Can gender rebel Ash Regan win the SNP leadership race?

Ash Regan is the latest MSP to launch a bid for the SNP leadership. The former Holyrood minister, who quit Nicola Sturgeon’s government over gender recognition reforms, addressed party members and journalists at the Hilton in North Queensferry this morning. Her pitch was red meat to the rank and file, abandoning referendums as the mechanism to achieve independence. Instead, she argued, 50 per cent plus one vote for the SNP and other nationalist parties in any Scottish or UK election would be grounds to enter negotiations with Westminster for Scotland’s secession. She noted that this was once a widely-held view inside the SNP and even among some of its Unionist opponents. 

Under questioning, Regan struggled to explain how she would initiate negotiations if the UK Government refused to enter them. At one point, she said the matter had ‘nothing to do with the UK Government’ and at another that Whitehall would have to respect the SNP’s supposed mandate.