Salmond’s Alba ‘breakthrough’ turns to breakdown as election dream dies

Alex Salmond breezily predicted his party would make a “political breakthrough” in the weeks running up to the local council elections.

But that hit the skids just hours after the votes started being counted when one of the party’s top hopes failed to be re-elected in Salmond’s north-east heartland.

Council veteran Brian Topping left the SNP last year just before the Holyrood election to defect to Alex Salmond’s new party.

A councillor for almost 40 years and well-known throughout the Fraserburgh and district ward in which he was standing, it would be the first major blow for the party.

This would trigger a series of disappointing results across the country, with Mr Salmond conceding shortly after 3pm that no Alba councillors would be elected.

Among them, Chris McEleny, general secretary of Alba, who defected from the SNP last year, failed to keep his seat on Inverclyde Council.

Mr Salmond chose to put a positive spin on it, focusing on the party winning more than 5% of first preference voters in a “number of wards”.

But that result is a far cry from the predictions he made while launching Alba’s manifesto at the Caird Hall in Dundee in

April, when he told activists he sensed a “political breakthrough”.

And it comes after the party failed to win any seats in the last Holyrood election, meaning its first two electoral showings have little to show for them.

The former first minister lay the blame for his own party’s failure to cut through with the electorate with the party he used to lead.

In statement released yesterday, he said “...the instruction from the SNP leadership not to use preferences to support other independence candidates now condemns most Scottish councils to control by unionists”.

That particular theory does not appear to have held back the proindependence Greens who were jubilant after sweeping up seats in councils they had never sat on before.

Remaining defiant, Mr

Salmond told journalists in Aberdeen that “building up a political party from nothing takes time”.

The Alba leader vowed to continue to lead the pro-independence party into the next Scottish elections in 2026 despite this year’s dismal showing.

It remains to be seen whether Alba will eventually disappear into the political wilderness – but certainly at least one councillor might have helped counter that claim.