Slanszh Meeja go ballistic, Tas is quite atrocious

John Cowie on Twitter: "Asking pertinent questions at the Craig Murray talk and Tasmina went ballistic."
😂

— John Cowie 'Facts are chiels that winna ding' (@joco2014) April 27, 2025

Craig Murray talk.

Tasmina and husband turned up and sat right at the front.
Not happy bunnies

— John Cowie 'Facts are chiels that winna ding' (@joco2014) April 27, 2025

So Tasmina is against the SNP 1 ALBA 2 policy ?

— Denise Findlay 💚🤍💜 (@gracebrod1e) April 27, 2025

She hotly denied it was ALBA policy Denise. Very angry & indignant. Accusing me of not being for independence & causing division.

The ALBA Failed Clique find it impossible to admit that Alba's incomprehensible 'strategy' is SNP1/ALBA2 ad nauseum.
It's illogical & sign of failure

— John Cowie 'Facts are chiels that winna ding' (@joco2014) April 27, 2025

Now naturally I strongly disagree with the main point John Cowie is making here.  Leaving aside the usual highly misleading shorthand about "1 and 2" (there are no numbers involved in the Holyrood voting system), it would obviously be extremely sensible for Alba to get behind an SNP constituency vote at next year's election.  That's what they did in 2021 (their Party Election Broadcast even displayed a graphic of a cross marked in the SNP box on the constituency ballot), and their real mistake was in ever moving away from that.

But there are two issues about this incident.  Firstly, it's yet another demonstration of the contemptuous and often downright sinister treatment of Alba members by the party's unelected Chair, Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, who everyone knows has total dictatorial control of the party (with an elected "leader" there mainly as window-dressing).  She is utterly unable to cope with any interaction with party members that is not of the "how we adore you, our queen" variety.  

John Cowie can doubtless look forward to a tap on the shoulder from the Enforcement Team in the near future.  But remember, Alba is a "member-led party" (no sniggering at the back).

Secondly, there's the confusion the incident causes over Alba's strategy for next year's election, which we had been assured would be a "list-only" strategy.  Technically, it could be argued that Ahmed-Sheikh did not contradict that, because it's possible for Alba to stand only on the list while not urging their supporters to vote SNP on the constituency ballot.  But the problem is that we've been repeatedly told that the reason for the list-only strategy is that it's a reversion to what Alex Salmond did in 2021, and in the Alex Salmond Memorial Party it's important to walk in Salmond Footsteps at all times.  We know that actively supporting an SNP constituency vote was an indispensable part of Salmond's strategy in 2021.

Clearly some clarification is now required -

1) Is the list-only strategy still in place?

2) Will Alba be recommending an SNP constituency vote or not?

3) If not, why are you deviating from Alex Salmond's 2021 strategy?  Surely you're not saying an infallible strategic genius got it wrong?

4) If you're not going to recommend an SNP constituency vote, will you at least be recommending that Alba supporters vote for a pro-independence party?  Or will you be doing a Stuart Campbell and steering them towards unionist parties, including Reform?  Surely that would be the end for Alba if you go down that road?

*. *. *

Meanwhile, pressure is mounting this morning on Alba councillor Chris Cullen (dubbed "the Crossmaglen Columbo") after a recording emerged of the Tory leader of South Ayrshire Council, Martin Dowey, promising multi-million-pound contracts to his "pals".  Cullen is the owner of a local joinery business and is known to have controversial ties to Dowey and the ruling Tory group on the council.  He was alleged to have entered into an informal deal with the Tories (often referred to as "that grubby Tory-Alba deal") that led to him replacing a Labour councillor as chair of a key committee around six months ago.

At this time there is no hard evidence to suggest that Cullen is one of the "pals" Dowey promised a contract to, or that Cullen's partner Shannon Donoghue, or his future mother-in-law Corri Wilson (Alba's new "Director of Operations") have benefitted financially.  But questions are quite rightly being asked about what Cullen knew and when.

Keir Starmer is a hypocrite and a coward

The Scottish Government have been criticised in some quarters for "hiding behind the Supreme Court ruling" on gender ideology, but actually they have a fairly watertight excuse for behaving in the way that they are.  They have zero power to overturn or amend the Equality Act or to overrule the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Act, and their own self-ID legislation has been vetoed by London at the stroke of a pen, so it's perfectly reasonable for them to say that all they can do is operate within the very tight constraints that others have chosen for them.

