ACTION for Independence (AFI), the fledgling party aiming to sweep up list seats in next year’s Scottish Parliament election, has attacked the Electoral Commission (EC) after it was told their registration would not be decided until next year.

Interim leader Dave Thompson said he wondered if “deliberate prevarication” had become an establishment weapon to derail their concept of maximising the Yes votes in the Holyrood poll.

AFI first attempted to register under the name Alliance for Independence, which the regulator knocked back because voters could be “misled”. The party went back to the drawing board and reapplied in October as Action for Independence, but after waiting for 11 weeks, they have been told the earliest a decision will be announced is the end of January.

Thompson, a former SNP MSP, told The National the establishment appeared to be frightened by their strategy: “The latest polls show that the SNP is on track to take a massive majority of the constituency seats, if not all of them, and that the SNP will, probably, get no regional list seats.

“This leaves these 56 seats extremely vulnerable to the unionists and we must make sure they do not sweep up most of them. That is why the smaller indy-supporting parties must come together in a ‘Max the Yes’ alliance, which is the basic concept of AFI. It looks like the UK establishment is scared stiff of that concept.”

George Galloway faced a similar problem when he set up the Alliance for Unity to fight the Holyrood election on a Unionist platform.

The EC rejected that name and he reapplied as All for Unity, which is also under consideration. They refused to directly address Thompson’s claims, but a spokesperson said: “As the registrar of political parties, the commission has a duty to ensure that it takes a fair and reasonable decision in line with the legal registration requirements.

“How long this takes depends on the facts and complexity of each application.”