A supermajority is on the cards, but should we really need one?

One obvious difference between Alex ­Salmond and First Minster Nicola ­Sturgeon, is the one that receives the least attention. He is leading a new pro-independence party and she is running a country.

Much as we may wish to embrace independence tomorrow, devolution is still an ever-present reality, and managing its many challenges is a core responsibility of the First Minister. Salmond can afford to embrace audacious plans for change whilst Sturgeon is obliged to lead us through hugely trying circumstances and reach for change. These are not opposites nor are they a litmus test about independence, they are different stations on the seismic journey that Scotland has embarked on.

Like so many fissures in modern life, legitimate differences are often amplified and misrepresented by social media and the unrestrained attitudes and exaggerated language that these platforms callously exacerbate.

So, what did I see, and does it matter?

Firstly, the event was anchored by Alex Salmond, a figurehead around whom noise always seems to reverberate. My first instinct is that it looked a bit amateur, although a vast improvement on the party’s first public statements. That said, it was in tune with the Covid era we are living through, TV shows with no laughter-track, football matches with no crowds and public health briefings with journalists on poor connections shambling around at home bungling their way through highly loaded questions.

Coronavirus has reintroduced amateurism to the media. For example, I caught a brief glimpse of two established journalists Severin Carrell of the Guardian and Tom Gordon of the Herald, both asking questions entirely relevant to the event. What was abundantly clear, as I peered voyeuristically into their kitchens and home-based media is that neither is in a great position to mock the Alba Party about amateurism.

READ MORE: Alex Salmond's Alba Party on three per cent in first election poll

Nor was Alba alone in falling foul of amateur media. The most telling example of that failing of late was the so-called “Mike Oxsmells” scam that entrapped Scottish Tory Leader Douglas Ross during a Facebook live appearance. Watching him reflect on the hygiene of his own most private parts stands out as one of the most surreal moments in the history Scottish politics. What a truly awful week it was for Ross.

I concede that scams designed to trick politicians are puerile beyond belief, but they expose a deeper contradiction at the heart of this Covid election, namely the ghost in the machine. There is an ­unseemly rush to embrace new digital media, without a sufficient awareness of the many pitfalls that await.

Alex Salmond can charm and alienate in equal measure. This time round he was clearly enjoying sword fencing with old adversaries, greeting journalists as if it were a rekindled friendship forged in a previous war. Salmond’s bonhomie is an asset, but it disguises an underlying vengefulness, a desire to do battle only to triumph and not to elucidate.

What Salmond did get right and what lies at the core of the Alba Party is the use of his most dedicated followers. Rather than leave them at home to bristle on the periphery, Alba Party put bloggers were centre stage, mixed in with established journalists. It was a statement of our times.

It was inevitable that the press event would raise old and now familiar tropes about divisiveness, civil-war and pro-independence power struggles but Salmond was quick to quash the most obvious lines of enquiry, urging his supporters to vote for the SNP in constituencies and Alba on the regional list. He stressed that he would be voting SNP in his own constituency vote, “Because it is in the ­Scottish national interest to do so.” He is too ­cunning to say otherwise.

But what is far from clear at this early stage in the campaign is what impact if any Alba will have on the final composition of the next Parliament. Many ­gleefully rushed to pronounce them dead-on-arrival when a poll showed them ­operating from a low base of recognition. Then a second poll, albeit one with many health warnings, showed a significant jump to a level that would not only deliver seats, but deliver a so-called “supermajority”. A third poll by Opinium published last Thursday seemed to show them retreating to square one. The signs are not yet consistent.

DISAPPOINTINGLY for Alba, the polling also showed another route to the much-vaunted supermajority, the continued success of the SNP in government and a significant rise in the projected Green vote. It may be simply a case of party whose time has come as more and more people reflect on life and their locale in the final stages of lockdown, or it could be that Alba’s presence in the fray has highlighted the important choices available on the list.

The Greens have already disrupted common convention by approaching the election with co-leaders, Patrick Harvie and the Canadian-born Lorna Slater, an electromechanical engineer for Orbital Marine Power in Edinburgh, and so the near perfect person to communicate Scotland’s post-carbon energy opportunities.

Another challenge is out there. Very few people are wholly confident they understand the complexities of the list ­system. Even those that shout loudest struggle with the devilish arithmetic of the d’Hondt method. We are still at the baby steps of fully understanding a system that is predicated on highest averages and was designed in part to mitigate against the domination of a single party. The SNP have already blown that one apart and it maybe that a supermajority beckons, but it would be a brave psephologist that would guarantee it.

I must confess a tinge of nervousness of the term “supermajority”, which was boldly emblazoned on the car-cover hanging crumpled behind Alex Salmond. It may come with gestural self-confidence but there is a sting in its tail.

Scottish politics is a democracy already and should not need supermajorities to apply pressure or to enact legislation. I hope I am wrong, but I foresee lazy television journalists and news columnists demanding a supermajority for every piece of challenging legislation that passes through the parliament, in much the same way that they turned the phrase “once in a generation” into a totemic principle.

READ MORE: What independence supporters have learned from a busy week of Holyrood polling

We are now in full election mode. Postal voting cards are on their way, social distancing signs are being printed and party activists are leafleting door-to-door. The Covid lockdown remains a restraint but it has already delivered one welcome feature. Candidates are restricted from speaking to people, and so can no longer challenge the brutal statistics of an unflattering opinion poll by saying “well that’s not what I’m hearing on the doorsteps”.

I’m sure doorstep clichés will return one day soon, but for now it’s worth luxuriating in their absence. I’m not sure how Alba will influence event but I sense a Yes supermajority is in the air. At least that’s what I’m hearing on the doorsteps.