ALEX Salmond has claimed to have given the SNP “their saving grace” as he revealed he voted for his former party in the election.
The Alba leader’s party did not stand any candidates in the north east of Scotland and the former first minister said he voted SNP to get Douglas Ross out.
Seamus Logan won the new Aberdeenshire North and Moray East, which includes Salmond’s home Strichen, in the SNP’s only gain on election night.
The party was reduced to just nine Commons seats after Thursday’s poll, its worst election result in over a decade.
"I'm one of the few people in Scotland who can say 'I voted for a successful SNP candidate!'" Alba leader Alex Salmond tells @matthew_wright that the fall of the nationalist parties in Scotland can't be on his shoulders, having voted for his former party on Thursday. pic.twitter.com/8u872vd1Wq
— LBC (@LBC) July 7, 2024
All of its seats are now concentrated in Perthshire and the north east as Labour effectively wiped them from the central belt while Mid Dunbartonshire went to the LibDems.
Speaking on LBC, Salmond said he had found the result “agonising”, but noted he was “one of the few people in Scotland who can say I voted for a successful SNP candidate”.
He said: “I voted SNP because we had no Alba candidate here in the north east of Scotland and I’m one of the few people in Scotland who can say I voted for a successful SNP candidate.
“Because in this seat because of the shenanigans of the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, Douglas Ross, who stabbed his one of his colleagues in the back, metaphorically, as he was on life support in a Glasgow hospital – quite literally, that’s what happened.
“Many people here decided that’s not the sort of person we wanted representing the north east of Scotland. So this was the SNP’s gain of the election.”
Salmond added: “I’m glad to give the SNP their saving grace.”
Alba fared much worse on election night, losing their deposit in every seat in which they stood.
Both their MPs Neale Hanvey and Kenny MacAskill failed to be re-elected to Westminster and they managed a total of just 0.5% of the popular vote across the 19 constituencies they contested.
That was behind Reform on 6.9% and the Greens on 3.8%.
Salmond has previously said his sights are set on making a breakthrough in the 2026 Holyrood elections in which he intends to stand as an Alba candidate.
