Ash Regan defects to Salmond’s Alba party

Another one bites the dust. In the latest blow to afflict the hapless Humza Yousaf, his onetime leadership rival Ash Regan has spectacularly defected to Alex Salmond’s Alba party at their annual conference. The Spectator pondered back in February whether Ash Regan was Alex Salmond in disguise. And now she appears to be his heir apparent…

Salmond’s speech set the stage perfectly for Regan, a onetime SNP minister. Reminding his members that ‘there are many fine nationalists and many fellow Scots’ within the SNP, he told his party that ‘recruits from the SNP’ were needed if Alba wants to see success. Returning back to the podium after a standing ovation, he welcomed the party’s ‘latest recruit’.

Cheers filled the hall as Regan, widely known as the SNP’s ‘rebel’ MSP, made her way to the mic. Slamming her former party the Edinburgh Eastern MSP told the crowd that she was joining Alba ‘on the principle that independence cannot be a carrot that is deployed at election time, just to keep the voters voting for you’.