Former Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond has launched of the Alba Party to fight the 6 May Scottish Parliament elections.
Mr Salmond said he and other candidates will stand on the regional list in the election to try to produce a “supermajority” in the Holyrood assembly for independence, maximising pressure on Boris Johnson for an IndyRef2 referendum.
He rejected suggestions that the launch was a challenge to his former protegee Nicola Sturgeon, with whom he has fought a bitter feud over her handling of sexual harassment claims against him, which he was cleared of in court.
Alba will not stand against Ms Sturgeon’s SNP candidates in constituency seats, and will urge its supporters to vote for them, he said. But it aims to win additional pro-independence seats via the separate regional lists, where the SNP has little hope of success.
“Today Alba are hoisting a flag in the wind, planting a Saltire on a hill,” said the former first minister. “In the next few weeks, we’ll see how many will rally to our standard.”
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Mr Salmond said that the voting system in Scottish elections meant that votes for the SNP on the regional list will be “totally wasted”.
But he said that voting Alba instead could deliver a parliament at Holyrood with as 90 or more of the 129 seats held by pro-independence MSPs.
Mr Salmond said that success for Alba would “recast” the independence debate from a battle between the SNP and Tories into a battle between prime minister Boris Johnson and the Scottish parliament and the Scottish people.
He said that his new party would not challenge the SNP or other pro-independence parties for constitutency seats, but would aim to use Scotland’s voting system to maximise the number of pro-independence MSPs at Holyrood.“In the last election, there were nearly 1 million wasted SNP votes on the regional list – only four SNP MSPs were elected in that way,” he said.
“On yesterday’s Survation poll, the SNP would elect no regional seats at all from a million votes on the list. They would all be totally wasted independence votes.
“If Alba fights the regional list seats, the wasted votes end. The number of independence- supporting MSPs in the parliament could reach 90 or even more.”
And he added: “The initiative for independence should then be led by the parliament, uniting the parties.
“Johnson has already said No to the SNP proposals. He will find it much more difficult to say No to a parliament and a country.
“And the independence debate will be recast, not as the Tories against the SNP, but as Boris Johnson against Scotland’s parliament representing Scotland’s people.”
Under the additional member system of voting used in Scottish parliamentary elections, voters have two ballots – one for a constituency MSP and one for a regional list.
Some 73 MSPs are elected for geographical constituencies on the first-past-the-post system, and a further 56 from eight regions.
Regional seats are allocated according to a proportional system which favours parties under-represented in the constituencies, in a way which makes it very difficult for a single party to gain an overall majority.
Mr Salmond calculates that if independence-supporting Scots were to vote SNP in their constituencies and Alba on the regional list, the total pro-independence voice at Holyrood could be massively increased from the SNP’s current 61 seats.
“The Alba Party is a list party, we are standing only in the list,” he said.
“We are not challenging the SNP in the constituencies. Indeed we are saying vote SNP or for an independence party on the constituency section.
“We are giving that support. Our campaign that we have launched is going to be entirely positive.”
Mr Salmond said the new party expects to field a minimum of four candidates in each regional list and hopes to elect MSPs from every area of Scotland.
It is understood he will himself be contesting the North East regional constituency.
Its agenda will be driven by the aim to create a “successful, socially just, environmentally responsible, independent country”, he said.
