But until this morning we’d regarded Kate Forbes as a decent consolation prize – no plan for indy, but at least someone who’d lead to the withdrawal of the toxic Scottish Greens from government and probably a mass exodus of the SNP’s Twitler Youth, leaving the party in a better place to rebuild for the future.
And after her disappointing chickening-out from the vote on the Gender Recognition Reform bill, we’d been impressed at the fortitude she’d shown by carrying on in the contest after the (justifiable) furore around her views on abortion and equal marriage, and her combative showing in Tuesday night’s STV debate.
Erin Lux, the co-convener of the extremist SNP affiliate Out For Independence, is the ultra-woke Canadian activist who tried to have Forbes kicked out of the election for “transphobia” almost as soon as she’d declared her candidacy.
OFI, whose membership is measured in dozens, has a disproportionate influence on policy but a microscopic percentage of votes in the election. The chances of any of its members ever voting for Kate Forbes under any circumstances are less than nil. She could have waded into the crowd and decapitated Lux with a chainsaw for all the difference it would have made to the number of votes she’s going to get from OFI.
But Forbes still folded like a deckchair in a hurricane.
The great unknown in the SNP leadership contest is an extremely significant one: who are the voters? Nobody but Peter Murrell really knows how many members the party has, but almost nobody believes the claimed number of over 100,000. (Our guess, based on pretty much nothing but a gut feeling, is 75,000 plus or minus 5000.)
But more to the point, nobody knows who they are. The average member age in most political parties is over 50, and according to figures published in 2019, more than 80% of SNP members are over 40, with half of those being over 60. There’s also an almost 3:2 bias in favour of men.
Humza Yousaf will not be the next First Minister of Scotland. We’re calling it now. His trainwreck of a performance on last night’s leadership election debate on STV dealt a blow to his chances that we can’t see him recovering from, and the SNP establishment is now under such intense scrutiny over the electoral process that the chances of a fix being orchestrated by Peter Murrell are receding fast.
In the debate Yousaf declared that Nicola Sturgeon was the best politician in the UK, that he wasn’t as good as her, and that she’d failed to find a successful strategy for independence and therefore he couldn’t either.
If you’re talking about “transwomen”, you’re almost always talking about people with a fully intact and functional penis. More than 95% of people who identify as trans have NOT undergone any genital surgery, and that’s a fact that’s still not widely understood.
So in our most recent and double-size Panelbase poll we made it explicit that we were referring to people with a full set of man-junk, and the results speak for themselves.
We must admit it’s a shock – we were expecting the SNP President to remain neutral in the leadership election – but it’s hard to reasonably interpret this any other way.
(We’re not aware of Russell giving any media interviews last night so we assume from the timing that these comments were made at the regular meeting of the SNP Westminster Parliamentary group.)
Because both Humza Yousaf and Kate Forbes couldn’t have been any clearer that their indy strategies centre on getting Westminster to agree to another Section 30 order, and by pointing out that that’s never going to happen (which we all knew anyway), Mike Russell is admitting that a vote for anyone but Ash Regan is a vote to surrender any hope of independence for the foreseeable future.
We don’t often agree with him these days, but on this one he couldn’t be more right. For the sake of the SNP (and the Yes movement) we hope its members heed the sage, albeit coded, advice of their President.
Last month this site ran an article entitled “All The Nice Greens Love A Rapist”, and two days ago the Scottish version of the party officially confirmed it.
Let’s take a moment off, folks. In our latest Panelbase poll, we also threw in a question just for fun, with genuinely no agenda at all, simply because we were curious to know what the answer was. Here it is:
By now many of you will have seen last night’s article on Craig Murray’s site, in which a current SNP branch convener revealed how the party machine is setting fire to all its own rules in a desperate attempt to secure the succession of Humza Yousaf.
Yousaf is the party establishment’s last hope of keeping all of its misdeeds in the last few years under wraps, and realising the magnitude of what’s at stake if he loses to Ash Regan or Kate Forbes, they’re abandoning all pretence of neutrality or integrity and throwing everything they’ve got at getting him elected.
Last month Wings broke a story about a “survey” being conducted by dozens of primary schools in the Aberdeen area in which children as young as nine were being asked about their sexual orientation and “gender identity”.
The charity LGBT Youth Scotland is currently the subject of a live police investigation over its involvement in a second major child-abuse scandal in little over a decade.
So you’d expect Police Scotland to be taking that pretty seriously, right?
