THOUSANDS of SNP members are descending on Glasgow today for the start of the party’s annual conference.
But all eyes will be on just four of those members this morning, with the result of the party’s depute leadership contest due at 10.30am. It’s been five months since Stewart Hosie indicated he would be stepping down from the position.
In that time the four contenders, Angus Robertson, Tommy Sheppard, Alyn Smith, Chris McEleny have travelled the country, taking part in 32 hustings, each lasting two hours, speaking to around 4,000 activists.
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Sources indicate that, with a turnout of around 50,000, the race is firmly between leader of the party at Westminster Angus Robertson and his Westminster colleague Tommy Sheppard.
McEleny, the Inverclyde councillor, was the candidate with the lowest profile, but first to announce his intention to run. He’s hoping to be at conference on time, but when The National spoke to him yesterday he was somewhere in Slovakia trying to get home following Scotland’s dire world cup qualifier.
“I’ve been keeping an eye on the polls and the polls have told me I’m not going to win,” he says.
However, this campaign, he says, has become “more than an election”.
“I might not win, but the arguments I’ve made at the hustings have won the debate. There’s a hunger for community politics”.
On that, his rival Smith agrees: “There has been a consensus allowed to emerge in terms of the idea about where the party needs to be heading. This has been a massive internal listening exercise.”
Sheppard said the four would still be friends after the results were in: “It’s gone very well, possibly a little long, but it’s been a dignified process.”
He adds: “What I’m most gratified about, even though I’m typical of a lot of new members, it never became divided like that, I was getting a lot of support from older hacks, telling me ‘we were arguing what you’re arguing 20 years ago. Win or lose these things are on the agenda’.”
Robertson said the SNP’s contest had been a “real example to the other political parties in the UK”.
“What we do know is that our party remains united with a positive vision for Scotland. Whatever the result, we’ll have a strong leadership team that continues to stand up for the people of Scotland.”
Around 3,000 members are attending the conference. The surge in membership after the 2014 referendum now means the SECC in Glasgow and the AECC in Aberdeen are the only venues in Scotland big enough for the party’s conference.
Deputy First Minister John Swinney said the SNP were continuing to go from “strength to strength”.
“Our membership has more than quadrupled since the independence referendum, we won almost every single Scottish seat in last year’s General Election, and in May we won an historic third term in office .
“This weekend will see the SNP set out our vision for the tolerant, inclusive and economically thriving Scotland that we are determined to protect from an increasingly intolerant, xenophobic and economically reckless Tory Government at Westminster.”
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