The case for thinking this contest is winnable for Kate ForbesI agree with a fair bit of Craig Murray's latest blogpost, but there's one part I'll pick up on, because it's not actually the case that there have been no membership-wide votes in the SNP for twenty years. There have in fact been three depute leadership elections since 2014, and I remember them well because I voted in all three. On the face of it, the outcomes do not appear to bear out Craig's suspicion that there is a tide of radicalism within the SNP membership just waiting to burst forth...
2018:
1st) Keith Brown
2nd) Julie Hepburn
3rd) Chris McEleny
2016:
1st) Angus Robertson
2nd) Tommy Sheppard
3rd) Alyn Smith
4th) Chris McEleny
2014:
1st) Stewart Hosie
2nd) Keith Brown
3rd) Angela Constance
The 2018 result almost gives the impression that SNP members were deliberately ranking the candidates from least radical to most radical on independence strategy. The most radical candidate of the lot, Chris McEleny, finished last on both occasions he stood, and although his vote increased markedly between 2016 and 2018 as dissatisfaction with the leadership's over-caution grew, many of his supporters have since followed him to the Alba Party and thus can't vote in this election. (I'm in that category myself.) So it might almost be assumed that The Trendies, ie. the Sturgeon-aligned youthful identity politics obsessives who want decades-long political careers and don't want independence getting in the way of that, are in the ascendancy in the membership, and that Humza Yousaf is thus bound to win.
I'm actually not at all sure that's right - after all, Alyn Smith is the undisputed "Daddy" of the soft unionist, identity politics wing of the SNP, and he only finished a distant third in 2016. I think what actually happened on all three occasions is that SNP members picked the candidate they knew best, liked most and instinctively trusted. So that resulted in them going for an establishment choice, but I don't think it should be inferred that any of the winning candidates would have suffered if they had offered a more radical independence prospectus - in fact, if they had done, they might have won by an even greater margin. It's just that being strong on independence isn't sufficient in itself - the members will always choose on personal qualities first. All other considerations are just the fine-tuning.
That would fit in with the analysis mentioned in The National that 70% of SNP members are over the age of 50 and not as socially liberal as might be assumed. There are reasons why the membership have leaned towards establishment candidates in recent years but those reasons may have little to do with identity politics issues or a perverse desire to kick independence into the long grass. Which would be great news for Kate Forbes, because she's just as 'establishment' as Humza Yousaf in that she's a very senior member of the government, and is equally as well known to members. So if Yousaf and Forbes start on a level playing field in that sense, and if Forbes' social conservatism isn't necessarily a barrier, is there any reason to doubt that SNP members might just come to the same conclusion that the general public are expressing in opinion polls - ie. that Forbes is by some distance the more likeable and trustworthy of the two, and is thus the most deserving of support?
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Source: The case for thinking this contest is winnable for Kate Forbes (//)