But the situation is totally different for the UK Labour Government.  In fact it's the complete opposite.  As I understand it, the Supreme Court ruling had nothing whatever to do with the European Convention on Human Rights, or any other international treaty obligation, or any UK constitutional principle that is outwith the London government's control.  It was purely and simply the court's interpretation of the textual meaning of an ordinary piece of domestic legislation passed by Gordon Brown's majority Labour government in 2010.  Lord Hodge made clear that the ruling was based on a logical deduction of what the legislature (or to all intents and purposes the Labour majority within it) must have intended when it passed the law.  Effectively the court was explaining what the Labour Party's own definition of a woman is, or at least what it was fifteen years ago.

If the Labour party of today is unhappy with that definition, the Supreme Court ruling is not even a trivial obstacle for them in putting it right.  All they would have to do is use their current parliamentary majority to repeal or amend the Equality Act and legislate in crystal clear language for a new trans-inclusive definition of a woman.   If they did, For Women Scotland could go back to the Supreme Court but they would get completely the opposite result from before.  Exactly the same judges would say that equalities legislation gives trans women exactly the same rights as other women.  And that is not an exaggeration.  That is literally true, because the courts can only interpret laws in cases of ambiguity.  It is for MPs to decide what those laws say, and to remove all ambiguity if they so choose.

Now, I for one am glad that Labour are not going down that road.  I think the definition of a woman that has been arrived at is the sensible and correct one and it should be left alone.  But what I have no respect for is the Hollywood production Starmer has put on to try to convince everyone that he has no agency in this matter.  It's as if he's just been handed tablets of stone from Our Lord Jesus Christ and has a duty to obey The Truth, which is an absolute that no mere mortal can defy or resist.  That's a bit different from the reality, which is that he just doesn't much fancy amending a dodgily-drafted Gordon Brown / Harriet Harman law from a decade and a half ago.

The trans activists who Starmer led up the garden path have got every right to be furious with him, because he's simply too much of a moral coward to admit that he's changed his mind about the pro-trans comments he made a few years ago - or more likely that he never believed those comments in the first place, and only made them because he naively thought at the time they would prove to be net vote-winners.

Scotland's escape from the prison of the UK must be 100% non-violent - but it will be a prison-break just the same

Peter Hitchens has gone up in my estimation of late due to him leading the charge for the unsafe conviction of Lucy Letby to be revisited as soon as possible, but it's strangely reassuring to be reminded that he's still a hard-right Brit Nat extremist in other respects.  He's written a piece about the hypocrisy of those who oppose the principle of a "land for peace" deal in Ukraine, and it actually has a lot to commend it, but just look at this segment about Northern Ireland - 

"But the closest to home of all these events is the hardest to see. Thanks to brilliant Blairite spin-doctoring then and since, much of Britain has yet to realise that the United Kingdom surrendered to the Provisional IRA at the fabled ‘Good Friday Agreement’ in Belfast in 1998...The 1998 agreement is clear. All it will take is a referendum, and the six counties of Northern Ireland will become part of the Irish Republic. This is what our government signed, though Ukrainians might be struck by the way our cave-in followed strong pressure from the US, which abruptly dropped its supposed close ally.  The defeated must do as they are told..."

"All" it will take is a referendum?  Well, what more should it take?  Are we to assume that the principle the British government was defending in the war against the IRA was that Northern Ireland must remain part of the UK regardless of whether its people want to or not?  I don't remember that being mentioned very much at the time.  And are we to assume that "defeat to the IRA" looked like the introduction of democracy, or at least of the most fundamental democratic principle of all?  Does Hitchens actually intend to frame the IRA as pro-democracy freedom fighters, and Britain's 30-year military campaign against the IRA as being about defending a colonial possession against democracy?

This of course has implications for Scotland, because if you take it to its logical conclusion, it means that for your vote to count in a British territorial possession like Northern Ireland, Wales or Scotland, you first have to defeat the British government militarily.  Now, to be clear, if our independence movement ever became violent, which it never, ever will, I would walk away from it.  I would rather live under London rule indefinitely than be associated in even the remotest way with IRA-type violence, and thankfully I will never be faced with that dilemma.  But if a Hitchens-type mindset is prevalent in the British establishment, and it does appear to be (the pretence that the UK is anything other than a prison has fallen away in recent years), we need to start thinking about the non-violent ways in which we are going to stop playing by London's rules and bring matters to a head.

