Much excitement was provoked at the weekend by Michael Gove’s tumbling and bumbling on the BBC A MANDATE is an intangible thing. It is subject to different interpretations and thus complex to exactly describe. But then so is an elephant and you would still recognise one coming through your living room door. The elephant is now planted right slap bang in the middle of the Scottish Parliament. There is a clear mandate, an instruction by the people to proceed with indyref2. The people have spoken but will their call be answered? Not according to tone-deaf London politicians and their Scottish appendices. Apparently the election was a triumph for the Labour Party although they scored even less than their badly bruised colleagues south of the Border. The Liberals – or as we should learn to call them, Wee Willie Rennie’s LibDems – are celebrating their disappearance as a national party after 150 years while the Tory man in black has been shown the ref’s red card.
Sir John Curtice was speaking on the BBC THE path to an SNP majority is now “clearly closed”, Professor John Curtice has said. The top pollster’s calculations for the BBC predict that Nicola Sturgeon’s party will fail to gain the overall majority “they always denied they needed, but probably privately always craved”. Curtice projected that, with 65 seats needed to win a majority in the 129-seat Holyrood chamber, the SNP would win 63, the same as they won in 2016’s elections. The news came after the Tories managed to hold Aberdeenshire West, a key SNP target seat. He said that the possibility that the SNP return 64 seats cannot be ruled out, but “that the route to 65 is now clearly closed”.
Exclusive
Alba Party leader Alex Salmond said he would have no problem picking up the phone to Nicola Sturgeon ALEX Salmond’s Alba Party has confirmed the day it will release its first manifesto in the midst of “astonishing” international interest in independence, The National can reveal. The announcement comes the day after Salmond’s former party, the SNP, published its manifesto and just three weeks after the launch of the Alba Party itself. Since then, there’s been intense speculation about what the new Yes party will offer voters beyond their commitment to immediate independence negotiations with the UK Government.
Polls suggest Nicola Sturgeon s party will win the election THE next couple of weeks will see the election campaign step up a gear as the parties set out their policies and promises in their manifestos. Scottish Labour is due to be first up with leader Anas Sarwar expected to unveil his party’s key document to voters on Monday, April 12. Two days later it will be the turn of the Scottish Greens with co-leaders Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater due to make public the full details of their party’s election vows. As revealed in The National yesterday, the Greens are to restate their commitment to an independent Scotland joining the EU and will also propose that Scotland should play a bigger role on the global stage in readiness for independence.