There are two drivers behind my support for Scottish Independence.

The first and most obvious is to see our ancient land restored to the place it held so long in the community of free and self-governing nations, and end the colonial exploitation of our people and resources.

The second is to destroy that Imperialist rogue state, the United Kingdom. With the UK actively participating in the Gaza genocide through supply of arms, intelligence, military assistance and diplomatic cover, that need has become ever more acute.

Were that not bad enough, the London government is now overtly militarist and looking to provoke conflict with Russia which could lead to nuclear holocaust. There is something in the UK nationalist soul which has an addiction to war, and Keir Starmer stands in the long line of British politicians who look to increase their dire domestic popularity ratings by killing people abroad.

It is a matter of deep sadness to me that the formerly radical and pro-Independence Scottish National Party has become a classic example of a local colonial puppet elite serving the interests of the colonisers and anxious to adopt conspicuous markers of loyalty, in order to continue to benefit personally from their position in the London-ruled political Establishment.

We therefore have the Scottish National Party seeking to outdo the UK Labour Party in its militarism and commitment to needless conflict with Russia, absolutely against the interests of Scotland.

Is this what you voted for, SNP voters? pic.twitter.com/NwlgkEftcm

— Wings Over Scotland (@WingsScotland) March 5, 2025

The SNP is massively infiltrated by the UK and US security services, including at senior levels. Plus many of its leaders are easily captured by the wealth and circumstance coming from their position within the UK state.

The SNP was finished as a force for Independence when Sturgeon accepted that Scotland could only exercise its right of self-determination with the permission of London.

If you consider it coldly and logically, it cannot be a right of self-determination if it requires the permission of somebody else to exercise it.

So for me the SNP is trash, useless, a vehicle for self-enrichment of some of the most repulsive parasites of the political class.

As the SNP had succeeded in becoming the automatic recipient of the votes of the large majority of those Scots who want Independence, that is a real conundrum for progress. It is particularly galling that, now we finally have achieved a consistent and growing majority in favour of Independence, politics remains dominated by the SNP, who have no intention whatsoever of doing anything about it.

Which is where Alba comes in, the new pro-Independence movement founded by former SNP leader and Scottish First Minister, the late Alex Salmond.

I am a member of Alba, the fundamentalist Independence party which is also anti-NATO, anti-neoliberal, anti-monarchy and anti-EU membership.

I might perhaps clarify that I am now very firmly anti-EU, given its extraordinary anti-Palestinian and anti-Russian positions and its plans for massive military expansion. The EU has morphed into something very sinister indeed.

Alba is a very small political party. In Council elections it consistently pulls in low single-figure percentages, as it did in the few seats it contested in the last Westminster election.

Alba’s significance lay in that it was founded by Alex Salmond, former First Minister of Scotland and former Leader of the SNP, and the man who almost brought about Scottish Independence in the 2014 referendum.

After Alex resigned the leadership following that referendum, his successor and protege, Nicola Sturgeon, immediately set about destroying Salmond’s reputation while moving the focus of the SNP decisively away from Independence and into identity politics.

A conspiracy orchestrated by Sturgeon, through her Chief of Staff Liz Lloyd, brought in a number of Sturgeon’s close allies and confidantes to make sexual assault allegations against Salmond – of all of which he was acquitted, following a trial before a majority female jury.

Salmond was into the third year of building up his new Alba Party from scratch when he recently died suddenly, aged 69.

Despite losing Alex, there should be a real political opportunity for Alba. A radical Scottish Independence Party with the positions listed above, accords with the views of a very substantial proportion of the Scottish electorate.

Alba’s problem is that, ironically due to the pioneering achievements of Alex Salmond, voting SNP has become a reflex expression of Scottish national identity, and many voters have simply not noticed the party’s absorption into the British state narrative.

Now, for a small and new party, Alba has also faced a quite extraordinary amount of internal conflict, which may also have been in part stirred up by covert influences.

It is worth here stating that it is plain that Scottish Independence is the biggest practical threat to the UK state. Naturally the UK’s disproportionately large and well-funded security services are targeted on it. They would not be doing their job otherwise.

