* Voting for Membership Support Convener opens TODAY and all current Alba Party members can vote.
* If I win, I will use my long experience as one of Scotland’s leading pro-independence bloggers to engage with members creatively and re-engage with inactive members to make it less likely that they will drift away and leave the party.
* I will also try to help ease some of the communication problems that have bedevilled the party.
* I support the democratic empowerment of *all* Alba members. Roughly half of the NEC are currently only elected by conference attendees – those voting rights should be extented to all members. All other national committees should also be elected by the whole membership, which is not the case at present. And all members should be able to vote on conference resolutions, regardless of whether they are in the hall or not – this is perfectly achievable by online vote.
* A fully democratised party will have a far better chance of attracting new members, who will know that they’re not just joining a fan club or a chat show.
* Only full democratic empowerment of Alba members can protect against a “Sturgeon / Starmer scenario” in which a future new leader comes in and bypasses the members to take the party in a new direction, for example by putting independence on the backburner. Once that happens it’s too late to put the genie back in the bottle – the only protection is to get the structures right *before* it happens.
