SNP in meltdown but threat remains

DEEP-sEatED divisions have festered within the sNP for years – and now it’s in the grip of civil war.

the meltdown continued yesterday as Nationalist MP Neale Hanvey defected to alex salmond’s breakaway alba Party.

Former justice secretary Kenny Macaskill, representing East Lothian, is another highprofile alba recruit, helping to turn a splinter group into a credible threat to the sNP’s hopes of electoral success.

true, alba is a ragtag bunch of politicians who are either past their best – or have serious question marks hanging over their conduct.

Mr Hanvey was suspended by the sNP during the last General Election campaign after it emerged he had used anti-semitic language on a social media post in 2016.

It’s a backward-looking outfit led by a man who has admitted to serious shortcomings in his own behaviour while he held the highest office in the land.

But alba has more MPs than scottish Labour or the Greens, meaning it can’t be written off. as for Nicola sturgeon, she insists that Mr salmond is a ‘gambler’, adding: ‘He makes big claims which often don’t stand up to scrutiny.’

that is beyond doubt – but didn’t she stand by him as his loyal deputy for seven years? she vouched for him time and again, and didn’t ever disclose her misgivings about his tendency to make ‘big claims’ with little or no foundation.

Is this a recent realisation, and if not when exactly did the scales fall from her eyes, revealing the truth about her erstwhile mentor? Presumably it was after 2015, when she said that having worked with him for 25 years, she believed he did not have a ‘sexist bone in his body’ – and ‘nobody in [her] political career’ had been more supportive.

Whatever the truth, it’s undeniable that the sNP hierarchy are badly rattled. a pro-independence ‘super-majority’ raises the prospect of Miss sturgeon having to rely on back-up from a man who is now her sworn enemy.

Mr salmond believes they should be able to put their differences behind them to further their shared cause. Yet only weeks ago he accused Miss sturgeon’s inner circle of orchestrating a smear campaign with the aim of having him imprisoned.

the separatist movement is now a soap opera – its main protagonists reduced to bare-knuckle combat as a party once famed for its internal discipline descends into internecine warfare.

Ordinary voters will be bemused or more likely sickened by this score-settling – their priorities are holding onto their jobs and making sure their children get a decent education.

Neither the sNP nor alba promise anything more than another long spell of constitutional obsession.

How can we trust either of them when their sole aim is to game the system and smash apart a Union that has flourished for more than 300 years?

In this context, it’s heartening to hear Douglas Ross’s clear-eyed analysis of the situation.

His proposal for a Better together-style alliance to head off a separatist majority is sound, but the other opposition parties have rejected it.

that was short-sighted but, as Mr Ross writes in today’s Mail, it’s not too late for them to wake up to the possibilities of a co-ordinated approach.

In some cases, it’s possible the tories could agree to stand down their candidates if another Unionist party had a greater chance of winning the seat.

the stakes are simply too high for pro-UK politicians to bury their heads in the sand.

they should call a temporary halt to hostilities – or risk handing the Nationalists a victory that would put the future of our cherished Union in jeopardy.