Ed Miliband must be relieved. With Ash Regan’s idea for an ‘independence thermometer’, a giant screen or billboard visually representing progress towards various aspects of independence, his ‘Edstone’ now has competition for the most ridiculous idea ever presented by a UK politician during an election campaign.
It is a measure of how absurd the contest to replace Nicola Sturgeon has become that Regan’s Heath Robinson-esque brainwave has caused only mild amusement. Regan followed up her inspiration by going full Braveheart and endorsing Alex Salmond’s idea of withholding the Stone of Destiny from the upcoming coronation. Quite how this benefits the people of Scotland or advances the cause of independence was left unclear. Still, at least Regan is offering a modicum of comic relief, a rare commodity from the usual granite-faced, permanently outraged Sottish Nationalists.
It is unsurprising that the SNP hierarchy has gone into defensive mode and attempted to make the hustings a ‘safe space’
Less amusing than the various gaffes and pie-in-the-sky promises is the growing controversy about how the contest is being run and the allegations that the SNP hierarchy is doing everything it can to favour one candidate: the supposed court favourite and front runner health minister Humza Yousaf. Influential pro-independence blog Wings Over Scotland has published several pieces arguing that the party is ‘abandoning all pretence of neutrality or integrity and throwing everything they’ve got at getting him elected’. Those most closely involved in doing ‘everything they can’, it suggests, are the duumvirate of Nicola Sturgeon and her SNP CEO husband Peter Murrell (also referred to as ‘The Murrells’).
As evidence, Wings has pointed out that the SNP’s constitution stipulates a four-and a half month contest. This time around, though, it has been truncated to just five weeks with a decision due by the end of March. Why the rush? Well, the abbreviated schedule means the new FM will have just enough time to lodge a challenge to the UK government’s Section 35 blocking of the notorious Gender Recognition Reform Bill (GRRB) before the April deadline. Only Humza Yousaf has said he will do this.
Separately, there are allegations that SNP members are being invited to speak directly to Humza Yousaf but not to the other candidates. MSP Mairi McAllan has sent out a Zoom invitation to Clydesdale members to put questions to Yousaf but there will be no opportunity to quiz his rivals. The former UK ambassador and now pro-independence blogger Craig Murray claims this breaches the party’s campaign rule 4.2 which stipulates that any party organisation organising an event during the election period must issue an invitation to all candidates.
This might be an oversight from an overly enthusiastic Yousaf fan less acquainted with the rule book than she ought to be. But it comes on top of the email sent out by SNP list MSP Emma Harper who somehow accessed the SNP’s South of Scotland membership list and sent two emails endorsing Humza Yousaf. This is a direct violation of the rule book. Harper was forced to apologize.
It has also been noted that Yousaf has appeared with placards using the same fonts and materials as party HQ from whence, it is suspected, they originated. Strange fluctuations in a poll in the pro-Independence newspaper The National and curiously repetitive pro-Humza tweets have also raised eyebrows and suggested Yousaf is getting some help – from bots. Joanna Cherry, the SNP MP, has claimed that ‘the party machine’ is backing Humza.
No doubt the Murrells and Yousaf would deny all of this and there is no suggestion that any of them have done anything improper. And to be fair, the Murrells are entitled to an opinion on who should be the next FM. Sturgeon’s comment that whoever that is should be judged on their values – made while the controversy over Kate Forbes’ Christian beliefs was at its height – was a sledgehammer of a hint as to who that wasn’t.
But even if we accept that the contest is, more or less, fair, serious questions remain over whether Peter Murrell should be able to preside over such an important election – at all. He is currently helping to handle an investigation into possible fraud at the SNP over alleged misdemeanours with regards to the party’s finances. To be clear, Murrell is not personally implicated in any way, nor has he, as far as we know, even been questioned, but his position as overseer of both the response to this investigation and the vote looks highly dubious.
Given all this pressure, the at times risible nature of the contest and pungent whiff of scandal surrounding the whole process it is perhaps unsurprising that the SNP hierarchy has gone into defensive mode and attempted to make the hustings a ‘safe space’ by banning the press. By ‘safe space’ they presumably meant safe from scrutiny, and ridicule.
It is a move that is in keeping with the party’s general policy on the management of its affairs throughout its sixteen years in power. It also marks a striking contrast with the big political story south of the border where Matt Hancock’s WhatsApp revelations have given us all unprecedented access to the inner workings of the UK government during the pandemic. It may be shocking and disturbing and at times farcical but at least it is, finally, out in the open, in the mainstream press.
Would that such exposure could be possible in Scotland. But in what has become a virtual one-party state and with that one party having spread its power and patronage throughout every institution in the country, it looks unlikely.
That is Scotland’s particular shame.
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