100%Yes on Spoiler Alert: “Geoff Anderson, I apologize I got you confused with someone else.” Dec 10, 21:04
100%Yes on Spoiler Alert: “Its funny you’ve got a voice today, well done. Because on the constitutional question the SNP has you pissing your…” Dec 10, 20:48
Jay on Spoiler Alert: “Frearghas, thank you for making me think further than before. Returning to practical circumstances, if there were a channel of…” Dec 10, 20:12
Geoff Anderson on Spoiler Alert: “Times Sandie Peggie case Stu given credit Archived https://archive.is/SK4Cv” Dec 10, 19:56
Craig on Spoiler Alert: “https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c75v1d6npr1o Not in the habit of posting a BBC website link but Baroness Falkner is saying exactly what Rev said…” Dec 10, 19:42
Aidan on Spoiler Alert: “Quite 100% Yes, it might be different if Liberate were a genuine challenger to the SNP, but 6 months out…” Dec 10, 19:14
Lorncal on Spoiler Alert: “I really think it goes way beyond that now, Marie. Some are openly hostile to women’s rights and biased towards…” Dec 10, 18:45
agentx on Spoiler Alert: “On BBC Reporting Scotland tonight – Robin Moira White (“I was the first barrister to transition from male to female…” Dec 10, 18:44
Lorncal on Spoiler Alert: “Lord Hodge, soon to retire, is a Scottish judge in the Supreme Court, James, and the For Women Scotland case…” Dec 10, 18:42
100%Yes on Spoiler Alert: “So explain to us all how voting for liberate Scotland and the SNP remaining in power benefit Scotland and how…” Dec 10, 18:29
Lorncal on Spoiler Alert: “Bilbo, interference by the state in the legal system is totally against all democratic principles. Separation of state and judiciary…” Dec 10, 18:28
Alf Baird on Spoiler Alert: “In colonial societies the co-opted dominant national party: “helps the government to hold the people down. It becomes more and…” Dec 10, 18:25
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on Spoiler Alert: “WHAT’S GOING ON? “At great turning-points of world-history the relativity of our traditional measures and opinions manifests itself in a…” Dec 10, 18:24
Hatey McHateface on Spoiler Alert: “Naw, you’ve got that wrong. It was an episode of “Rumpole Of The Bailey” wot dun it.” Dec 10, 18:16
Lorncal on Spoiler Alert: “James, I would dearly love to to see an independent Scotland but just look across the water to Ireland to…” Dec 10, 18:16
Hatey McHateface on Spoiler Alert: “Good one, TH, but a smidge verbose. I asked Grok to summarise: “Vote SNP one and two for another 5…” Dec 10, 18:13
Geoff Anderson on Spoiler Alert: “Dr. Upton. The credible witness https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpqnq3gpe0vo” Dec 10, 18:05
100%Yes on Spoiler Alert: “Liberate Scotland, was a great idea if all Indy party’s got involved but they ain’t. Liberate Scotland constant call for…” Dec 10, 18:02
Hatey McHateface on The Valley Of The Dolls: “Poor old Bilbo. Congenitally unable to comprehend that working class and Tory voting have never been and never will be…” Dec 10, 18:01
Colin Dawson on Spoiler Alert: “Let’s not forget that Fife Health Board (and countless other public and private bodies) were following allegedly unlawful instructions issued…” Dec 10, 17:26
Marie on Spoiler Alert: “If judges can ignore the law why can’t Joe Public?” Dec 10, 17:23
Marie on Spoiler Alert: “Yep. The rule of law – who cares for that?? Not Scotland’s judges.” Dec 10, 17:20
Ex President Xiden on Spoiler Alert: “We are ruled by an elite class of jackasses.” Dec 10, 17:15
Aidan on Spoiler Alert: “Whilst they can harness 30/35% of the vote they’ll have enough income from short money, from a cut of their…” Dec 10, 17:10
twathater on The Valley Of The Dolls: “TBQH Karen and Lynn I think that ANY female that votes for the Scum Nonce Party OR the Green perverts…” Dec 10, 17:09
Bilbo on Spoiler Alert: “I know I’m contradicting myself with my original comment because this has all been caused by bad legislation passed by…” Dec 10, 16:48
robertkknight on Spoiler Alert: “Scotland…the logic-free banana republic brought to you courtesy of the invertebrate Swinney and his loathsome bottom feeders in the SNP.…” Dec 10, 16:47
Captain Caveman on The Valley Of The Dolls: ““… Didn’t your Nigel cite TV programmes from the seventies towards allegations that he made racist comments as a teenager…” Dec 10, 16:47
panda paws on Spoiler Alert: “” The nurse and her legal team are expected to disclose their next steps at a press conference on Thursday.”…” Dec 10, 16:46
twathater on Spoiler Alert: “First of all to Natasha Sterling thank you for this post it echoes what most right thinking persons will think…” Dec 10, 16:26