You know as well as we do that the Scottish National Party is - deservedly - well on the way to an epic victory in the coming election. You know that the SNP will win all - or almost all - of the constituency seats - and will deserve to. But you also know as well as we do that victory in this election - that forming the next administration - is not an end for the SNP: it is only a means to an end.
The end is to create a better Scotland, and you believe - as we do - that to achieve that requires the powers which will come with independence.
In the recent referendum, our side nearly won. We nearly achieved independence. But if you are honest you will agree that the Scottish National Party did not nearly win alone, and that, alone, it would not have nearly won. Rather, a broad movement in which many non-party actors, Women for Independence, the National Collective and the Radical Independence Campaign not least among them, and many other party actors including the Green Party and the Scottish Socialist Party, put their shoulders to the wheel together.
To achieve independence we need to motivate a broad coalition across Scotland. That's why the party you lead - the Scottish National Party - is necessarily a broad church, why for those of us on the left your policies on land reform, on local and central taxation, on fracking inevitably seem timid and unadventurous. We understand that it is necessary for you to be unadventurous in order to not startle the horses on the right of your party, to keep your broad church together.
We greatly respect the competence, focus, hard work and dedication of your government over the past eight years. You, personally and collectively, have done very well and richly deserve the nation's backing.
But competence won't win us independence. Timidity won't inspire people to vote for a big change. The very strategy which is necessary to hold the party together is a strategy which will prevent it winning independence, alone.
It does not have to stand alone. It has natural allies, whom it could choose to foster. The Green Party, RISE and the Womens' Equality Party are all forces which could provide a Holyrood chamber much more supportive of and conducive to the policies you want to advance than the present chamber.
We're sure your recognise in Cat Boyd of RISE, for example, someone far closer to you across a wide range of policy issues than some members of your own cabinet. We're sure that you'd agree that however awkward Andy Wightman would be for any administration as a Green MSP, both the parliament and Scotland's rural policy would be the richer for his presence.
So we're puzzled and disturbed by your support for the 'Both Votes SNP' tag. You must know that tribal politics have been a damaging force in Scotland for generations. But more than this you do know that under the de Hondt system, because the SNP will win the preponderance of the constituency seats, it will win very few of the list seats.
To illustrate this, if everyone votes as current polling suggests they will, we would have seventy nine pro-independence MSPs - sixty nine SNP and ten Green - facing fifty unionists. But if everyone who plans to vote SNP on their first vote also votes SNP on their second, the number of pro-independence MSPs falls to only seventy four, and your allies the Greens are wiped out. Unionists would benefit, and the party which would benefit most from 'Both Votes SNP' is UKIP, up from zero seats to eight.
If, however, everyone who votes SNP on their first vote were to vote, for example, Green on their second vote, we'd have one hundred and eleven pro-independence seats, and only eleven unionists.
Both Votes SNP is a policy which wins the SNP votes at the expense of its pro-independence allies. Worse, it's a policy which actually loses thirty-seven potential pro-independence seats. But worse still, it's a policy which costs any future Yes movement a great deal of money and a lot of full time research and support staff, because as you know, behind every MSP there are two or three staff supporting them.
Both Votes SNP not only removes thirty-seven pro-independence votes from the parliament, it also removes not thirty-seven but about one hundred and twenty nine full time workers from the next Yes movement - and it gifts one hundred and twenty nine full time salaries to the next No campaign.
We're sure that you're confident that, should England vote for Brexit, you can get a motion through Parliament for a new independence referendum. But to win that referendum you will need allies. Now is not the time to be stabbing those allies in the back, but to be embracing them and leading them forward. Now is the time to create a Yes alliance, to agree with Greens and Rise who will stand for Yes on each of the regional lists, to withdraw the SNP's list candidates, and to encourage your supporters not to vote 'Both Votes SNP' but instead to vote 'Both Votes Yes'.
You know as well as we do that Scotland needs this. You know as well as we do that we will not achieve independence without it.
Yours sincerely
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