by Richard A » Mon Mar 27, 2023 8:42 pm
Yes, the relentless painting of Kate Forbes - the only candidate, as far as I know, who speaks Gaelic - as a homophobe clearly worked. I watched a 10 minute interview with her on STV (thanks to You Tube) in which little else was covered. And one of my colleagues, who did her PhD at Strathclyde, also focused solely on that: "She's a homophobe and she doesn't try to hide it." And as Lianachan also said, Ash Regan was efficiently airbrushed out.
It'll be interesting to see what happens next. From what Lianachan says, Hamza Youssaf will likely prove the SNP's answer to Keir Starmer: a "steady" centrist. Whether he will purge SNP of those he sees as too radical in the way that Starmer continues to work at with Labour remains to be seen. The flood of people leaving the SNP is a decided déjà vu of what happened to Labour under Starmer. The difference is that Alba, although small now, offers such people an alternative; it'll be interesting to see how many of them take it.
In England, with Labour, it's much less clear cut. Not happy about Starmer refusing to consider any attempt to rejoin the European single market? Well, the only real answer is the Lib Dems. But don't count on them to take real action to deal with the inequalities in this country. And the Greens, who have moved from being solely focused on environmental issues to being a more generally progressive party, still remain very much a fringe. We're still some way off any prospect of what Arneb and his compatriots would call a traffic light coalition, even though it would be good for the country.