THE Alba Party will field at least 100 candidates in the Scottish local council elections in May, its leader Alex Salmond has said.
The former First Minister spoke to the party's spring conference at Hampden Park in Glasgow on Saturday.
He also attacked the current Scottish Government's record saying it was "becoming incompetent and accident-prone".
Two Scottish MPs and a number of councillors are members of the Alba Party, which was launched in March 2021.
Opening his speech by addressing the war in Ukraine, Mr Salmond said: "Firstly, we condemn all illegal invasions regardless of the perpetrator. That has been our stance since Vietnam and has continued through Palestine, Afghanistan, Yemen and Iraq.
READ MORE: Alex Salmond: Nicola Sturgeon's government becoming incompetent
"Secondly, our movement urges reconciliation, peace, diplomacy - de-escalation, not escalation."
Saying the Alba Party had just reached its first birthday, he continued: "We are in fine, rude health.
"People said we wouldn't last a month, nobody would be interested.
"Now we're 6,700 strong and 100 of us and more will carry the party banner into the elections in six weeks' time."
He also accused his former party of failing to progress the case for Scottish independence, saying: "There's been naethin' daein' (nothing happening) on independence over these last eight years."
Closing his speech, he said: "The Arbroath Declaration - it said, among other things, as long as 100 of us remained alive then we'd keep the flame of independence burning strong.
"Well, we have more than 100 candidates in this election.
"Let's go forth from this our National Stadium and set this nation alight."
In February, Mr Salmond announced he was suspending his show on the Kremlin-backed network RT due to the full scale invasion by Russia of Ukraine.
RT later had its licence revoked by the regulator Ofcom.
The EU had earlier banned RT from being broadcast across any of its 27 members.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald 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 hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel