Wings Over Scotland | The Future Is Yesterday

So on the one hand there’s obviously very little point paying attention to the SNP’s regional list candidates for May’s Holyrood election, because as this website has comprehensively demonstrated over recent months, the chances of the SNP having any list MSPs elected are remote.

However, nothing is impossible, so let’s take a look at the B team, which also serves as a guide to the party’s upcoming talent taking its first steps towards the gravy bus.

Well, that was even grimmer than expected.

We should probably start at the very bottom of the barrel.

Because the SNP seem absolutely hell-bent on inflicting the utterly loathsome Fatima Joji on the people of Scotland by hook or by crook.

Not only is she the constituency candidate for Aberdeenshire West – currently held by Alexander Burnett for the Tories on a slim majority of under 3,400 and looking very vulnerable given their collapse in national polling from 22% to 11% – but she’s also been voted third on the SNP’s regional list, which sounds like no chance until you realise that the top two (Stephen Flynn and Gillian Martin) will very likely win their constituency seats, which are both currently SNP with the Tories in second.

So in the event that the SNP do fail to win a few constituency seats in the North-East, Joji will effectively be first in line to pick up a list seat even if she hasn’t won Aberdeenshire West. And even in a region currently represented by both Karen Adam and Maggie Chapman, that is a pretty catastrophic degradation in member quality.

But Joji isn’t the only one being offered a belt-and-braces double ticket. Most of the regional lists are being topped by people also standing for (and likely to win) constituency seats, so the electorate’s chances of rejecting them are almost nil. Let’s redline those and see what’s left.

An incredible 45 of the full slate of 71 list candidates (63%) are also contesting constituency seats, which means that some of the very worst of the party’s absolute dregs – including serial carpetbagger Graham Campbell, the hideous Declan Blench and his fellow “Out For Independence” stalwart Michael Gibbons – are actually in pole position to get list seats should the SNP manage to secure any, despite finishing as low as NINTH on the party’s internal ballot.

There’s also a generous smattering of FILTH – Failed In London, Try Holyrood – trying to get back to the trough after being unceremoniously binned at the 2024 UK election.

(bold entry indicates a double ticket, both constituency and list)

John Beare
Steven Bonnar 
Deidre Brock
Alan Brown
Allan Dorans
Patricia Gibson
David Linden 
Kirsten Oswald 
Tommy Sheppard
Alyn Smith
Alison Thewliss 

(You can be forgiven if you’ve never heard of some of those names despite them being MPs for years, we hadn’t either. But it’s nice to see serial failure Toni “independence is off the agenda” Giugliano getting yet another swing at it. Poor old Katy Loudon must be gutted.)

Basically, as long as you really really hate women’s rights and represent no danger whatsoever of dissenting from the leadership, the SNP will bust a gut to make sure you get into Parliament somehow, no matter what the voters think.

What all that tells us, of course, is that the SNP’s talent pool has the depth of a soggy tissue, and that its next generation makes the useless current one look like a team of geniuses. Readers, if there were still any of you contemplating a list SNP vote despite everything, we simply invite you to picture Fatima Joji, Graham Campbell and Declan Blench trousering £75,000 a year for the next half-decade and shaping the laws of Scotland while they do it.

There is no rescuing the party. Only its destruction will do.