Council candidates

Word on the grapevine reaches me reporting that the SNP have selected a bare half-dozen candidates for the Council elections, and bizarrely it looks like no less than 4 of these candidates will be fighting each other, meaning that they might manage to contest as many seats as the LibDems.

On the surface this appears to be an appalling state of affairs. But look deeper, and it is even worse.

About 18 months ago I outlined a strategy which would have resulted in 15-20 candidates across virtually every ward. The Branch Executive promised to come back to me about the strategy, and when they didn't I realised that there was an active policy to disempower the SNP Council group. This was rammed home when a very, very, very, senior of the local branch told a number of MSPs to ignore a Council Group initiative to introduce RET throughout the islands with the words "Just ignore them". And here's us naively thinking that policies were there to be supported and introduced.

From having 17-19 SNP supporters in the Comhairle over the past 4 years, I would estimate that the deliberate policy of ignoring and undermining the Comhairle by the local SNP has caused the active support to drop to 7-8 Councillors. And that includes the 3 in the Group.

The anti-windfarm policy has been such a "success" that not one person from the west-side tried to become a candidate, and of those selected, I make it that a majority support the developments.

I know that one leading anti-windfarm campaigner who had indicated to me that he would stand as an SNP candidate, is not now voting SNP as a result of policy flip-flops.