Party at war may pay a high price for chaos
THE civil war raging within the SNP has reached boiling point.
Each day brings fresh conflict as a party once renowned for its iron discipline tears itself apart.
It was a process firmly under way long before now – but the catalyst for the latest bout of internal turmoil is Alex Salmond.
In her campaign speech yesterday, a badly rattled Nicola Sturgeon condemned those who put ‘self-interest ahead of the country’s best interests’.
As a very thinly veiled swipe at her predecessor, it was instructive – Miss Sturgeon must rate him as a real threat, otherwise she would not have raised it.
Former health secretary Alex Neil has advised his colleagues to ‘calm down, respect each other’s point of view and recognise we are all fighting for the same thing, which is independence for our country’.
It seems something of a forlorn hope – the damage is done, and the SNP is in meltdown.
The Alba Party, whatever one thinks of it, has changed the parameters of this election campaign by forcing all participants to re-examine their tactics.
True, its latest signing – boxer Alex Arthur – may be a big hitter, but he’s far from a political heavyweight, and other Alba recruits are equally uninspiring.
Yet Unionists are right to be concerned that – as Mr Salmond suggests – his party could lead to a ‘super-majority’ in favour of independence.
That would be a retrograde step for Scotland and an abuse of the Holyrood voting system, which was designed to make parliament more representative of the electorate.
Most voters dread five more years of monomaniacal fixation with a constitutional question that was emphatically settled nearly seven years ago.
Miss Sturgeon, if Alba prospers and she is forced to accept Mr Salmond’s help after polling day, would become a figure stripped of all remaining credibility.
But if she were to reject it, and try to pretend Alba did not exist, she would risk losing grassroots support among those increasingly impatient for an escalation of the drive for independence.
As Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie has pointed out, it’s also possible that the relentless in-fighting will cause lasting damage to the separatist cause.
He said: ‘Moderate, reasonable people will be horrified…
‘They will also be horrified that, if they get their way, the next parliament will be dominated by two things: a never-ending argument between Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon and a never-ending argument about independence.’
It is estimated that as many as one in four SNP voters are not strongly in favour of Scexit – and could switch to the Tories, Labour or Lib Dems.
Many of those ‘soft’ Nationalist voters will be sick and tired of the toxic tribalism that now overshadows Miss Sturgeon’s threadbare pitch for another term.
A party obsessed with fomenting division is now at war with itself – and on May 6 it may pay a heavy price for its long record of chaos and failure.