Wee Ginger Dug: Will the Alba Party really tackle the Unionist seats?

Unpalatable as it may be for those of us who support independence to see a quarter of the seats in the Scottish Parliament occupied by Douglas Ross’s wee pals – who will cheerfully collude with the British Government in order to grab powers away from the Scottish Parliament and return them to Westminster – the reason they and representatives of the other anti-independence parties are there and blocking moves toward another independence referendum is because a not insignificant slice of the Scottish population keeps voting for them. That is how democracy works.

Other people who vote for parties that you or I personally find distasteful are still entitled to have their votes make a meaningful difference and gain representation. The purpose of the arcane workings of the additional member system used for Scottish parliamentary elections is to ensure the parties who contest them are allocated a share of the seats which is broadly in proportion with their share of the votes.

The system used for Holyrood elections is designed to ensure parties which pick up a considerable share of the votes in the first-past-the-post constituency vote but which don’t win any seats then get the seats their vote share warrants.

For all that we want fewer anti-independence MSPs in the Scottish Parliament, Scotland is a democracy and voters who lend their support to parties opposing independence have as much right as independence supporters to see their choices reflected in the Scottish Parliament.

READ MORE: George Kerevan: This could be the real impact of election success for the Alba Party

The only safe and principled way to reduce the total number of Holyrood seats which fall to the anti-independence parties is to persuade fewer people to vote for them. In turn, the only way to do that is to focus the campaign on the shortcomings and failures of the anti-independence parties and in particular the Conservatives and the danger that the Tories represent to the future of the devolution settlement.

That’s now going to be a lot harder to achieve because over the coming weeks our overwhelmingly anti-independence media will not be distracted from the ongoing drama of the dispute between Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon. The election campaign will be dominated by this issue, not the immense threat to Scotland that the right-wing English nationalism of the current Conservative Government at Westminster represents.

The launch of the Alba Party will not by itself reduce the total vote share received by anti-independence parties, indeed the great danger is that by ensuring the divisions between Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon remain front and foremost in the media throughout this crucial campaign, there is a very real possibility that some soft Yes and undecided supporters will be less likely to lend their votes to an independence movement which is internally divided.

Unless the Alba Party relentlessly and with a laser focus turn all their energies and efforts to an attack on the Conservatives and Labour it is not going to reduce the total anti-independence vote at all, and indeed this kind of focus is precisely what will be required in order to mitigate and minimise any reduction in the total pro-independence vote that the launch of this new party threatens.

ESSENTIALLY what the Alba Party offer is a strategy for divvying up the list vote in a way they hope will produce a larger number of pro-independence MSPs without necessarily increasing the total vote share received by pro-independence parties.

For the sake of all of us and for Scotland’s hopes of independence I sincerely hope Alex Salmond’s gamble succeeds, but it is just as possible that the existence of another pro-independence party on the list will simply deprive an SNP or the Greens from picking up a seat that they might otherwise have won.

The wildly hyped forecasts of Alba Party supporters that the new party could secure a pro-independence bloc of 80 or more MSPs are highly unlikely to be realised. Alba will almost certainly win some seats, but these are more likely to come at the expense of SNP or Green list seats rather than those of Unionists and will not substantially increase the total number of pro-independence MSPs. Above all, I am not sure Alex Salmond and his supporters truly appreciate the extent of the reputational damage he has suffered over the past year and so many voters who are not already deeply engaged with the independence campaign will be reluctant to vote for a brand new party with few policies, uncertain funding, a lack of any apparent internal democratic structure, and no track history.

​READ MORE: Alex Salmond has achieved his first aim with Alba but the main goal is a tall order

Beyond supporting independence and assisting Alex Salmond with his revenge against Nicola Sturgeon, it’s unclear what a vote for the Alba Party actually represents. For that reason many independence supporters will prefer to stick with the known quantities of the Greens and the SNP.

However, we are where we are. We must all make the best of the circumstances in which we find ourselves and do our utmost to ensure the upcoming elections give us the pro-independence majority that Scotland so desperately needs.

The best way to achieve that is to cease attacking one another and to focus our energies on highlighting the paucity of hope and vision offered by the anti-independence parties with the aim of minimising the support and vote share that they receive. Otherwise we are in serious danger of providing the history books of the future with a prime example of Scotland’s unfortunate tendency to wrest defeat from the jaws of victory.