Another one bites the dust. In the latest blow to afflict the hapless Humza Yousaf, his onetime leadership rival Ash Regan has spectacularly defected to Alex Salmond’s Alba party at their annual conference. The Spectator pondered back in February whether Ash Regan was Alex Salmond in disguise. And now she appears to be his heir apparent…
Salmond’s speech set the stage perfectly for Regan, a onetime SNP minister. Reminding his members that ‘there are many fine nationalists and many fellow Scots’ within the SNP, he told his party that ‘recruits from the SNP’ were needed if Alba wants to see success. Returning back to the podium after a standing ovation, he welcomed the party’s ‘latest recruit’.
Cheers filled the hall as Regan, widely known as the SNP’s ‘rebel’ MSP, made her way to the mic. Slamming her former party the Edinburgh Eastern MSP told the crowd that she was joining Alba ‘on the principle that independence cannot be a carrot that is deployed at election time, just to keep the voters voting for you’.
Addressing the hall, Regan said:
The reason I’m standing in front of you here today is because I believe that the SNP has strayed from the path to independence, and it’s time for Alba to get Scotland back on track.
Now, instead of our referendum, the SNP leadership is calling for something that they’re calling a democratic effect of a timescale where it seems to be sometime, or maybe never. They won’t even commit to a plebiscite poll at the next Scottish election. They’re saying they’re only going to consider it. Well, if they’re capable of reneging on a definite commitment to a referendum this year, what’s to stop them forgetting about a conditional commitment to an election poll in future years?
Urging independence supporters to ‘rise above’ the anger within the movement, Regan echoed Salmond’s calls for ‘street warriors not keyboard warriors’:
Let’s channel our collective energies into constructive action. And when it comes to the online world, a place where anger often festers, let’s replace vitriol with vision and hashtags with handshakes.
And addressing pro-indy supporters feeling disillusioned with the SNP government, Alba’s newest — and first ever — MSP said:
I’d like to take the opportunity to speak to any yes voters that might be watching this at home, and particularly to anyone that’s feeling politically homeless right now. Alba is ready to pick up the baton and to do what is needed to achieve independence as a matter of urgency.
Is it much of a surprise? Mr S thinks the signs have always been there — despite the Edinburgh Eastern MSP telling the Herald in March that she was ‘not at all’ interested in being the first MSP for Alba. However Regan did not attend the SNP’s recent party conference and, at the start of the year, admitted to The Spectator: ‘I’ll work with all the pro-independence parties. I want to get the band back together.’
Rumours about who might go next are rife. Steerpike’s sources tell him that Joanna Cherry is ‘100%’ not planning to defect while Independent MP Angus MacNeil, who was recently expelled from the SNP, has ‘no plans’ to defect. Douglas Chapman, former party treasurer, has told the Scotsman he also has ‘no plans’ to jump ship. So, following the defection of a former minister the question remains: who will be next to quit Humza Yousaf’s team?
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