This SNP leadership contest is without doubt the most crucial election in the party’s 89 year history. With three choices come three different outcomes for both the SNP and Scotland. There are a lot of home truths that many just refuse to see. To look forward, we must first look back.

In November 2014 when Nicola Sturgeon was handed the leadership of the SNP and Yes Movement everything was set fair. The membership had increased fivefold in just a matter of weeks. Almost overnight the SNP had gone from cottage industry status to corporate monolith. The bank account was full and the YES Movement was being acknowledged as the finest democratic campaigning unit in the history of British politics.

The UK establishment in London was braced for a struggle to hold Scotland inside the union. This fear was compounded in 2015 when the SNP won 56 out of 59 Westminster seats. All the political commentators throughout the islands and beyond were forecasting Scottish independence within a decade. How wrong were they?

Here we are one year away from a decade since the independence referendum. What is the latest on the Scottish struggle for independence? Well, the membership of the SNP is a closely guarded secret. Guesstimates vary between 30,000 and 60,000. If you do speak to any of the SNP automatons, they will tell you 100,000 + The bank account is not only empty, the party has serious financial troubles. I am not just speaking about the missing £633,000 and the fraud investigation. Large donations have dried up. Membership has not only fallen, but those that remain many of them are paying the minimum membership fee or are indeed concessionary members. The Westminster ‘short money’ barely covers the cost of the army of advisors Sturgeon recruited. I really should find another name for them they don’t advise, they bend their views to align with the leadership and the Stonewall fanatics. They never actually advise, they comply!

The YES Movement once so feared by the British establishment has been hollowed out by Sturgeon and her minions. Where a quarter of a million Scots used to march for independence with AUOB now you are lucky if a couple of thousand turn up. Not so long ago people were suggesting that Scots were the most political aware in all of the Union. That is the biggest myth ever! An astute political class would not have allowed so many opportunities to have been wasted.

Nor would they have allowed the insanity and lack of action over the last eight years to have gone unchallenged. Sturgeon played on the people’s desperation for independence. Hence why the Yes Movement was replaced by the Wheesht for Independence movement. One of Sturgeon’s few successes!

The past seven years were the most fertile political circumstances for our independence. Sturgeon let every opportunity pass her by while she built up her own personal popularity at Scotland’s expense. She indulged in gender politics and relegated independence to an aspiration, not a necessity.

She has now resigned, however, like a fart in a lift the aftermath is still with us! She leaves behind a complete and utter disaster. The party is corrupted and on the verge of open warfare. She surrounded herself with sycophants and children. She ripped the democratic heart out of the SNP and supplanted the Constitution with a reign of terror and fear.

Her dalliance with Stonewall and their Queer Theory led to her forced resignation.Many others in the pro-independence media and myself did all we could to warn her and the Movement of the stupidity of such actions. Like most other things she just wouldn’t listen. Her pig headedness has destroyed her party and delayed our independence by some way.

The fantastic party she inherited has been destroyed. She leaves behind a party that has a higher % of troughers than even Scottish Labour had in its heyday.

This has never been more apparent than in this leadership contest. The payroll have all fallen into a line behind the Sturgeon/Murrell continuity candidate. Humza Yousaf a young man that has never had a real job or managed to do a competent job in any role he has been given. I remember when he first appeared on the scene. Sturgeon used him at Conference to whip up the membership to make donations and buy the raffle tickets. I would suggest that was when he reached his zenith!

He will be an even bigger disaster than Sturgeon if he is elected or should I say, shoe-horned into the leadership. The membership will fall even further and quicker under Humza’s leadership. He has no core to his politics indeed his only remote connection to politics is his ability to make a damn good living while being talentless. He is a follower, not a leader! Hence all his references to Nicola at all the Hustings.

Every brief Sturgeon gave him he has screwed up. From Transport to Health and Justice, he has left each role in a worse state than when he arrived. Chaos and utter failure characterise his career thus far. Sturgeon should shoulder the blame for that, she promoted him too quickly and way beyond his meagre capabilities.

