Salmond Calls For Single Pro-Indy Candidate In Ferrier Seat By-Election
Former First Minister, Alex Salmond, has called on SNP leader and First Minister Humza Yousaf to back a Scotland United for independence approach to fighting the Rutherglen and Hamilton West By-Election. Mr Salmond has hit out at the “undemocratic” recall petition that has resulted in removing Margaret Ferrier from Parliament.
Former First Minister and Alba Party leader Alex Salmond said:
"The recall petition was double Westminster standards from the off. Other MPs did exactly the same as Margaret Ferrier and have gone unpunished, the current and past Prime Ministers held and attended parties and were merely fiscally fined and faced no censure whatsoever from Parliament for those acts themselves.
There is not a family in Scotland that wasn’t impacted by Covid, whether through personal loss or the mental impact lockdowns had on the country. Three years ago Margaret made a terrible mistake and it is understandable that people were angry about this.
However, she is the only person on all of the islands to face the complete and final end of her political career for a single mistake, with all the good she has done set aside and counting for nought. No reasonable person should think that fair or equitable.
The recall process itself is a democratic disgrace. Why should 14.66% per cent of the constituency be sufficient to call a by-election? Over 85 per cent of the people of Rutherglen and Hamilton West did not want one or did not care.
Throughout this whole saga the Labour Party have been arrogantly pounding the streets of the constituency as sheep dressed in wolves clothing ready to turn a nationalist seat into a unionist one and hypocritically promoting their naked self-interest as if it were a public duty. The problem is unless there is a dramatic change in direction, their plan will work.
It’s time for Humza Yousaf to shake off the legacy of his predecessor and a constituency which contains Hamilton, with all its historic resonance for Scottish Nationalism, is the ideal place to make a change.
The by-election must be fought by a single nationalist candidate standing on a Scotland United platform for independence.
In that way there would be a fresh start for an independence campaign in this constituency and a by-election fought on the future of Scotland, not on the track record of the SNP administration.
Humza needs to act now to avoid a human mistake from Margaret Ferrier becoming a serious set-back for the entire national movement. The ball is in his court, should this election be fought with one candidate representing the independence movement or will he choose to put party before country?"
