Why (and how) the Alba Party should be choosing its electoral battles

Whatever my misgivings about Alba’s announcement yesterday in relation to the Rutherglen by-election, it’s important to challenge the narrative contained in the above tweet, because it’s entirely baseless.  Alba have in fact been standing in elections very extensively since they were founded two and a half years ago.  Every single voter in Scotland was given the opportunity to vote Alba at the 2021 Scottish Parliament election, because there were four Alba list candidates in every electoral region.  Roughly one-third of wards in the 2022 local elections had an Alba candidate, and there have since been a number of local by-elections in which Alba have stood.

But it’s not unusual at all for small parties to sensibly pick their battles. Don’t forget that Alba was the end product of years of agitation for the creation of a list-only party to attempt to “game the system” in Holyrood elections and dramatically increase the pro-indy representation on the list ballot while not harming the SNP at all on the constituency ballot.  The implicit logic of such a party is that it should only stand in proportional representation elections and in general should not risk splitting the Yes vote in first-past-the-post elections.  That principle is actually not especially limiting, because there are three tiers of electoral representation in Scotland – local council, Holyrood and Westminster – and only the latter is solely first-past-the-post.  History demonstrates how tough it is for a small party to gain more than a negligible number of votes in Westminster general elections, so much better to reserve your energies and resources for the other types of election in which both votes and seats can be more easily won.

Almost as soon as Alba came into being, matters were complicated by the defection of two MPs from the SNP who were always likely to want to defend their seats under Alba colours.  But again, squaring that circle is not rocket science.  You do it by pouring all your available resources for the general election into those two constituencies, and not standing elsewhere.  If a small party is going to defy gravity by winning seats in a first-past-the-post election, it’ll do so with a geographically-concentrated campaign.  That gives you the best of both worlds – you maximise your chances of holding those two seats while avoiding the harm of pointlessly splitting the pro-indy vote anywhere else.

Unfortunately, for the last two years there have been senior individuals within Alba intentionally trying to crank up expectations of the party taking the reckless step of putting up candidates across the board at the general election, even though that was not agreed Alba policy, or even the publicly stated preference of the leadership.  What I found so dispiriting about yesterday’s announcement is that it was the first time (to the best of my knowledge) that the leadership have ever nailed their colours to that particular mast.  The language used was explicit – if the SNP don’t agree to the Scotland United proposal, which they almost certainly won’t in the absence of a pre-election change of leader, then Alba will make a “significant”, “wide scale” intervention in the general election, “across Scotland”.  Those words are plainly not consistent with the common sense option of only putting up two candidates: Neale Hanvey and Kenny MacAskill.

Yesterday’s statement was essentially a grenade wrapped in a love letter.  It was attempting to minimise the negative impact of revealing a plan to potentially act irresponsibly and recklessly at the general election by simultaneously revealing a plan to first of all act responsibly and put country before party in a one-off by-election.  It was like an ultimatum: “we’ll act responsibly this one last time, but never again, unless you agree to our terms”.  Now, it may be that this is still just tactical positioning intended to pile pressure on the SNP and that it shouldn’t be taken too literally.  Perhaps just before the general election, Alba will once again say they’ll be the grown-ups in the room and withdraw all their candidates (apart from Hanvey and MacAskill) at the very last minute.  But the problem is that if you have a lot of party members who are itching for an all-out fight with the SNP, no matter what the consequences, and if you allow expectations to build sky-high that those members will be getting what they want, it’s very difficult to change course at a late stage even if you know that proceeding would be a dreadful mistake.  

My other concern about the announcement yesterday was the fairly unmistakeable subtext that Alba are giving the SNP a free run in Rutherglen in the hope that they will fail badly.  “The SNP say they want to fly solo, so let’s give them the maximum opportunity to do that and see how they get on” – nobody is going to miss the sarcasm in those words.  Such cynicism isn’t really the normal Salmond style.  I’d have expected him to say instead that the independence movement can’t afford to collectively indulge itself with even one failed by-election, and that he’ll fill the vacuum by standing himself, running a relentlessly positive campaign, and doing his utmost to ensure the media narrative about the final result is one of Alba on the way up rather than the SNP on the way down or Labour on the way to power.  If I’m honest, I’m extremely puzzled that he’s decided against that course of action, because a parliamentary by-election (yes, even a first-past-the-post by-election) presents a rare and special “free hit” opportunity for a charismatic politician to seize the moment and change the political weather. Another such potential opening for Alba may not crop up for years.

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My blogpost on Thursday, about the difficulty of keeping Scot Goes Pop going for much longer due to lack of funds, produced a substantial response.  Not all of it is visible on the fundraiser page itself because around half the donations were made directly via Paypal, but over £600 has been raised since I posted.  The fundraiser remains well short of its target, but I’ll certainly keep going for as long as I possibly can, and there’s still some sort of chance I may be able to keep going indefinitely, depending on what happens over the next few weeks.  Many thanks to everyone who has donated, and if anyone else would like to contribute, the fundraiser page can be found HERE.  Alternatively, direct payments can be made via Paypal – my Paypal email address is:  jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

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