SNP leadership campaign

[RoyalCorgi]

I thought it would be fun for the leadership campaign to have its own thread.

According to Wikipedia, the timetable for the election is:

"Nominations opened on 16 February, and will close on 24 February. Those nominated will then be put forward as options in a ballot of party members, which will open on 13 March, and close at noon on 27 March, with the result announced on the same day by the SNP's national secretary, Lorna Finn."

So quite a short campaign. I don't completely understand how the voting works - it's not first past the post, but a "type of single transferable vote", according to Wiki, which is clear as mud.

Kate Forbes seems to have lost some key supporters by saying she was opposed to same-sex marriage, which perhaps means some of them will transfer to Ash Regan. The only other candidate is our old chum Humza Yousaf, author of one of the most deranged and authoritarian pieces of legislation, the Hate Crime and Public OrderAct, to pass through a UK legislative body in the past 100 years.

Those of you in Scotland, how do you see this playing out?

Humza is sturgeon and Murrell's yes man.

He'll be voted in and then continue with Sturgeon's agenda.

The Guardian has Humza as favourite to win, Ash is barely mentioned.

It feels like the Tories and Europe, watching it play out. Craig Murray has written about Humza

www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2023/02/humzas-lies-on-gay-marriage/

According to a poll in the National, reported by Wings over Scotland, Forbes is in the lead, admittedly amongst ordinary people rather than SNP members.

wingsoverscotland.com/the-hand-of-the-state/#more-135581

That link is shocking @ResisterRex - I hope it's picked up on properly during the hustings process.

Current odds.

(Ash Denham is the same person as Ash Regan, unless I am highly mistaken?)

Does anyone know is it the other MSPs who get to decide or the membership or a mixture?

Membership - it's one member, one vote. Which makes it harder to predict the outcome, I think.

Craig Murray, ex British ambassador, seems a pretty reliable expert on these issues:

'The notion that a meeting with the Pakistani Consul General needed 19 days’ notice and could only be scheduled to coincide with the gay marriage vote – is such obvious nonsense it insults our intelligence and damages the moral stature of all those who parrot the lie.

Humza bottled the gay marriage vote and came up with a really unpleasant ruse to justify it, profiting from the suffering of someone on death row.

For him then to attack Kate Forbes for her views on gay marriage – which are at least honest – is sickening.'

Hope Useless wins as it should harm SNP the most.

Humza appears to be the most likely winner at the moment.

However, I don't know how long he will last. Is the election next year a definite?

I'm always nervous about this kind of statement! What if he wins and people love him? Or what if he wins, people hate him, and then they vote in a Labour administration that is just as hell-bent on introducing loopy self-id laws?

People are highly unlikely to love Yousaf, for several reasons. Mostly, he talks a lot of pish. He is apparently incapable of making any decisions. And while his feel-good fact-free rhetoric is probably modelled on Nicola's, he lacks her style and skill.

Scottish Labour, outside of Glasgow, are really barely existent.

The party most likely to benefit from SNP losing support are the Tories.

TBH whichever way this election goes I can't see the GRR getting through. I think self ID in Scotland is done.

I am a natural pessimist but I think you're right about this. Public opinion is overwhelmingly opposed to the GRR. You'd have to be mad to reintroduce it.

In Humza's position, I wouldn't be confident about winning. If he's as bad as you say, why would the membership vote for him? Ash is personable and has shown she has principles. She's also about the same age as Sturgeon, so the membership might think "We've just had one middle-aged woman make a success of being leader, so let's have another."

Yousaf can pretend to push for a repeal of Section 35, but the UK gov aren't going to grant it. He can rail a bit about how unfair it is and how it's undermining devolution. Then move on.

Forbes can meet with UK gov and ask for ways to make GRR compliant, which will effectively gut it and bring it back in line with UK law.

And Regan can chuck it in the bin.

If he's as bad as you say, why would the membership vote for him?

He's the 'continuity candidate' anointed by Sturgeon. He won't rock the boat.

The legal battle might go on for a really long time though. What if Yousaf's legal battle plods on for months by which point Starmer gets into power in Westminster and then gives the green light for the Bill to go ahead and replicates it across the UK. That's my worry.

Yes, Ash Denham=Ash Regan.

How can Alex Salmond be in the list, he isn't even in the SNP! John Swinney has said he isn't standing, and so far only 3 have said they actually are standing. So that's a very peculiar list!

Starmer knows that the s35 is correct though which is why he backtracked as well

It's not a list of candidates per se, it's just the odds bookies are giving on who people think will be the next first minister. People are even talking about George Galloway apparently, but it doesn't look like anyone is going to lay odds on him...

I think this is the beginning of the end for the SNP as a party in power.

This is reminiscent of Labour all those years ago.

They are targeting Forbes for Transphobia. This is going to be the deciding issue of the Leadership campaign.

I think the SNP is so thoroughly rotten and controlled by bigots (that's really the only way to describe the so called 'progressive' extremists), that the party is done for.

It doesn't really matter who wins. The electorate simply will not believe that a man can be a woman and any tolerance they may have had will slowly be eroded.

This isn't like the gay rights movement which was progressive and which over time is more and more supported by the general public.

This is a fundamentally rotten movement that is as damaging for trans people as it is for women and children.

As a Scot who does believe in the UK (don't live in Scotland), I do think this will be the end of independence for a long while. Just a few months ago I would have said it would happen in the next few years.

What I'm interested in is: who are the SNP membership? We know that the SNP MSPs are mostly supportive of the GRR and would probably vote for Yousaf. It seems clear that the electorate are anti-GRR - I don't know who they'd vote for, but my guess is it wouldn't be Yousaf. Apparently the SNP has 100,000 members. But are they more like their representatives in Holyrood, or more like the broader electorate?

Not sure the SNP still has a membership of 100,000 - it was around that just after the Referendum but apparently they have lost members recently and could be down to around 60,000