Reform UK double their GB-wide lead and hit a new all-time record high vote share in YouGov poll - but SNP retain double-digit lead in the Scottish subsample

I had wondered after the last batch of polls whether the Reform UK vote might finally have plateaued, but that theory seems to have gone out of the window.  As I've mentioned a few times before, YouGov are in a special category because they showed the Brexit Party in the lead in a few polls back in mid-2019, with a peak vote of 26% - and because Reform is a direct legal continuation of the Brexit Party, it's therefore been harder for Reform to hit a new record high with YouGov than with other firms.  But it's finally, unambiguously happened - and we consequently move into uncharted territory.

GB-wide voting intentions (YouGov, 16th-17th February 2025):

Reform UK 27% (+1)

Labour 25% (-)

Conservatives 21% (-)

Liberal Democrats 14% (-)

Greens 9% (-)

SNP 3% (-)

Plaid Cymru 1% (-)

Scottish subsample: SNP 34%, Reform UK 22%, Labour 22%, Conservatives 8%, Liberal Democrats 7%, Greens 6%

Corroboration of the general trend is offered by a poll from More In Common, which also shows Reform rising one point to hit a new high watermark of 26% with that polling firm, and to move into a one-point lead over Labour.

Meanwhile, the tables from Saturday night's Scottish poll from Norstat have been published, which allows us to tie up some loose ends.  Although we already knew that the independence question was tied 50-50 after Don't Knows were excluded, it turns out that if Don't Knows are left in, Yes has a slender lead of 48% to 47%.  If nothing else that's psychologically important, because it means that across all polling firms, all of the last four published independence polls have shown a Yes lead of some description.  The numbers with Don't Knows removed but rounded to one decimal place are: Yes 50.4%, No 49.6%.

The Westminster voting intention percentages are:

SNP 32% (+1)

Labour 18% (-2)

Reform UK 17% (+2)

Conservatives 13% (-1)

Liberal Democrats 11% (+2)

Greens 6% (-)

Labour have never been in so much danger of being overtaken by Reform in Scotland.  OK, they've been in third place behind the Tories many times over the last few years, but is this a wholly new category of threat due to Reform eating into their core working-class support?  Norstat already have Reform miles ahead of Labour among lower-income voters (by 26% to 14%).  That said, at the height of the Ruth Davidson surge in 2017, the Tories must have been taking a fair amount of working-class support that would once have been solidly Labour - not least in the constituency of Lanark and Hamilton East, which amazingly the Tories came within 266 votes of winning in 2017.

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I launched the Scot Goes Pop fundraiser for 2025 last month, and so far the running total stands at £1491, meaning that 22% of the target of £6800 has been raised.  If you'd like to help Scot Goes Pop continue with poll analysis and truly independent political commentary for another year, donations are welcome HERE.  Direct Paypal donations can also be made - my Paypal email address is:   jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

This is, apparently, not a practical joke - Chris McEleny is genuinely standing for depute leader of the Alba Party while still under suspension for "gross misconduct". This is the sort of thing that happens to political parties when they are disintegrating.

Thrilling news for Alba members this afternoon: if you don't think Chris "Disgruntled Employee" McEleny, aka "Dzhugashvili", has done quite enough to destroy your party so far, you now have a golden opportunity to elect him as depute leader and help him to finish the job.  I honestly thought it was an elaborate practical joke when someone mentioned on the previous thread that he was standing - I thought at most that perhaps one or two Alba members might have nominated him as a bit of a lark.  But no, it's absolutely for real.  This at least explains why after a prolonged period of radio silence, he suddenly started pumping out pro-Alba tweets at the weekend as if his suspension had never happened.

And ah yes, the "suspension".  I'm already picking up a great deal of anger from Alba members, because the very fact that McEleny is able to seek nominations for depute leader reveals an important piece of information that was not previously known - his party membership has not been suspended.  How can that possibly be?  If he's been suspended from the most senior party staff role for "gross misconduct", how can he possibly still have the official status of a "party member in good standing"?  Ironically, his candidacy poses as many awkward questions for the current leadership as it does for himself and his own allies.  I gather some people are on the brink of leaving the party if McEleny's suspension isn't extended to cover his party membership.

I don't think McEleny has a cat in hell's chance of defeating Neale Hanvey for the depute leadership, but just imagine the implications if he actually did.  He would almost certainly be the deputy of the very leader who had sacked him for gross misconduct.  That is not a sustainable situation - one of the two would have to resign, or the party itself would fracture, or both.  He knows that as well as anyone, so exactly what game is he playing?  I can think of two main possibilities - 

1) He thinks if he polls a respectable minority vote in the depute leader election, it'll be his get-out-of-jail-free card and prevent MacAskill from getting rid of him.  I'm not sure that's right, though.  Remember that I had a decent record in Alba internal elections - I'm a former NEC member, I came within 0.5% of being elected Member Support Convener in December 2023, I was a serving member of three national committees, and I was the incumbent Organiser of North Lanarkshire LACU, but they still didn't think twice about expelling me at McEleny's own instigation.  Similarly, I believe Sean Davis was the Convener of a LACU in Ayrshire before McEleny maliciously took disciplinary action against him, but he still ended up effectively being indefinitely suspended from the party.

