Guest blog by Gordon Millar - ALBA in the Balance

Gordon Millar is back with a guest blog analysing the recently published 2023 Alba Party accounts.

After spells as a senior manager with Arthur Andersen and Ernst & Young, in 1996 Gordon became the proprietor of a South London tax and accountancy practice.

Gordon was a member of the SNP’s London Branch from 2015 to 2021 and their Political Education Officer from 2017. Gordon was elected to the SNP’s National Policy Development Committee in 2020.

He is a current ALBA member.

Introduction:

This article started as a response to a question about my reaction to the Alba party's recently published 2023 accounts.

However, it soon became apparent that the accounts could not be looked at in isolation. In my view, I don't think that this set of accounts says anything good about Alba or the party's prospects but, while the accounts themselves paint a fairly gloomy picture, this is not necessarily an irrecoverable situation. In analysing or commenting on these figures, context matters.

So, what follows looks at more than just the bare figures and again, because context matters, I will say up-front that my interpretation is based firmly on my own experiences as an Alba member. Other people may have different interpretations.

Income:

The first problem is the income. It's not just that it's down by £60k from the previous year, it's the differences that are significant.

Donations have almost dried up - £134k down to £34k (and they received no large, reportable donations). This is not good and seems to be a direct result of Alex Salmond's and the leadership pretty much giving up on Wee Alba Book and other events designed to build the brand.

Conference income has halved from £16k to £8k. Not a big number, but an indication of a decline in enthusiasm – my estimate of attendance at the widely promoted “pre-election strategy conference” at Lochgelly was approximately 180.

Also, at £124k, the policy development grant is about 30% of the total income, but this won't be available in the future as the party no longer has any MPs. (There may be other problems with this – see below)

So, it's very difficult to see where the funds are going to come from to get through 2024 and 2025, let alone compete seriously in the 2026 Holyrood election.

Expenditure:

Turning to the expenditure, this has risen overall by £37K even though income is down by £61k, which isn't a great start. Especially as Alba has gone from an £80k surplus to a small loss.

But again, it's the details that are worrying.

Staff costs have increased from £117k to £192k, but it is not clear why – administration of conferences, assemblies, and the party generally is still chaotic and last minute. There are also no visible indications in policy development, party exposure, or brand building to reflect the impact of the increased staff costs.

“Miscellaneous Expenditure” is four times the previous year's figure, at £45,943. However, £34,666 of this is classified as “general administration costs”. This seems rather high, especially as there are already captions for “office running costs”, “postage”, “photocopying and printing” and “website and IT”. There is speculation that some of this may be travel and subsistence for Alex Salmond and others in the leadership, and the speculation arises because it looks as if something is being hidden – you would not normally reclassify miscellaneous expenditure as, effectively, more miscellaneous expenditure!

There have also been some reductions in expenditure. However, for three items, these reductions may not be a good thing – expenditure on Conferences/Events, Campaigns/Elections, and Newsletters/Mail Outs has dropped by a cumulative £100,235, which may well be the other side of the apparent abandonment of building the brand and the drop in member enthusiasm referred to in the income section above.

Balance Sheet:

The bank balance has been effectively halved and creditors (the amount owed by Alba but not yet paid) have doubled. We are not told who or what the creditors are, but neither of these are good signs.

Other Issues:

There is also a potential issue with the policy development grant received from the Electoral Commission. While the accounts show that £124,584 has been received from the Electoral Commission for “policy development”, they also note that the “policy development grant is restricted, as it is specifically used towards policy development”. Therefore, as the whole amount is shown as having been spent during the year, someone, somewhere must have produced £124,584 worth of policy development work.

However, Alba's policy suite has huge gaps, all attempts by members to put policy development on to a more professional/organised footing have been rejected, and all policy resolutions adopted to date have come from the membership. The two individuals employed as policy development officers have produced, as far as I am aware, zero in published policy work to date.

We do not know what checks were carried out by the Electoral Commission on the use to which the grant was being put, and what assurances or evidence were provided by Alba regarding their policy development work, but it seems that this income is open to question and that some clawback might be an issue in the future.

Context:

None of the issues highlighted above are necessarily fatal or unrecoverable but, looking at them in the context of Alba's current position and history and the actions and attitudes of the leadership, there doesn’t really seem to be much scope for optimism.

Alba started with immense amounts of goodwill. The return of Alex Salmond to mainstream politics was seen as a godsend for the independence movement and the first Alba conference at Greenock seemed like the spirit of the real SNP reincarnated. But that feeling had evaporated by the end of the Stirling conference and was finally snuffed out at last year's Glasgow conference.

A major problem is that having promised a transparent, member-led organisation, devoted to Scottish independence, Alex Salmond has actually set up a very tightly controlled top-down organisation, run by three unelected former politicians as Chair, General Secretary, and Deputy General Secretary. These three have consistently blocked any attempt by members to democratise the party or create a proper policy development process aimed at independence.

But it was made very clear at the Glasgow conference that this was Alex Salmond's party, and things had to be done his way. The main result of this has been the party losing the very activists it needs to achieve results.

Recent History:

It was agreed at the Glasgow conference that, in respect of the then forthcoming Westminster election, Alba would field high quality candidates in 12 key seats, provided that the local branch had 12 activists and £5,000 to cover costs. However, once the election date was announced, Alex Salmond personally overturned this plan and decided to field 19 candidates. He also decided, having promised a "a street orientated, high visibility campaign" on 23 May, to go to Germany for the Euros, leaving the campaign leaderless for a week or so at a crucial time!

The results were predictably disastrous. The candidates were left with no plan, no leadership, no funding, and no activists. After an effectively invisible campaign, the average result was 1.5% of the vote and all deposits were lost.

The Future:

At the moment, Alba's membership is static, the party is not breaking through in the polls, potential SNP defectors are staying put and the most committed activists are leaving.

In these circumstances, there is no reason to assume that donations, membership fees, and conference/marketing income will recover to any significant extent, in which case expenditure on employees, conferences, and building the brand generally will have to be seriously cut back.

Also, no lessons appear to have been learned. The report from a special National Assembly on 21 July claimed that the Scottish elections of 2026 are to be ALBA’s breakthrough election and that Alba would aim to get 15% of the list vote, but there was absolutely nothing on how this might be achieved, given the party’s current position.

Conclusion:

Therefore, in my view, there is simply no possibility, on the figures and trends shown by the 2023 accounts, and the current path being pursued by the leadership, that Alba will be able to survive in any meaningful form for a further two years, let alone mount a significant challenge in the Holyrood 2026 elections.

Is it disloyal to say so? As a member, I feel that I am entitled to query the party’s leadership and direction. I have already done so several times, directly to the Leader, the Chair, the then elected members and the general secretary without receiving an acknowledgement, let alone a reply, except for one response from the general secretary on the meaning of “member led”. So now I’m saying it here, because the one thing that I’m certain of is that “wheesht for Indy” was a demonstrably bad idea in the SNP and it remains an equally bad idea for Alba. None of Alba’s considerable problems are insurmountable, but they will not be addressed by wishful thinking.

The ALBA Party accounts for 2023 can be found at this link https://search.electoralcommission.org.uk/Api/Accounts/Documents/26171