BBC Scotland, Ash Regan and the campaign to delegitimise the SNP leadership contest

On March 15th, in the midst of the SNP leadership contest, we stepped back from Twitter. Things were becoming heated amongst pro-Humza and pro-Kate posters on social media and it seemed the correct thing to do.

The outsider in the contest, Ash Regan, had just released a public letter calling for the SNP to release key information about the party’s membership and the leadership ballot. In her letter, Regan had said that the information was “necessary for ensuring a fair and transparent leadership election”.

Our interest piqued. Why was a candidate to replace Nicola Sturgeon as leader of the SNP implying that the contest she signed up to weeks earlier suddenly wasn’t fair?

A day later the SNP released details of its membership numbers. There were just over 72,000 of them. Still the biggest party in Scotland by a considerable margin, but down 30,000 on the previously reported figure.

The drop was embarrassing, given that one month earlier the party HQ had derided a claim by the Sunday Mail that membership numbers had fallen by 30,000.

On March 17th the SNP’s head of media, Murray Foote, resigned claiming to have issued the denial in good faith. A day later the head of the SNP NEC, Peter Murrell, resigned too, taking full responsibility.

Ash Regan basked in the limelight. The leadership candidate posted a message on social media ‘Ash Regan Gets Things Done’.

An embarrassing own goal by SNP HQ? Undoubtedly. Losing 30,000 members isn’t ideal, and trying to hide the fact unwise, but in the grand scheme of things it was a political-bubble story. But then things changed.

BBC Scotland began running a narrative that the membership-fall denial had undermined the integrity of the leadership contest itself, that the blunder would “cast doubt” on the election result, that it “raised suspicions around the process”.

Presenters and reporters began pushing the narrative with relish. The underlying message was that the contest was rigged.

Ash Regan bolstered this narrative when it emerged her team was looking at ways to stop the contest.

First the public letter, now a possible legal challenge. Ash Regan was handing the pro-Union media ammunition in order to undermine the integrity, and ultimately the legitimacy, of the SNP leadership contest. But why?

There had been suspicions from the very beginning of the contest about the motives of Ash Regan. Many believed she was a puppet candidate acting on behalf of people loyal, not to the SNP, but to Alex Salmond and Alba.

There was circumstantial evidence. Kirk Torrance is an adviser on Regan’s campaign team. He was also instrumental in the creation of Salmond’s rival pro-independence party and was the top Alba candidate in the Highlands and Islands regional list for the last Holyrood election.

Torrance had also alleged Nicola Sturgeon had been part of a ‘machiavellian stitch-up’ against Alex Salmond following Salmond’s acquittal of sexual assault charges and accused the soon to be former First Minister of being ‘up to her dark eyes’ in the Salmond ‘stitchup’ and subsequent ‘coverup’.

At her campaign launch in Fife, Ash Regan was reportedly evasive when asked questions on her relationship with Salmond. When asked if she’d had any contact with Salmond in the week preceding her launch, she failed to answer. When asked if she would invite him back into the SNP if he said he wanted to come back, she replied “If he wanted to. Sure.”

Coinciding with Regan’s attack on the integrity of the leadership contest was the appearance on BBC Scotland of two rather interesting guest pundits.

On March 17th Geoff Aberdein, Alex Salmond’s former Chief of Staff, appeared on Radio Scotland. Aberdein told listeners that trust in the SNP leadership process had been undermined by the membership numbers issue.

Two days later Fergus Mutch, a former aide to Salmond, appeared on The Sunday Show. Mutch went further and called for the contest to be rerun.

On Monday, the day after Mutch appeared, Geoff Aberdein again appeared and echoed the calls from his former party colleague. Within hours of Aberdein’s second appearance, the Radio Scotland phone-in was asking folk for their views of the contest.

So what you might say? These guys were key figures in the SNP at one point. They’re just giving their honest opinion.

