A WAR of words has broken out between the fledgling Independence for Scotland Party (ISP) and Action for Independence (AFI) over a critical new blog.
Last month the ISP told The National it “won’t be joining with any other parties” after AFI made a renewed call for smaller independence-supporting sides to join with them.
The new organisations were formed just 11 months ago and aim to contest seats on the list at next year’s Scottish Parliament elections, with AFI seeking to form an alliance with other indy-backing parties.
The call came as Solidarity formally confirmed they will work with AFI. However, both the Scottish Socialist Party and the Scottish Greens indicated to this newspaper that they have no plans to do the same.
READ MORE: Do parties not understand how the Alliance for Independence will work?
In a new blog, ISP leaders say they’ve been “trolled” on Facebook and “castigated” by AFI supporters for “being spoilsports and splitting the vote”. The blog, republished in today’s National, states: “It would be completely chaotic and completely mad for us even to think about this, at this stage.”
But AFI has refuted the claims made by ISP, including that it “will not be on the ballot paper” after the Electoral Commission rejected its original Alliance for Independence name.
AFI says it has resubmitted and does not “anticipate further problems” with registration.
It also denies that membership would interfere with the selection and vetting of candidates and submitting its registration bid “late”.
The ISP says it is “not at all confident” that AFI will “make it onto the ballot paper”, but AFI said: “Given all of the above factual errors and misunderstandings, it is perhaps not surprising that they reach this conclusion.
“However, we consider it just as flawed as the rest of this fundamentally inaccurate blog post.”
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