Dear oh dear. The SNP is not a happy place right now. Following yesterday’s spectacular defection from Lisa Cameron, Kate Forbes has today announced she will also be a no-show at SNP conference for the first time since becoming an MSP. Forbes, who narrowly lost hapless Humza earlier this year, plans to shun her party’s Aberdeen shindig and head instead stateside. Forbes says she has ‘longstanding engagements’ in the US, but her timing will raise eyebrows among the SNP establishment. Sunny climates or watching your party implode in the Granite City? Tough choice….
Forbes isn’t likely to be the only SNP politician snubbing Yousaf’s first party conference, senior nationalists tell Steerpike. ‘It is a stage-managed affair and I suspect that the turn out will be pretty much the remaining loyalists,’ one source said.
The event ‘isn’t really what it used to be,’ admitted Fergus Ewing MSP, announcing that he will not be going to Aberdeen either. Ewing was suspended last month after casting a vote of no confidence in junior minister Lorna Slater and has since criticised the First Minister’s leadership, saying that Yousaf must ‘radically change direction’ before the SNP faces ‘very serious decline’.
Alex Neil, former SNP health secretary, confirmed to Mr S that he will not be in attendance this year, wryly confessing: ‘I’m just going to watch paint dry at home.’ Angus MacNeil, now an Independent MP after being expelled from the party for a bust-up with former Chief Whip Brendan O’Hara, will also have nothing to do with the conference. And Ash Regan, the third candidate in the SNP’s now infamous leadership contest, is yet to decide whether she will head to Aberdeen. Perhaps Yousaf’s party will now regret suspending a number of their own politicians this year. If nothing else, the SNP will need them for the numbers…
The happy days of SNP unity appear to be well and truly over. Battle lines are being drawn suspect party insiders and Forbes’s conference no-show will serve as the catalyst for greater fragmentation of the party. Some, including Neil, have even suggested Yousaf needs to bring Forbes into the cabinet ‘as the deputy first minister’.
But as they continue fighting like Nats in a sack, one question remains on everyone’s lips: will the blessed Nicola, the woman whose resignation is responsible for the demise of her party, be there? Mr S reached out to the Dear Leader’s representatives on earth but thus far, no response. Shame…
Comments