Well, Geoff Aberdein, Fergus Mutch and Kirk Torrance have something else in common. They all appeared as witnesses on behalf of Alex Salmond during his trial and here we had two of them invited onto BBC Scotland to provide opinion that just happened to chime with the sentiments of Kirk Torrance and Ash Regan.

It wasn’t the first time Fergus Mutch had appeared more in tune with Alex Salmond than with his successor. In 2021 he and Salmond both attacked Nicola Sturgeon’s stance on the Cambo oil field.

BBC Scotland’s sudden interest in Mutch and Aberdein coincided with attacks on the SNP leadership contest by the Ash Regan team. It all looked suspiciously coordinated.

Was it coordinated or was it coincidence? Well, ask yourself, what’s more likely? That BBC Scotland provided key slots to two former SNP figures without knowing or suspecting they held views identical to Ash Regan OR that BBC Scotland knew fine well what Mutch and Aberdein were likely to say and provided them with a platform upon which to say it?

There’s no doubt that the SNP leadership contest has been bruising for the party. Nobody can argue with that. But the claim that it is suspicious or lacks integrity is a smear being promoted by malcontents, many of whom no longer support the SNP.

What we are witnessing is an attempt, not just to undermine the election of the new SNP leader, but to undermine the legitimacy of the next First Minister. There are figures outwith the SNP who hold a grudge against Nicola Sturgeon and who believe she tried to orchestrate the political downfall of their hero Alex Salmond.

What is being presented as an SNP meltdown is nothing more than the hi-jacking of a passionate leadership contest by a tiny vested interest group. What is being presented as a contest that lacks integrity is actually baseless claims from a disgruntled candidate who is linked to figures more interested in helping Alex Salmond’s new party than anything else.

BBC Scotland is indulging these figures and their message because it suits the broadcaster’s own SNPBad agenda. The practice goes all the way back to Gordon Wilson and Jim Sillars. Ash Regan is merely the latest in a long line of useful malcontents.

Indeed, the day after Fergus Mutch demanded the leadership contest be rerun, Regan was the pin-up on the BBC Scotland website as she demanded SNP members be allowed to change their vote.

After her demand was rejected, Regan — in a move eerily similar to Donald Trump’s when he encouraged supporters to march on the Capitol building — posted a message on social media that ended with the following call.

However I encourage the members to now demonstrate their will with SNP HQ.

That same evening Kirk Torrance appeared on BBC Scotland in a three-way debate and again argued that SNP members who had voted for the so-called ‘continuity candidate’ might want to change their vote. Torrance, in Trump-like fashion urged voters to “make their voices heard”.

Ash Regan and her team are playing to a pro-Union media audience. They know this audience will pick up her attack lines and amplify them. BBC Scotland has never required evidence to headline smears against the SNP, merely accusations.

Demand for a rerun of the leadership contest isn’t as widespread as BBC Scotland would have you believe. It’s a narrative created by a tiny section of the Indy movement who have nursed a bitterness against the SNP hierarchy over the Salmond trial for years. If they can’t control the party they’ll see it, and those they hold responsible, destroyed.

The bitterness is so strong that they’re prepared to help the very broadcaster Salmond himself accused of being biased against Scottish independence.

Despite the hysterical and over-the-top headlines on BBC Scotland, nobody has produced a scintilla of evidence of wrongdoing in the SNP leadership contest. The whole narrative is fuelled by bad-faith actors who have a voice in a mediocre attention-seeker who contributes to the leadership contest in the way a loud-mouth drunk contributes to a wedding. Sober at the start but increasingly out of control as the end looms.

But the narrative is up and running and it’s going to endure. You’re going to hear every 2nd rate reporter and presenter at BBC Scotland parrot it at every opportunity. The very office of First Minister of Scotland is going to be smeared by an assortment of Unionists, vested interest deadbeats and 2nd rate journos.

The aim is to present the SNP as corrupt and the new First Minister as a product of an illegitimate process.

Postscript — Forty five minutes after we published this article this was the subject of the Radio Scotland phone-in. The first caller was … Kirk Torrance.