveller, of Nicola Sturgeon at Edinburgh Airport, reacting badly to receiving news that Peter Murrell has been “unavoidably detained” and won’t be making their rendezvous to Rio.
So what now, readers? What now?
The mainstream Scottish political media might not have many professional standards, but there’s one it’s still pretty diligent about upholding.
And that’s that if a political party’s press office starts really taking liberties and making them look like fools, all bets (and gloves) are off.
Hats off to the SNP. Every time we think that the party’s leadership election can’t get any more absurdly farcical, they pull something extra-mad out of the bag.
After this happened yesterday, it suddenly become “known” across the Scottish media that the SNP NEC was going to hold an extraordinary meeting in order to authorise the release of the membership figures after all three candidates demanded them.
Some of the country’s most senior hacks, including BBC Scotland’s Political Editor and the editor of the Daily Record, sombrely informed their readers of the development.
Only trouble was, nobody had told the SNP NEC.
This is the SNP members’ website tonight.
Looks like anything goes, folks.
Well, this has set the cat amongst the pigeons.
Because the SNP leadership election is now a full-blown four-alarm skip fire.
He’s not our man in the contest, but a free bit of advice for Humza Yousaf anyway.
When just about everyone with eyes and a brain in their head thinks the vote’s being rigged in your favour, and there’s tangible evidence of its dodginess, and the party’s track record in this area is in fact somewhat less than immaculate, then “just shut up and let it happen” is a really, really bad response.
Wings Over Scotland is a (mainly) Scottish political media digest and monitor, which also offers its own commentary. (More)
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