My concern is that John Swinney (assuming that the cynics who say he is a devolutionist are wrong) has this notion in his head that if we can just achieve a very large supermajority for independence, Britain will eventually accept it, as they did with devolution.  But the key difference is that one of the two main London parties was actually pro-devolution, and simply delivered its own devolution policy when elected to government.  That will never happen with independence.  Labour and the Tories (and Reform) will always be opposed to it, so we'll have to find another way of breaking the logjam, no matter how high support for Yes goes.  Remember that the Tory government of 1979-97 had no problem whatsoever continuing to resist devolution even when support for it in opinion polls reached 70-80%.

So we'll have to think about tactics like civil disobedience, non-cooperation between the Scottish Government and the UK Government, and parliamentary disruption at Westminster (although the latter will be a lot more effective if and when the SNP get their Westminster majority back).

And if the SNP leadership really are saying that 50% + 1 is no longer enough for independence, then I'm afraid there's no use being squeamish about it.  In my opinion the only way a supermajority for independence is even feasible is if a massive disruptive event occurs, and the only such event I can see potentially on the horizon is a Nigel Farage premiership.

More analysis of the SNP's astonishing landslide victory in Glenrothes

Just a quick note to let you know I have a new article at The National about the SNP's extraordinarily strong performance in the Glenrothes Central & Thornton by-election, which bodes extremely well for the Holyrood election next year.  You can read the article HERE.

And while I'm about it, I may as well give one more plug for the new episode of the Scot Goes Popcast, in which you can learn more about the new "Get Counted" campaign for independence.  You can watch it HERE or via the embedded player below.

SNP storm to landslide triumph in Glenrothes by-election

Glenrothes Central & Thornton by-election result on first preferences (24th April 2025):

SNP 47.6% (-1.1)

Labour 21.5% (-6.4)

Reform UK 17.9% (n/a)

Liberal Democrats 6.9% (+2.9)

Conservatives 6.1% (-5.9)

I know people will say "well, this was a strong ward for the SNP anyway", but how many local by-elections did we see in the second half of last year when the SNP failed to defend the seat despite starting in first place?  Even the most favourable terrain in by-elections still has to be won, and the SNP have not only done that, but done it in style.

Remember that the baseline for the percentage changes above are not the 2024 general election, but the 2022 local elections when Nicola Sturgeon was still in her pomp.  So for the SNP to actually improve their position relative to Labour in a local by-election is quite a rare thing, and is consistent with the recent GB-wide polls showing Labour imploding.

For some reason Glenrothes was one of the strongest areas in Scotland for the Leave campaign in the 2016 Brexit referendum, so it's both interesting and heartening that the Reform surge in the ward isn't anything out of the ordinary.

As they've been doing in the vast majority of recent by-elections, Alba sat this contest out, which is particularly significant given that Glenrothes Central and Thornton is one of the roughly one-third of wards in Scotland where they did put up a candidate in 2022.  This is beginning to look less like a 'choose your battles and concentrate your resources' strategy, and more like a party that is gradually and quietly exiting the stage for good - and given the way they've been behaving recently, that's perhaps for the best.

Twenty's Plenty: Thanks to Liz Kendall, Labour are hurtling towards an electoral bloodbath of BIBLICAL proportions, as they slump to yet another new post-election polling low

GB-wide voting intentions (Find Out Now, 23rd April 2025):

Reform UK 28% (-)

Conservatives 20% (-)

Labour 20% (-2)

Liberal Democrats 14% (-)

Greens 13% (+3)

SNP 3% (-)

20% is a new post-election low for Labour across all polling firms, beating the record of 21% set by More In Common around a month ago.  It's a full two points lower than the previous record in Find Out Now's own polls.  It's not quite an all-time or post-1945 record low, because a few weeks ago I trawled through Labour's polling fortunes under Jeremy Corbyn, and found one poll (in July 2019) where they were on 18% and a handful of others where they were on 19%.  It's important to stress that the vast majority of polls during the Corbyn period had Labour on a much higher vote share, and they were very often in the 30s or 40s.  But yes, at Corbyn's absolute lowest moments, when the carefully concocted "anti-semitism" scam was at its peak, Labour did occasionally slip sub-20.  Once Starmer starts posting polling numbers that are lower than anything Corbyn ever suffered, the psychology of the situation will shift and the beginning of the end of his dismal premiership may move into view.

