2023 Scottish National Party leadership election

[Coldstream]

Robertson and Swinney must have some skeletons in their closets (or quite a serious lack of confidence) if they thought they couldn’t beat these 3.

[JimJamUK]

Just watching the Sky News debate now. Regan comes across as light on detail but does well pointing out the flaws in the other candidates. Yousaf comes across as a typical politician. Case in point, when questioned by Regan about how much involvement he really had in the “successful” Queensferry Crossing, he immediately accuses Regan of attacking the SNP’s record in government, when she asked him about skipping a vote on gay marriage, he accuses her of doing Alba’s dirty work. Forbes seems unwilling to give straight answers to a lot of questions, but otherwise appears fairly competent and comes across as a nice and thoughtful person. Her social conservatism remains a major problem, but perhaps she is nonetheless the least worst option for the SNP?

[CumbrianLefty]

Still think that is Yousaf, the chances of Forbes doing a Truss if she wins are maybe underrated (and lets be honest, few thought Liz would be *quite* as catastrophic as she actually was beforehand)

Forbes as leader may well mean the chances of a reverse 2015 for the SNP become non-negligible.

Do they really want to take that risk?

[Torrain]

Oh - didn't realise tonight's debate on the BBC was a hustings format - first debate to even have an audience. Will be interesting to see how it plays out.

Edit: Eh.

[afleitch]

Oh - didn't realise tonight's debate on the BBC was a hustings format - first debate to even have an audience. Will be interesting to see how it plays out.

Edit: Eh.

I chose not to watch it. Unlike a similar debate the BBC had during the Tory leadership campaign, this one was not composed of party members and supporters only. Which I guessed would have been the case when it was first announced.

[Torrain]

Oh - didn't realise tonight's debate on the BBC was a hustings format - first debate to even have an audience. Will be interesting to see how it plays out.

Edit: Eh.

I chose not to watch it. Unlike a similar debate the BBC had during the Tory leadership campaign, this one was not composed of party members and supporters only. Which I guessed would have been the case when it was first announced.

That certainly showed from some of the questions asked. I get where the BBC were coming from - it was after all pitched by them as a debate about Scotland’s next FM. And it did give a voice to some more critical voters, which definitely created a different environment to the hustings.

But it created a really weird dynamic. Sometimes the audience asked questions about how they felt they’d been failed by the government (waiting lists/deposit return scheme, etc) but candidates had to play to the membership over the airwaves, rather than those in the room, and talked rather gung ho about how proud they were of their record. Created an odd vibe.

Really, if they were going to do it in this format, they might have been best to do the hustings-style debate at the start, and save the STV-style cross-examination debate for the end.

[CumbrianLefty]

Robertson and Swinney must have some skeletons in their closets (or quite a serious lack of confidence) if they thought they couldn’t beat these 3.

Swinney has been there, done that. Robertson - well yes, there are rumours of this sort.

[Torrain]

A subplots in this campaign has been the growing skepticism within the Regan and Forbes camps of the SNP party infrastructure, as led by Peter Murrell - SNP CEO and Sturgeon’s husband. This has become a bit of a dividing line - Regan and Forbes are pushing for Murrell to stand down, or even recuse himself, while Yousaf has said that Murrell is a “vote winner”, and his future is his own matter to decide.

The complication here, is that there’s an ongoing police investigation into Murrell’s allocation of £600,000 donated to the party for use in a future referendum, as well as a large personal loan he made to the party. Neither Murrell, nor Sturgeon will confirm whether they share a joint bank account, which could rope her into the situation. All that to say that, Murrell’s in a shaky enough situation that he’s become newsworthy in his own right.

Regan has gone full-out on this angle in recent days, and likes to suggest that Murrell overseeing the contest as CEO is the equivalent of “Carrie Johnson counting the votes in the race to succeed Boris.” This has escalated to tacit suggestions of vote-rigging, and the language is a little Trumpian. Obviously, these sorts of complaints are most common from candidates about to lose badly.

I do think it’s a little weird no one knows how many members there are - Stephen Flynn certainly says he doesn’t, and the candidates apparently don’t either - leading to today’s joint Forbes-Regan open letter, demanding access to this information. Again, doesn’t sound like the act of a confident campaign, but isn’t entirely unreasonable as a request. They’ve gone about it in a rather public way though…

Edit: based on a new statement from a spokesman, it appears the Yousaf team asked for access to this information to be shared yesterday - but did so privately, compared to the other candidates’ public demand.

Edit 2: Forbes campaign manager demands “independent auditors oversee voting process and the final result”. SNP NEC now scheduled to meet tomorrow. Hard to see how that doesn’t end with the figures being released, now that all candidates are asking for them.

[Torrain]

According to BBC Scotland, today’s proposed NEC meeting is now scrapped, and the party’s national secretary has instead emailed members some kind of consultation on whether they should release the membership numbers?

Regan said last night that unless she had the numbers by 3pm today, she would call a press conference outside the Scottish Parliament to “discuss matters further”, so I guess that *might* happen now.

