ROBBIE DINWOODIE
and Tom Gordon
THE SNP membership would be declared quarterly under Alex Salmond's leadership, and he has pledged to sign up the party's 10,000th member at its annual conference in three weeks' time if he is today named as national convener.
Given that little more than 8000 party members were eligible to vote in the leadership contest, such a 25% boost in numbers may appear fanciful, but the party's archaic system probably depressed membership while the contest over the past two months appears to have boosted the central roll.
''I will recruit the 10,000th member at the annual conference in Inverness, and thereafter I promise to release figures every three months,'' said Mr Salmond.
''I am fed up with all the guessing games, let's cut them out. If membership is going up I want everyone to know about it and if it goes down I certainly would want to know.''
The national convener will be declared at 10.30am at the Dynamic Earth visitor centre in Edinburgh. Few doubt that Mr Salmond will be returned for a second term as leader, and misgivings about whether he will have his preferred deputy, Nicola Sturgeon, were eased by a voting turnout of almost 80%.
Last night it emerged SNP officials have ruled only winners may address supporters and press from the platform.
While Mr Salmond seems to have won comfortably against Roseanna Cunningham, the deputy leader, and Michael Russell, former front bencher and one-time party chief executive, the contest for deputy could have been tight had turnout not been so high. Ms Sturgeon is expected to defeat challenges from Christine Grahame and Fergus Ewing.
Ms Sturgeon, who will be acting leader of the opposition at Holyrood if she wins, stressed that things said in the heat of internal debate over the past two months would be put aside. She hailed Michael Russell as ''an immense talent'' and claimed it would be ''daft not to use him'', adding a reference to the aftermath of Alex Neil losing to John Swinney: ''Things said in the heat of debate should be forgotten. That didn't happen last time, but I hope it will happen this time.''
Meanwhile, the spin doctors who advised John Swinney through his SNP leadership have quit the party before the new leader arrives.
Gordon Archer and Colin McAllister had both been widely tipped to depart after the calamitous European election result that forced Mr Swinney to step down in June.
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