Alex Cole-Hamilton, December 2022:
And it was for Beth and for you guys that we were doing it, we were fighting it.”
Alex Cole-Hamilton, February 2023:
We wonder when Patrick Harvie, Ross Greer and Maggie Chapman will follow suit.
We’ve already noted how the Unionist press appears to be trying to influence the outcome of the SNP leadership election, but last night the big beast of Scottish media – the BBC – waded into the fray.
A major piece by the Corporation’s Scotland editor James Cook focused on interviews with two of the three contenders – excluding Ash Regan – on the basis that both had launched their official campaigns yesterday while Regan’s isn’t expected to be until later this week.
That’s fair enough. No problems there, right?
So this is interesting. Last week we were about to release some results from our latest Panelbase poll when events intervened. Naturally we’d asked a few questions about gender issues, and one of them concerned the Scottish Government’s potential legal challenge to the UK government’s use of a Section 35 order to block the Gender Recognition Reform bill.
There were three options in the question, and as luck would have it the three potential new leaders of the SNP each advocates a different one.
So we finally have two official runners.
And to be honest, we’ve never had an easier decision to make since that time when we caught fire while standing next to the sea.
When assessing who might be the best choice for the next leader of the SNP, and by extension of the independence movement, it’s a pretty good rule of thumb to beware of anyone being bigged up by the Unionist media.
(Not only because they don’t have the SNP or Yes movement’s best interests at heart, but also because these are the people who thought Jim Murphy would take Scottish Labour surging to triumph in 2015 and Kezia Dugdale would win the 2021 election.)
So let’s take a quick look at the runners and riders.
Can you spot the subtle change between these two National stories, readers?
Now, as they’re both in The National the standard of journalism is obviously completely dreadful, and so neither of them actually explains their headline. Nobody is named or quoted even anonymously, and there’s no elaboration other than that “[a member of] the NEC appeared to halt any proposal to use the next General Election as a proxy constitutional vote”, with no indication of HOW they “appeared” to do that.
But they DO raise the question of where on Earth – whoever becomes its new leader – the SNP goes from the smouldering bomb crater that Nicola Sturgeon has left it in.
The SNP constitution states that a leadership election should take place over a period of four and a half months. Having not had one in almost 20 years, the SNP are now to conduct one from start to finish in the space of four and a half weeks.
The voting period of two weeks (who needs two weeks to vote after three weeks of debate?) means that it’ll be over just a week too late for the party to be able to hold its “special democracy conference” to determine its independence strategy for the next couple of years, but also that the new leader will be in place just in time to file a legal challenge over the Gender Recognition Reform bill before the April deadline.
(Something the party president Mike Russell publicly called for today, in an apparent attempt to influence the outcome of the election. Indeed, he called for candidates not to go back on ANY of the outgoing leader’s policies, which rather invites the question of why they should bother electing a new leader at all.)
Isn’t that convenient, readers?
So here we are, the morning after the morning before.
The thing that had to happen happened. What happens now?
Firstly, some of you owe us money.
But much more importantly, why now?
Nicola Sturgeon told Scotland’s press this morning that despite her weariness, she could have managed a few more months or even a year as First Minister, which would at least have got her halfway to keeping her promise to serve a full term if she was elected in 2021.
Which just makes her timing all the harder to explain.
Last night we tweeted this:
We did so because we’d just been told – by a completely random source – that Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney would both resign today, and Brown would be the interim leader while a replacement was elected. We’d never spoken to this person before, but the manner in which they said it made us take it more seriously than all the “someone told me” rumours we get told and ignore every other day.
As yet only the first part has been confirmed, but you have to admit that our source is looking pretty darn hot right now.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