[afleitch]

According to BBC Scotland, today’s proposed NEC meeting is now scrapped, and the party’s national secretary has instead emailed members some kind of consultation on whether they should release the membership numbers?

Regan said last night that unless she had the numbers by 3pm today, she would call a press conference outside the Scottish Parliament to “discuss matters further”, so I guess that *might* happen now.

News to me if true as I'm on the mailing list.

[Torrain]

According to BBC Scotland, today’s proposed NEC meeting is now scrapped, and the party’s national secretary has instead emailed members some kind of consultation on whether they should release the membership numbers?

Regan said last night that unless she had the numbers by 3pm today, she would call a press conference outside the Scottish Parliament to “discuss matters further”, so I guess that *might* happen now.

News to me if true as I'm on the mailing list.

My bad on the phrasing front - should have just posted the tweet. Glen Campbell’s saying that the NEC members have been emailed the proposal, and are being asked whether the information should be released.

[afleitch]

According to BBC Scotland, today’s proposed NEC meeting is now scrapped, and the party’s national secretary has instead emailed members some kind of consultation on whether they should release the membership numbers?

Regan said last night that unless she had the numbers by 3pm today, she would call a press conference outside the Scottish Parliament to “discuss matters further”, so I guess that *might* happen now.

News to me if true as I'm on the mailing list.

My bad on the phrasing front - should have just posted the tweet. Glen Campbell’s saying that the NEC members have been emailed the proposal, and are being asked whether the information should be released.

Good.

That's probably quicker than having a meeting. Less the meeting also be questioned as impartial.

[Torrain]

https://mobile.twitter.com/KieranPAndrews/status/1636383218269298689
Means the party has almost halved since their 2019 peak of 125,691 members. Also of note - NEC have been told the party had 82,598 members in December 2022, implying a 10,000 drop in members in the past three months.

Glad they got there (eventually) and provided this information.

[CumbrianLefty]

Now, that is interesting - didn't think their numbers would have dropped by quite as much.

Though this does seem to be a time of "retrenchment" for British political parties more generally, following the upward trend in membership across the board from the early 2010s onwards.

[afleitch]

https://mobile.twitter.com/KieranPAndrews/status/1636383218269298689
Means the party has almost halved since their 2019 peak of 125,691 members. Also of note - NEC have been told the party had 82,598 members in December 2022, implying a 10,000 drop in members in the past three months.

Glad they got there (eventually) and provided this information.

There.

We have the useless information they all wanted that tells us nothing. Though if 10,000 walked from December to March, I don't think that's what two of the three candidates wanted to hear.

[Torrain]

https://mobile.twitter.com/BBCJamesCook/status/1636385968570908679
Shades of Sunak asking a homeless man “do you work in business?”

[Zinneke]

I'd never been lucky with girls, I confess
Don't know who to blame for my lack of success
'Cause even with ones up the back of a bus
There was always the risk of a slap in the puss!

[Torrain]

https://twitter.com/nickeardleybbc/status/1636797947013738496

[Torrain]

Some context: Foote spent February rubbishing a story in the Sunday Mail that 30,000 members had left the party, calling the story "drivel" and "tartan bollocks", doubling down on the party line at the time:

The 30,000 figure that was reported is not just flat wrong, it’s wrong by about 30,000.

As the SNP clearly stated when asked, fewer than 300 members have left the party over the period and they have been replaced by the same number of new members.

This story is both malicious and wholly inaccurate. Fortunately, few people are gullible enough to believe it.

Either Foote lied, or he was lied to by someone senior. He’s clearly alleging the latter - which has now been tentatively accepted by SNP HQ. They've released their own statement seemingly admiting Foote was mislead by someone else within the party - but won’t elaborate. They also make the *interesting* claim that because they disagree with Mail article's attribution of membership loss (to GRR and waning Indyref2 enthusiasm), it wasn't really misleading to suggest their membership had not declined.

[Logical]

Amazed at how SNP's wheels has completely fallen off in such a short time.

[TheTide]

Amazed at how SNP's wheels has completely fallen off in such a short time.

And yet, there is still no particular sign that it's in electoral danger.

[Coldstream]

Sturgeon deserves far more credit than she’s getting that she was able to keep this clown car on the road for 9 years.

[Torrain]

https://mobile.twitter.com/heraldscotland/status/1637018925203353600

[Torrain]

Murrell has resigned, with immediate effect. He had been party CEO since 1999.
https://mobile.twitter.com/paulhutcheon/status/1637062030011006976

[MacShimidh]

The speed with which things are unravelling is just incredible - for the last five years (at least) there’s been the sense that disquiet was brewing in the party, but for it to all come tumbling out at this precise moment is nightmare fuel for the SNP. Sturgeon clearly deserves credit for keeping things together this long, but I don’t think she can escape all the blame for the wheels coming off this quickly after her resignation.

I always thought the Tories had the most spectacular meltdowns but this is a different level!