Let me introduce this subject anecdotally. Towards the end of 2023 I was standing for election to Alba’s national executive. The election was postponed in circumstances which were obscure. Then it was re-run.

I was in Geneva and about to enter a meeting at the UN, when Alex phoned me and told me I had been elected to the National Executive, but he wished me to stand down and not accept the seat, as there was somebody else he needed on the exec.

This obviously was unwelcome, principally because it felt like a betrayal of those who had been kind enough to nominate me and to vote for me. Who stands for election and wins, then does not take it up? It seems very irresponsible, and would justifiably damage my reputation.

But the truth is, I felt enormous personal loyalty towards Alex and a trust that, whatever he was up to, it was a strategy with the long term goal of Scottish Independence in mind. So I agreed and declined to take up my seat.

I subsequently discovered there was a large amount of controversy surrounding the results of that election, with people claiming cheating, and I believe I am correct in saying that the results were never published, with some threadbare excuse about publishing the results of an online election being a breach of the Data Protection Act.

A number of founder members of the party, people I had pounded the streets alongside in the 2014 referendum, were resigning. I phoned Alex to express concern and say the results should be published.

He told me that some people were unhappy that many new members had been signed up and voted in the election, but this was within the constitution. A faction had been out-organised, and that was their own fault.

Alex had made plain to me that his request that I stand down was confidential, and I maintained that confidence while he lived. I view that confidence as a personal commitment from which I am now released. But things continued to be very strange in the Alba Party.

The excellent Denise Findlay, who had been a major part of Alba’s organisation and drive, was forced into resignation. I learnt just in the last few days, after I told my own story on Twitter/X, that Denise had gone through precisely the same experience.

More recently, James Kelly, the valuable Scot Goes Pop blogger, was expelled from the party, apparently for criticising it. Then extraordinarily, the General Secretary, Chris McEleny, attempted to expel the Acting Leader Kenny MacAskill from the party, but ended up himself demoted.

I don’t think pretending none of this happened is a sensible option, which is why I told my own story. It remains the case that I trust both Alex’s good faith and that he had a vision for taking the party forward, on which he was working.

But I think it is fair to say that if the brilliant Salmond had an Achilles heel, it was in his judgment of people closest to him. He did not see Sturgeon coming, and indeed refused to accept her part in the plot against him until long after the evidence was undeniable.

In Alba likewise I believe some of the trouble was the extraordinarily possessive attitude towards the party of some of those with whom Alex surrounded himself. This interacted very badly with some activists who wished to see the party move forward with less deference to the leader, or even a different leader (a view I disagreed with, but to which they were perfectly entitled).

Unfortunately some of those espousing that viewpoint undermined themselves by indulging in some unpleasant character assassination and gossip mongering (not towards Alex, but his circle).

The result was a toxic mess. A small party attempting to gain a foothold cannot afford to execute many of its own best soldiers, and neither is incipient insurrection a practical working environment.

Alba will elect a new leadership shortly. I shall be supporting Kenny MacAskill and Neale Hanvey for Leader and Depute, but that implies no disrespect to anybody else.

My plea to the new leadership and the membership is to adopt an amnesty and bring everyone back in to the party. We need eventually to unite the Independence movement. How can we do that, if we cannot unite ourselves?

The party has a rule which bans from rejoining those who went public on their resignation or expulsion, and my attempts to persuade the party “establishment” we need to accept people back, has been met with turgid reference to that rule.

This is just an excuse for maintaining feud. I have also spoken to other factions who, by and large, remain embittered and alienated.

So I plead, with all, that it is time to bury the hatchet, forgive and forget, and work united towards the 2026 Scottish parliament elections.

I am happy to see that Tommy Sheridan, a giant of the Scottish left whose career was interrupted by standard sex allegations (cf. Julian Assange, Scott Ritter, Alex Salmond etc.) orchestrated by the security services and Murdoch press, is standing for the Alba executive. This is the kind of unity we need.

