ALBA’s Kenny MacAskill has said that it seems to have been “an election too soon” for his party as regional vote counts begin to suggest that they will struggle to gain any MSPs.
The completed regional list vote in Aberdeen Donside, where the constituency was earlier declared for the SNP, found that Alba had won just 2.07% of the vote.
This constituency is part of North East Scotland, where Alba leader Alex Salmond is standing on the list and had hoped that his regional support may be enough to return him to Holyrood.
Speaking to Global’s Newsroom, MacAskill said the disappointing number suggested “it’s just an election too soon for Alba”.
READ MORE: LIVE Scottish Parliament election tracker: Maps and charts show results so far
MacAskill, who defected from the SNP to become an Alba MP earlier this year, went on: “The fact is we’ve only had five weeks, we’ve faced a media blackout, but we’ve got two MPs, twenty-odd councillors, and 5000 members so its onwards and upwards even if we’re not getting the result that we perhaps hoped for today.”
Asked about the targeted “supermajority” and Alba’s apparent inability to break through, MacAskill said: “I think it was just perhaps too short a time to be able to get the explanation across. I think what we are going to see is that the SNP will have piled up hundreds of thousands of votes on the list and will probably return no list MSPs.
“That was always the argument from Alba so I think we didn’t have the opportunity to explain the system to the electorate and I think that’s been the difficulty.”
The former justice secretary also rejected accusations that the creation of the Alba Party had led to divisions in the Yes movement.
MacAskill said: “The Alba Party was quite clear. We supported a vote for the SNP, I voted SNP myself, but we’re not without challenging them.
READ MORE: SNP takes East Lothian from Labour in first seat to change parties in election
“We cannot have a situation where they simply accept Boris Johnson saying you cannot have [indyref2] and we cannot accept the ongoing problems we’re facing in our economy, the threats to our NHS, and indeed the powers that are being stripped from our parliament.
“We will be critical friends of the SNP. The independence movement is a broad church. It has people of many parties, not simply the SNP or Alba, and there’s people of no political parties but we have to go forward.
“The SNP will be supported by Alba, but they have to deliver on what they have pledged and committed to the people of Scotland.”
Former SNP MP, and recent defector to Alex Salmond’s Alba party, Kenny MacAskill says this was “an election too soon for Alba” as early signs suggest they’re unlikely to break through. #SP21 @LBC @LBCNews pic.twitter.com/XIEdasq08d
— Jack Foster (@jackfostr) May 7, 2021
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