I've pumped the Find Out Now percentages into the Electoral Calculus seats predictor (which is of course a flawed model, but at least it's easily available), fine-tuned them with the Scottish subsample numbers, and this is what came out - 

Reform UK 339

Labour 118

Liberal Democrats 61

Conservatives 50

SNP 45

Greens 9

Plaid Cymru 4

Others 24

Reform UK: 339

All others combined: 311

REFORM OVERALL MAJORITY OF 28 SEATS - NIGEL FARAGE BECOMES PRIME MINISTER - BRITAIN LEAVES THE EUROPEAN CONVENTION ON HUMAN RIGHTS

We're now only a week away from the English local elections, and although Labour have been on the chicken run by postponing as many elections as they think they can get away with, there'll still be plenty enough to produce the annual tradition of the BBC projected national vote share.  Corbyn's worst showing was 27% in 2017, so there must be a strong chance Starmer will do worse than that - albeit with the caveat that Reform's lack of a traditional local government base may mean that they underperform the opinion polls.  

If Labour do slip to 26% or below, and if they lose the Runcorn & Helsby by-election to Reform (still a big "if" in my opinion), Starmer's leadership will perhaps start to look damaged beyond repair.

"The only boy who could ever reach me was the son of a toolmaker": IN YOUR DREAMS, Keir Starmer, as Labour are overtaken by Reform in the latest YouGov poll - and the SNP have another big lead in the Scottish subsample

One of the curious features of YouGov polling since "the Kendall event" is that Labour had until now remained consistently in first place even though their vote share was hovering at or close to their post-election low of 23%.  That's surprising, because Reform were in first place in four consecutive YouGov polls in February when Labour's vote share was sometimes as 'high' as 25%.  The obvious conclusion to draw was that Reform must have slipped back a bit too, and that Labour's newly-lost voters were going to other destinations like the Greens.  That's no longer getting Starmer off the hook, though, because Reform have now taken the lead with YouGov for the first time in around two months.

GB-wide voting intentions (21st-2nd April 2025):

Reform UK 25% (+2)

Labour 23% (-1)

Conservatives 20% (-1)

Liberal Democrats 16% (+2)

Greens 10% (-1)

SNP 3% (-)

Plaid Cymru 1% (-)

Scottish subsample: SNP 32%, Reform UK 23%, Labour 14%, Liberal Democrats 11%, Conservatives 9%, Greens 8%

Look at the Liberal Democrats in the GB-wide figures - they're now just four points behind the Tories and only seven points behind Labour.  We've talked quite a bit about how the next election could see the breaking of the Labour/Tory duopoly that has existed since Labour overtook the Liberals in the 1920s, but it's no longer just Reform that are threatening to break through.  Remember that Labour are not really in mid-term yet, so the real depths of their unpopularity could be yet to come.  Might there eventually be polls showing them in fourth place?  I'm not predicting that, but it's certainly not impossible.

The Scottish subsample obviously looks highly significant in a number of ways - the big gap between Reform and Labour, and the Tories reaching the existential crisis territory of fifth place.  But remember that although YouGov's Scottish subsamples have more credibility than those from other firms, the margin of error is still exceptionally large, so it's not possible to be sure that Reform are even in second place.

*  *  *

You can catch up with the latest episode of the Scot Goes Popcast, in which I found out more about the IndyApp and the new "Get Counted" campaign for independence, on the embedded player below, or via this link.

Just when you thought Alba couldn't lose the plot any more than they already have, a senior figure within the party is now calling for the abolition of the Scottish Parliament and the return of direct rule from London

Although Mike Dailly only joined Alba about six or seven months ago, it's pretty obvious that at the point of joining he had some sort of "understanding" with the leadership, because since then he's been slavishly loyal to the leadership line, and it's clear from a number of his tweets that he fully expects to be an Alba candidate in next year's Holyrood election.  So, yes, I think it's reasonable to describe him as a senior member of Alba, and yes, he does appear to have just called for the abolition of the Scottish Parliament and the return of direct rule from London.

If the Scottish Parliament doesn’t remove Maggie Chapman MSP as deputy convenor of the Equalities Committee, I think we need a new referendum on whether we need a Scottish Parliament or not. This is so important.

— Mike Dailly (@mikedailly) April 23, 2025

I'll be perfectly honest with you - I'm not Maggie Chapman's greatest fan, and I obviously don't agree with her on the trans issue.  I thought she was delusional and offensive when she said after the 2021 Holyrood election that the Scottish people had rejected the "bigotry" of gender critical feminists and that those people should leave politics. Quite clearly the vast majority of people had not been voting with the trans issue at the forefront of their minds, and indeed I proved that in a Panelbase poll I ran only a few months later.

