The Alba Party is a Scottish nationalist political party which was founded on 8 February 2021 by former Scottish National Party leader and First Minister of Scotland Alex Salmond. Salmond left the SNP in 2018 after being accused of sexual harassment, and, after floating the idea of forming his own party in 2020, Salmond - encouraged by a 2019 poll which showed that 40% of SNP voters would back a party led by him - founded the Alba Party in February 2021. On 28 March 2021, SNP MPs Kenny MacAskill and Neale Hanvey defected to the Alba Party. The party declared that Scottish independence was an immediate necessity, and it sought to build a socially just and environmentally responsible Scotland. The party planned to stand four candidates for the list vote in every region in the May 2021 Scottish Parliament election, endorsing voting for the SNP for the constituency vote while voting for the Alba Party for the list vote in order to ensure that more pro-independence MSPs were elected. The SNP, however, criticized the formation of the Alba Party as "a party thrown together by a disgruntled ex-first minister as part of his vendetta against our first minister."