Now Sturgeon wants to promote him into the role of First Minister. God preserve us have none of the payroll obediently supporting him looked at his track record? Why would anyone want this political wrecking ball anywhere near the top job? I task anyone to tell us his skillsets that match the task of gaining Scotland its independence. He has slipped on more banana skins than Elmer Fudd has in Bugs Bunny cartoons!

He has told us he won’t change a thing. He worships Nicola and believes there has never been a better, more astute or more intelligent politician ever. Why then would he change anything? He will continue with her disastrous gender policies and challenge the Section 35 right up to the Supreme Court. HE WILL LOSE AND COST THE TAXPAYERS £ X!

He will continue the coalition with the equally incompetent Greens. He will keep the same questionable CEO who is at present under police investigation for possible fraud. He has already stated gaining independence is beyond his abilities citing that if Nicola couldn’t achieve it he certainly can’t think of a way to gain it!

The latest opinion polls show that those in favour of independence are back to 2014 levels. Humza wants to carry on in that manner!  We need progress, not regression!

I have asked this question on social media to all the SNP MSPs, MPs and the payroll that have sworn allegiance, adoration and unquestioning backing of Humza. How can anyone that supports independence, support Humza when by his own admission he has no idea how to gain our freedom?

The only answer I can come up with is these people are happy with the status quo and enjoy the salaries and perks that come with it. They are not focussed on independence. All they have are soundbites handed to them and blind loyalty to keep them in a manner they have become accustomed to. Scotland’s independence? Pah, humbug!

This leaves the two female candidates. Let me say either would be better than the hapless Humza Yousaf. Kate Forbes has the higher profile from her time as Cabinet Secretary for Finance. People were rightly impressed by the way she began her brief taking over from Derek McKay 24 hours before the budget was to be presented.

Her intelligence, honesty and decency are unquestionable. Her politics, however, are a little too right for me. Her compliance to tax evading Freeports particularly disturbs me. Her part in the great sell off of renewables to the spivs has to be questioned. Lastly, her failure to vote on the GRRB amendments strikes me as a cowardly way out of a difficult personal predicament.

Gaining independence from the British state requires a warrior as leader, not a timid, unsure individual. Kate has also stated that she will ask for other mandates in the hope of finally convincing Westminster to agree to a Section 30. That is just insanity. As Einstein famously said “doing the same things over and over and expecting a different outcome is a sign of insanity.

That leaves Ash Regan. She is saying all the right things. She wants unity of the entire movement. She wants a Constitutional Convention. She wants a separate Scottish currency. She wants every election to become an independence Plebiscite. She is not asking permission of Westminster, she is telling them. She wants a root and branch overhaul of the party’s headquarters and campaigning. Independence is at the core of everything she says.

So the choices for the SNP Members and the outcome for Scotland are inextricably linked. Here are the choices.

1. A Continuity candidate that has failed in every brief ever given. A steady as she goes man that will only be able to manage decline.

2. A very smart lady with a track record in finance and competent. Financially and politically wise to know that challenging the Section 35 is both infeasible and costly. However, perhaps a little too cautious and maybe not strong and brave enough to face the British establishment or the deadwood in her own party that need removed.

3. A candidate that puts independence as a first and main priority. Someone that has already demonstrated their abilities to reunite the entire independence supporting movement. Someone with some life experience who was not scared to stand up to power when she resigned on a matter of principle.

Scotland needs to take on the British establishment. We can no longer keep playing the British game at both Westminster and Holyrood. I believe only one of the candidates knows this too, Ash Regan.

Therefore, for Scotland’s well being I hope and trust that the SNP members choose the independence candidate over the continuity and conservative (Note the small c!) candidate. We must also hope for no chicanery in the actual election process by those with vested interests in preventing a new broom!

We will be watching events closely!