Scotland has the d’Hondt party list system where each voter has two votes, one for a candidate for the constituency list and one a party for the regional list, whereby an element of proportionality is introduced to the benefit of parties who failed to win constituencies despite substantive support.

It is a horrible system because it gives the party machines, rather than the electorate, the power to rank candidates (as opposed to the much more democratic Single Transferable Vote).

The position of Alba appears to be to stand as a “list only” party – to support the SNP in constituencies and ask SNP voters to support Alba on the list.

I am opposed to this approach and believe Alba should fight constituencies and the list. I do not accept the SNP is in any significant sense a pro-Independence party now. It is just a branch of the neoliberal uniparty, and a very dangerous one designed to hoover up Scottish nationalist votes.

We have a duty to oppose any party that supports British imperialist foreign policy, as the SNP does.

We also have a duty to offer the voters the chance to vote for actual Scottish self-determination and reject a London veto.

The only point in joining and supporting such a small party as Alba is to attempt to represent unrepresented positions and to affect fundamental change. That is what Alba must do. I look forward to the journey.

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When politicians in power are extremely unpopular, they generally turn to militarism and jingoism for a quick boost. Starmer is now the darling of the UK media for his sabre-rattling over Ukraine and is busily churning out tweets of military imagery.

In doing so he is attempting to pose as in defiance of Trump, and capitalise on Trump’s unpopularity in the UK, even though just two days earlier he was fawning on Trump in the White House and inviting him on an “unprecedented” second State visit.

As ever, there is a great deal of smoke and mirrors here. The European leaders are going to come up with an alternative “peace plan” to present to Trump. This will not be along the lines of the G7 Declaration which was strongly anti-Russian. The European leaders acknowledge that the Biden-era G7 Apulia position is now gone.

Instead the new European plan will essentially give Trump pretty well everything he wants, but give the Europeans a ladder to climb down. Starmer is seeking to be hailed as the great bridger of the Atlantic, who explained Trump to Europe and vice versa.

If Trump were an ordinary politician he would then agree to adopt the “European” plan brought to him by Starmer, with a couple of tiny amendments, and then take the joint position into talks with Putin. But Trump being Trump, he might just tell Starmer to stay out of it.

Both the European and American peace plans will involve Putin keeping control over the large majority of the land his troops hold – because otherwise Putin will not agree, and there will be no point. The European plan will have elements designed to blur the sovereignty issue of the Ukrainian land Russia will retain. This will not run once real negotiations with Russia are underway.

As always, money talks and big business is really pulling the strings. Zelensky did not in the event sign the minerals deal with Trump and is now desperate to do so to try to get American cash flowing his way again.

It is worth noting that Starmer’s delusional “Hundred Year Alliance” agreement with Zelensky contained the UK’s attempt to grab the same minerals Zelensky is now asking again to be allowed to hand over to Trump.

You find this in the UK/Ukraine 100 Year Partnership at “Pillar 5, Para 3, article iv”

(iv) supporting development of a Ukrainian critical minerals strategy and necessary regulatory structures required to support the maximisation of benefits from Ukraine’s natural resources, through the possible establishment of a Joint Working Group;

While we are on the subject, most people sensibly ignored the detail of this crazy “100 year” agreement on the entirely sensible grounds that none of it is ever going to happen. But it does contain some remarkable declarations of malevolent intent, of which my favourite is the desire to open a joint online propaganda unit to interfere in the legacy and social media of third countries.

Which we find outlined in fluent Orwellian at “Pillar 7, Para 4”.

Implement joint media initiatives, contributing to coordinated efforts to promote shared values and vision, addressing the information manipulation and malign interference in third party countries. We commit to partnering on joint initiatives such as communication campaigns to mitigate against those threats. We commit to facilitate strengthening of relationships with civil society organisations to support research and the development of counter-FIMI approaches, recognising the importance of independent media and civil society organisations in building societal resilience.

Which is of course precisely what they are always accusing Russia of doing. Indeed alleged Russian social media interference is why they interfered to have the anti-war winner of the first round of the Romanian elections disqualified.

