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With a grand fanfare, the SNP released their manifesto. Never have I seen such desperation and cynical attempt to pass off a promise that "we will try to fix what we broke" as something new and revolutionary, done in such a fundamentally self-contradictory manner.

No doubt you will have heard the headline that the SNP will now give you a free bike. Well, one kid somewhere may end up getting their photo taken with a bike. A closer look at this fabulous generosity reveals a manifesto that combines the policies of Jeremy Corbyn with the outlandishness of Willie Wonka and the financial sense of Wesley Snipes. 

Today, The Majority, with the support of almost 600 donors who raised £14,500 for their Let’s Put Up Billboards! crowdfunding campaign, launches its final elections campaign, before the Scottish Elections on May 6. 

After a hugely successful campaign that flew a #ResignSturgeon banner over Holyrood, and took ‘We Don't Believe You NIcola’ ad vans to the Scotttish Parliament, The Majority now takes the fight directly to the Scottish people, via billboards and mobile digital ad vans carrying a message highlighting 14 Years of SNP failure and promoting tactical voting:

The Scexit Files: The National, 27th April 2021

Letters to the Editor:

Sir – Enough is enough! We have ferries that don’t float, an education system that’s sinking and we’re still top of the Champions League for drug deaths and child poverty. And if that wasn’t enough, ministers in Holyrood are dishing out ‘pork pies’ while their friends have a hand in the till. 

So, why-oh-why hasn’t the SNP found a proper scapegoat for all these shenanigans? Boris is a pig’s bladder on a stick, but even he can’t be blamed for this. 

They say, with penetrating accuracy, that once you become a parent you are only as happy as your least happy child. And, sad to say, since we got the Alliance for Unity going last year it has been like having an extra child. The party’s triumphs and disasters have produced the same reaction in me as my children’s and I find myself worrying like a parent about our progress. 

The anxiety to start with was not finding enough people of sufficient calibre to join us; then it was that the Electoral Commission would find excuses to keep turning down our application to be a political party until beyond polling day; then it was that we would simply be ignored by everyone; then it was that we would never feature in any polls. So the Sunday Times poll putting A4U on 4%, one percent behind the Liberal Democrats, is a bit like seeing one of the children winning their first egg and spoon race: It is heartening and frustrating at the same time. 

Famed polling guru, John Curtice, tells us Scotland is "split down the middle" on the constitutional question. When the undecideds are excluded, the polling for either side is within the margin of error of each other (about 3% in a poll of 1000 people). This is essentially where we were right before the vote in 2014, when the vast majority of undecided voters voted to remain part of the United Kingdom.

STV Online: 15^th August 2029

Scotland is about to undergo the biggest rebranding since the abolition of Pictland in the 9^th century, according to documents seen by STV.

The Alba-SNP government has refused to comment on leaks that the post-Scexit Rebranding and De-Britification Commission has recommended a change to the country’s name, aiming to reposition it within the global marketplace.

Rumours that Alba would be incorporated into the official nomenclature have been circulating for months since the SNP was relegated to junior partner in the ruling coalition. But officials are still wary. “How long before it becomes Albatross? You’ve got to be so careful with these things. It’s even the name of a waste disposal company in Singapore.”

Solidarity, collective resources, having more in common than differences, and working together in a shared identity and future. This is the basis of my political beliefs and my commitment to Unionism and the British family of nations and people. 

They are powerful arguments that we, a country welded together through shared pain and happiness, are "better together". That we are even bigger, even stronger and even smarter than we could ever be apart. These arguments for the UK, are made real in furlough payments, the vaccine rollout, the British Armed Forces, the NHS, and people coming together during the pandemic. They are also arguments that Labour has used since its birth. 

“A week is a long time in politics” is a trite opening sentence but it has been true this week, as Salmond’s forced entry into the race has left things ‘all changed, changed utterly’ as WB Yeats wrote 105 years ago in a rather similar context. It is what we have feared all along: the formation of a ‘Nationalist Front’ and a creeping Ulsterisation of Scottish politics with Salmond already talking about ‘street protests’ as part of their campaign for secession. The big question is: will a nationalist monster with two heads be harder to slay, or will those heads devour each other? 

The Scexit Files: The Spectator, 10^th April 2021

At a tense briefing yesterday, SNP sources strenuously denied that any detergent was used to enforce ideological purity during the ongoing Sturgeonista-Salmondite split. The allegation emerged after a recording of a recent internal strategy meeting was obtained by The Spectator. 

An extract has now been published below in the public interest. (Identities have been amended for legal reasons). 

IAN: “TRAITORS!”

RUTH: “The Salmondite front is a total irrelevance now. We must focus on our campaigning as planned…”

Yesterday, following the widely covered announcement of Alex Salmond's new Alba party, those who listened very closely would have heard two distinct sounds: a pained groan and a jubilant celebration. For the SNP, it was a knife thrust deep into their back, and for Unionists, it was the joy of watching an enemy devour itself. Alba's hype — that it will somehow game the system and end up with an unchallengeable majority — is the ravings of a vindictive and ego-driven man high on his own supply.