You thought this SNP leadership election couldn’t get any more bizarre. It just did. Two of the candidates have effectively accused the leadership of their party of suspected ballot-rigging. Kate Forbes and Ash Regan have called for an independent auditor to be brought in to ensure the conduct of the ballot is ‘transparent, fair and equitable’. They clearly do not trust the party’s chief executive, Peter Murrell, husband of Nicola Sturgeon, to conduct this election honestly. Ash Regan said straight out that having Murrell in charge of the election is like ‘Carrie counting the votes for Boris’s successor’.
I’ve covered countless SNP internal elections over the last 30 years but I’ve never heard the party executive being accused of conflict of interest – still less allowing ‘dead people’ to have a vote, which is another of the Ash Regan campaign claims.
‘Keep an eye out for past members, lapsed members having their votes cast for them,’ said the former SNP minister, Alex Neil, this week. ‘No
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