Ruthlessly exercising a policy of narrowly focused nepotism across all aspects of its organisation and management the SNP leadership and the NEC, have in post, in paid employment MP’s, MSP’s, Councillors, special advisors and admin staff in excess of 1,500 persons. Many of these individuals have voting rights in the Party and enjoy the largesse without which they would be out of politics in a jiffy due to their incompetence.

SNP Leadership campaigns

Julie Hepburn (member) who was defeated by Keith Brown in her bid for the post of Deputy Leader of the Party said that the SNP’s NEC needed to be more effective, transparent and accountable and the attention given to the campaigns of the candidates encouraged debate between Party members who called for a rethink on how the Party was run.

The main thrust from the regions being complaints that the running of the party was overly structured around Nicola Sturgeon, her husband, the SNP chief executive Peter Murrell and the NEC.

The SNP Eastwood branch at conference, suggested that “improvements were needed” to give members as many opportunities as possible to formulate policy and question elected representatives.

It advanced the argument by tabling the amendment “Conference calls on the NEC to bring forward constitutional amendments to restore the National Council as a forum for policy-making and scrutiny.”.

The response from Keith Brown, the newly appointed Depute Party Leader, appeared to be positive when he later convened and chaired a Party Governance Review Group.

Membership of which included Doug Daniel, Julie Hepburn and Jamie Szymkowiak, Dr Eilidh Whiteford, Kaukab Stewart, and Shona Morrison.

Numerous calls for the final report to be published were ignored but a statement was finally issued saying: “there wasn’t “significant demand to reintroduce a National Council.” End of matter. No change.

This prompted numerous negative comments from readers of the National. Reader- User ID: 1036134 wrote:

I think the biggest message for SNP members from this whole NEC debacle is that the party are taking our loyalty and membership fees for granted.

I’m not a post referendum member, I’ve been kicking about since just after Tony Blair took us into an illegal war.

Everything I left the Labour Party for, I am now recognising in the SNP. Nepotism – how many couples, including the ultimate power couple at the very top, are in positions of power within the party/government.

We have selection processes for candidates for elections, but most of us know that actually, we have little say.

The party parachute in their preferred candidate and put all their resources behind them and now they have gone even further by inventing new rules to stop people from standing if they don’t want to resign their MP position and out all their support team out of a job.

The irony being that less than a year ago, Daddy Smith did just that, holding onto his MEP position and being parachuted in to Stirling for the GE.

This is what happened to the Labour Party.

True political activists, the very people who live, work and socialise in the areas and communities they would represent and now no longer sexy enough, so don’t get encouraged to put themselves forward, and if they do, they rarely pass vetting so the SNP handpicked candidate goes forward unopposed.

Serial candidate the unelected Julie Hepburn will most surely have her eye on a seat too, and I’m sure her SNP minister husband Jamie will be using his leverage to make sure that happens.

This is happening in front of our eyes, and they just don’t care.

Exactly what happened with New Labour.

They have never recovered and can’t get the talent into their party because the people who would have joined Labour, joined the SNP instead and are filling up the list and constituency places where real SNP people should be.

Comment: Ruthlessly exercising a policy of narrowly focused nepotism across all aspects of its organisation and management the SNP leadership and the NEC, have in post, in paid employment MP’s, MSP’s, Councillors, special advisors and admin staff in excess of 1,500 persons. Many of these individuals have voting rights in the Party and enjoy the largesse without which they would be out of politics in a jiffy due to their incompetence.