What this plan amounts to is another Integrity Initiative, this time as a UK/Ukrainian co-production.

One thing I learnt in over 20 years as a diplomat is that the public are generally fed lies about diplomatic discussions. Most diplomatic talks generally end up with an agreed communique that is designed to make everyone look good and may only have a slight link to actual events.

This is especially true with regard to human rights, where in my substantial experience claims that human rights abuses were being dealt with by “quiet diplomacy” were almost always a lie.

A British minister cannot meet a Saudi or Chinese minister without being asked if they raised human rights. The answer given is always “yes” and it is almost always untrue, or it was raised so briefly, quietly and apologetically that it is virtually untrue.

So there is a sense in which the Trump/Vance encounter in the Oval Office with Zelensky was refreshing, in that what you saw is what you got. It was only in being in public that it was more bruising than many diplomatic encounters. I suspect it has shortened the war, especially if Trump sticks to the decision to end aid.

Shortening the war would be a good thing. If you think a principle is so important that you believe it is fine for millions of people to die for it – none of whom are yourself – I suggest you reconsider your principles. I am not so exercised about who is the mayor of Russian-speaking Lugansk that I am prepared to have a nuclear war over the issue.

What I find particularly alarming is the continuing comparison of Putin to Hitler, and the allegation that if Putin is not “stopped” in Ukraine, then he will conquer the whole of Europe.

This is a quite extraordinary example of false analogy. Putin has never shown any indication of following a universal ideology he wishes to impose by conquest, or of territorial ambition beyond a small number of Russian-speaking ex-Soviet districts contiguous to Russia.

In addition to which, Russia is gradually winning a war of attrition against a much smaller neighbour, which is to be expected. Ukraine has survived this long with massive Western aid. But the idea that the Russian army is capable of conquering the whole of Europe, when it cannot subdue Kiev, is plainly utter nonsense. Even aside from the fact there is absolutely no desire in Moscow to do so.

Trump has pointed at NATO and revealed the Emperor’s New Clothes. NATO was formed to counter a Soviet alliance that did possess a universal ideology it wished to spread, and did have the military strength to threaten (though it should be stated not even the Soviet Union ever had any intention of invading Britain or formulated plans to do so). That threat has now passed.

The attempt to use the farcical Salisbury incident as evidence of a Russian threat to the UK population is, frankly, pathetic.

It is hard sometimes to follow the workings of the propaganda machine. At what stage did the crazy narrative that Russia blew up its own Nord Stream pipeline get abandoned?

Russia destroying the pipeline was unanimously and loudly proclaimed by the entire legacy media and the entire political class of the Western world. Those of us who pointed out this was not true were denounced and ridiculed. Yet now the narrative has quietly been dropped, and the truth is occasionally acknowledged by the media. Though with no admission of the previous lies.

How does this cycle operate? Is it centrally determined, or is it organic? Were the media really stupid enough to believe Russia destroyed Nord Stream, or were they knowingly lying? How have the German people been persuaded to accept the massive damage the increase in energy costs did to industrial employment? These are fascinating fields of study.

European politicians who have made a career of Russophobe rhetoric are suddenly naked in the breeze. They are charging around banging the drum of war, threatening to mobilise armies they do not possess and convinced that preserving their own place in the socio-economic hierarchy is well worth the threat of nuclear oblivion.

Laughter is the best response to their pretension.

———————————

My reporting and advocacy work has no source of finance at all other than your contributions to keep us going. We get nothing from any state nor any billionaire.

Anybody is welcome to republish and reuse, including in translation.

Because some people wish an alternative to PayPal, I have set up new methods of payment including a Patreon account and a Substack account if you wish to subscribe that way. The content will be the same as you get on this blog. Substack has the advantage of overcoming social media suppression by emailing you direct every time I post. You can if you wish subscribe free to Substack and use the email notifications as a trigger to come for this blog and read the articles for free. I am determined to maintain free access for those who cannot afford a subscription.

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