2003. Wilson was broadly critical of what he argued were the centralising tendencies of the Swinney leadership, as well as a drift to the centre ground of politics away from the SNP's traditional position of the left. At the party conference of that year, the election took place with Swinney receiving 577 votes and Wilson taking 111. 2004 did not get off to a good start for Swinney's leadership. On 1 January, a former parliamentary candidate and a party activist in the Shetland Islands Brian Nugent announced that he was forming his own pro-independence party, the "Scottish Party" (which eventually relaunched itself as the Free Scotland Party) in response to what he perceived to be an overly pro-EU stance by the SNP. Soon afterwards, the party's National Executive Committee decided to suspend and then expel Campbell Martin, an SNP MSP. Martin had backed Wilson's leadership challenge and had continued to be overtly critical of Swinney's leadership, resulting in disciplinary action. Despite a slump in the vote and a decrease in the number of available seats from 7 to 6, the SNP was able to retain its two Members of the European Parliament at the 2004 European elections. Nonetheless, John Swinney announced his resignation on 22 June 2004. He said that he would remain as caretaker leader until a successor was elected. 2004 leadership contest Shortly afterwards, two MSPs (Roseanna Cunningham and Nicola Sturgeon) and one former MSP (Mike Russell) announced that they would be candidates in the election for the party leadership. Alex Neil MSP announced that he would not be a candidate, citing what he believed to be the hostility of senior party figures such as Fergus Ewing and Alex Salmond to the prospect of his becoming leader. In a surprise announcement on 15 July 2004, Alex Salmond announced that he would also be a candidate in the leadership race, despite having previously said "if asked, I'll decline, if nominated, I'll defer, and if elected, I'll resign". Nicola Sturgeon then withdrew from the contest and declared her support for Salmond and decided to stand for Deputy Leader. This resulted in Kenny MacAskill pulling out of the race for deputy and declaring his support for Salmond and Sturgeon, leaving Sturgeon standing against Fergus Ewing and Christine Grahame. Shortly after Salmond and Sturgeon announced they were running on a joint ticket. The campaign for leader was characterised by being a low-key