But do I think the abolition of devolution and the return of direct rule from London is a price worth paying for getting rid of Maggie Chapman as the deputy convener of the Equalities Committee?  Er, no.  Even just saying those words out loud makes you realise just how spectacularly some people are losing their sense of perspective - or else how spectacularly skin-deep their commitment to the Scottish Parliament has been from the start.  If Alba don't swiftly distance themselves from Dailly's ridiculous comment, it'll call into question both the authenticity of their belief in Scottish self-government, and their seriousness as a political party (not that plenty of other things haven't already done that, of course).

Scot Goes Popcast Episode 24: Learn more about the new "Get Counted" campaign for independence

For episode 24 of the Popcast, I learned about the new "Get Counted" campaign, which is asking Yessers to register their support for independence via the IndyApp.  I was joined by Jason Baird of the National Yes Registry, Andy Oliver of Yes Stonehaven & Mearns, Lynn Hastie of Yes Haddington & District and Sheena Jardine of Yes Pentlands, who explained the thinking behind the campaign.  A few of the questions I asked were:

* Is the IndyApp free?  (Spoiler: yes, it is.)

* Is the campaign a sort of "referendum substitute" to demonstrate a mandate for independence, and if so, won't it have to go insanely viral to achieve its goals?

* Is the campaign a sort of high-tech version of John MacCormick's Scottish Convention & Covenant Association from the 1950s, which was wildly successful in terms of getting people to register their support for a Scottish Parliament, but wasn't able to translate that support into political action?

* Won't a non-party network open to all Yes supporters and groups run into problems with political parties that have a 'no-platforming' culture?

You can watch the video version of the Popcast via the YouTube embedded player below, or at this link.

You can also listen to the more traditional audio-only version via the Soundcloud embedded player below, or at this link.

James Kelly · Scot Goes Popcast Episode 24: Get Counted campaign

If you're interested in downloading the IndyApp, you can do so HERE or HERE, and information about the Get Counted campaign can be found HERE.

You can also catch up with previous episodes of the Popcast - 

Episode 2: Tim Rideout

Episode 5: Len Pennie

Episode 6: Alex Salmond

Episode 8: Election Results

Episode 10: Maggie McNeill

Episode 12: William Duguid

Episode 13: Denise Findlay

Episode 21: Fiona Sinclair

Landmark MRP poll shows Reform on course to defeat Labour UK-wide - and the SNP on course for a majority in Scotland

First of all, just a brief word about the Pope. I don't know about historical Popes, but Francis was undoubtedly the best of my lifetime, and was about as progressive as any Pope can reasonably be expected to be. (And given that historical Popes were not generally noted for their progressiveness, he may well have been the greatest of all time.) On Gaza, he didn't speak in code, he was absolutely explicit in his condemnation of Israel.

I have a horrible feeling that these things go in cycles and that the next Pope could be an arch-conservative like Ratzinger.  But you never know, of course, some of the Cardinals who will be voting were appointed by Francis himself.  [UPDATE: Having checked, it turns out that *80%* of the Cardinals eligible to vote were appointed by Francis, which is pretty astonishing and potentially very encouraging.]  Doubtless at some point over the coming days, I'll be doing an "Are Papal elections more democratic than Alba NEC elections?" blogpost, and inevitably answering the question in the affirmative.

Meanwhile, there was an MRP mega-poll from More In Common that I overlooked on Saturday.  It shows Reform UK on course to become the largest single party across Britain, and the SNP on course for a majority of seats in Scotland.

Seats projection (More in Common MRP):

Reform UK 180 (+175)

Labour 165 (-246)
Conservatives 165 (+44)
Liberal Democrats 67 (-5)
SNP 35 (+26)
Plaid Cymru 5 (+1)
Greens 4 (-)

Independents 10 (+4)

Vote share:

Reform UK 24% (+9)

Labour 24% (-10)

Conservatives 24% (-)

Liberal Democrats 13% (+1)

Greens 8% (+1)

SNP 2% (-)

All of the changes listed above are measured from the 2024 general election, and not from the previous poll.  

165 seats for Labour would be their worst showing since 1935, and therefore would be easily worse than anything Jeremy Corbyn managed.  However, even in 1935 Labour took a very healthy 38% of the vote.  You'd have to go all the way back to 1918 to find a general election in which Labour polled below 25%.

If anything, 35 seats for the SNP is a bit underwhelming based on the polling we've been seeing recently, but it's still a very clear majority of Scottish seats (61%, to be exact).