THE SNP's legion of new members is to be allowed to vote on forthcoming candidate selections for the General Election campaign.
The party will open its conference next month with a move to welcome the influx of new blood by waiving the "13 month rule".
The rule was originally devised to prevent individual constituencies with small memberships being swamped by new sign-ups specifically to influence candidate selection. But in the context of a national membership which rose from 26,000 to over 80,000 in the weeks following the referendum in response to the broad political mood, this rule is set to be waived.
The mechanism for this is for the conference to open as a meeting of National Council and this is the recommendation from the national executive of the party.
One of the candidates for deputy leadership, transport and veterans Minister Keith Brown, said he had written requesting the change, adding: "What kind of a welcome to the party would it have been for those members if the first thing they were told was that they wouldn't be allowed a say in who our candidates for Westminster are?
Deputy leadership rival, treasury spokesman Stewart Hosie, said: "I very much welcome the move. It's the perfect mechanism to ensure we maximise the number of members fully involved in party democracy."
The third contender, the secretary for training, youth and women's employment, Angela Constance, had argued for going further in terms of fully extending the franchise for voting for the deputy leadership but the date for this was set at opening for nominations on September 23, which means more than 25,000 new members will have a say but not the further 30,000 who have joined subsequently.
Why are you making commenting on HeraldScotland only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereCommments are closed on this article