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?

Shona Robison announced as Deputy First Minister. The main driver of the GRR Bill and the person who said the following (laughably false) statement. I suspect the Greens have had a hand in that.

The right side of history are delighted.

Has it never occurred to them that they might not be pretending?

They are turned on by dressing as a woman and a sexual predator?

Of course that is not true for all TW, but it's back to the age old argument - how the fuck do know, and does it really matter as there is also the massive loss of dignity and privacy if a male now determines a single sex female space is his for the taking.

2 numpties as FM / DFM who are controlled by extremist numpties of the Green Party- I don't reckon we really have much to worry about 🤣

Shona Robison is a bloody disgrace. She's not had the guts to show her face since Isla Bryson, how on earth she is going to expect to be taken seriously I do not know.

What I had forgotten is that Humza was bound to stuff his government full of the absolute worst people.

Sam Cowie, who alleged abuse at LGBTYS:

'remember that time you passed my disclosure about some of the things that happened to me to a team who worked with the charity I was complaining about? You are a disgrace and I, and others, are fully aware of your incompetence. Game on'

https://twitter.com/wundt_vil/status/1640747719655391236?cxt=HHwWiIC8wfTWjcUtAAAA

I would have thought that they should have brought in someone who would be more appealing to the members who voted for Forbes / Regan.

I can't see this appt doing anything but dividing the SNP more (it's bloody brilliant)

But this is linked to the Green Party definitely.

But why? What do they hold over them? It makes no sense. They could govern as a minority government. Being controlled by the Green Party is not going to win them votes or please their members.

The (I suspect mainly Tory) below the lines posters on The Times , Scotland are delighted too.

Lol Shona Robinson? He really is as big a muppet as I took him for

Where is this delightful screen shot from?

What a cesspit

If he has to step down, say a bizarre scooter accident, would she be left in charge?

https://twitter.com/PolitlcsUK/status/1640757092200902657

Kate Forbes resigns. The SNP is fucked.

Well that was foolish!

Confirming my suspicions that he's the Scottish Truss.

By Forbes or Useless?

Oh I do like a good schism

This is really interesting. The SNP was much further to the right in its early days (and of course let's absolutely not mention the war and which side its lunatic fringe supported then) I suppose because the majority party in Scotland then was the Conservatives.

Are they going to acknowledge there are Tartan right wingers and get them on board or will they continue to be an extreme left wing party?

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/523d9340-cd80-11ed-adc8-dcfa63cb4163?shareToken=65a593a80c8ca36d50d55e945dbac5ed

Ha me too

See Corbyn and Starmer goings on

@NatashaDancing

Someone more sensible that yousless would have realised that they needed to bring the party together and offered Kate a decent role

Anybody less sensible than yousless would have roots and produce chlorophyll.

What a petty man.

Have just seen the latest hashtag on Twitter - #ShonaShitesOnWomensRights 😄

Are they going to acknowledge there are Tartan right wingers and get them on board or will they continue to be an extreme left wing party?

The SNP is not an extreme left wing party and never has been. Until the 1980s it was centre-right with a small left minority (Alex Salmond was actually expelled for a time for being associated with the left fringe).

When Labour moved to the right under Blair, the SNP moved left to fill the gap and suck up ex-Labour voters. People in Scotland are still voting for the same sort of centre-left social democratic politics they have done for 70 years, just the label has changed.

Since 2014 the SNP is moving to the right again – its superficial wokery is a distraction from increasingly neoliberal politics.

'Blair McDougall, the strategist who led the pro-UK campaign in the independence referendum, had this reaction: “Nearly half of SNP members just voted for the small-government, low-tax, pro-austerity, anti-gay marriage, anti-choice, anti-single parent candidate. Don’t ever darken my door with your ‘red Tories’ shit ever again.”'

Tis indeed interesting.

Yousaf's decision is really odd.

If he had an ounce of sense, he ought to have been trying to paper over the schism and bring the party back together. That would have been the statesmanlike, sensible thing to do - be the bigger man. Instead, he's thrown it back in Forbes' face and ramped up bad feelings for the larger half of the party that didn't vote for him. And it seems he's not even going to pretend to address the issues with NEC and leadership that have festered over the past few years. I can't see the party surviving such massive cracks for very long.

I'm also a bit baffled by Forbes' dramatic exit. I rather get the feeling she just isn't into it at all. Reversing hard now the party has revealed what kind of a ghastly clown-car slow-motion crash it's going to be? I don't blame her, tbh. I wouldn't want to be in government as it unravels.

Sorry if this has already been discussed and not that it makes any difference now, but is it likely that enough SNP members bailed over the GRR who, if they'd stayed, could have got Kate over the line?

Yes. It appears that 10,000 left in the first 3 months of 2023 which would easily have taken Kate over the line.

I was thinking this earlier. 40% of the party voted for the "homophobic and transphobic" candidate. 11% voted for the "transphobic" candidate.

The SNP have always said they are a broad church. This notion that the membership were very left wing and "progressive" was always smoke and mirrors.