2) McEleny may be looking beyond his own defeat in the depute leader contest and his ally Ash Regan's defeat in the leader contest.  The idea may be to keep peddling the line that "Scotland needs a serious independence party, not a sideshow" so he and Regan can later claim that Alba have chosen to be a sideshow by electing the MacAskill/Hanvey ticket.  He and Regan would then claim to be acting in the national interest by providing a "serious independence party" in a different form.

I'm not sure if we're witnessing the death spiral of Alba as a whole or merely of McEleny's career within it, but it's likely to be one or the other.  In the meantime, we can look forward to one of the great comedy spectacles of our time as McEleny runs a depute leadership campaign almost entirely on the basis of his claimed "telepathic communion" with the late Alex Salmond, which apparently means that he and he alone is equipped to take forward Mr Salmond's secret-but-brilliant strategy for next year's Holyrood election.  Leanne Tervit set the scene rather well for what we're about to witness in this tweet from a few weeks ago.

If Alba are going back to begging for "tactical" votes, the basic arithmetic of the situation is going to make it very hard to convince people

The Alba Party's suspended General Secretary broke his radio silence on Twitter at the weekend. 

SNP on course to win 3/4 of constituencies. This means touch & go for pro indy majority as SNP list votes won’t deliver seats. Meanwhile Alba remain within touching distance of a breakthrough - if SNP voters back Alba on the list it guarantees keeping unionists out of Bute House. https://t.co/eMJpgr2fcz

— Christopher McEleny (@ChrisMcEleny) February 15, 2025

"if SNP voters back Alba on the list"

Oh, if "ifs" and "ands" were pots and pans. What matters is that at the moment almost every poll is projecting Alba on zero seats, so it's actually Alba list votes that are wasted. https://t.co/qYJhI7mHQy

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) February 16, 2025

First of all, of course, there's the little psychodrama here of why McEleny has suddenly started posting supportive tweets about Alba when he appears to be firmly on his way out of the party, unless his ally Ash Regan pulls off a major surprise in the leadership election.  I suppose it's possible that the MacAskill leadership might shy away from expelling McEleny from the party altogether simply due to his apparent closeness to Alex Salmond (the "telepathic link" and all that) - it would look like they were questioning Mr Salmond's judgement.  However, it does seem practically certain that McEleny's removal as General Secretary will be upheld on the grounds of "gross misconduct" - and if you find someone guilty of gross misconduct in 2025 you can hardly run them as a Holyrood list candidate in 2026.  My guess is that if McEleny is left with no role in the party, and has no means of using the party as a vehicle for his ambitions to become an MSP, he'll leave voluntarily.

But let's take his tweet about the 2026 election at face value.  It suggests that Alba are in a right old strategic muddle, because it implies that once again they will not be trying to win votes in the normal way by persuading voters that they are the best party, and will instead be begging for votes on a tactical basis.  OK, it's perfectly understandable that they don't think pitching themselves as the best party is a viable option, given all of the very public in-fighting, and the McCarthyite purges, and the deeply unattractive personalities at the top, and the half-baked policy platform.  (Even though I was an elected member of the Alba NEC for a year, I still don't have a scooby whether the party wants to rejoin the EU or not - all you ever hear is the holding position about joining EFTA for the time being.)

But if you're going to pitch for tactical votes on the list, you have to do that coherently.  You can't say to voters that they need to vote for different parties on the constituency ballot and the list ballot, and then announce that in some areas you're standing on both the constituency and the list and want votes for both.  As I've mentioned before, I heard McEleny suggest as recently as August that the plan was to stand in at least eight constituency seats, and I've since discovered that others have heard him say exactly the same thing on other occasions.  

And even if it wasn't for that hopeless incoherence, the raw arithmetic just doesn't support Alba's pitch for tactical votes anyway.  Here is the seats projection from the new Norstat poll broken down into constituency and list seats - 

Constituency seats: 

SNP 54 

Conservatives 10

Liberal Democrats 5

Labour 3

Greens 1

List seats:

Reform UK 15

Labour 15

Greens 9

Liberal Democrats 8

Conservatives 8

SNP 1

So of the three largest pro-independence parties, the only one whose list votes are entirely 'wasted' is Alba.  The SNP's list votes do produce a small return, but the one pro-indy party that leaps out as getting proper bang for their buck on the list is the Greens.  So as a rational voter, there are only really two options to choose between.  Either:

1) You can take the same view as I always have, which is that the Holyrood list system can't be 'hacked' because there's too great a risk of tactical votes backfiring and producing the opposite effect from the one you expect.  That would lead to the conclusion that you should always vote for your first-choice party on the list regardless of circumstance.

OR 

2) If you insist on taking a big risk with a tactical vote, you would identify the pro-indy party with the best statistical chance of converting tactical list votes into list seats.  At the moment it's impossible to escape the conclusion that party is the Greens.  There are Alba list votes going completely to waste which could actually have a chance of producing extra pro-indy list seats if they transferred en masse to the Greens.  

There is no planet on which Alba is the best statistical prospect for a tactical vote.  I suppose their get-out clause would be "ah, but the Greens aren't really a proper pro-indy party, are they".  That's a tough sell, a) given the Greens' track record of full involvement in the 2014 Yes campaign, and b) given McEleny's own argument that the pro-indy majority is under threat and on a knife-edge.  In a crisis situation, are independence supporters really supposed to muck around on the basis of purity tests?  

Natty Norstat poll is yet another to show the SNP and Greens on course to retain the PRO-INDEPENDENCE MAJORITY at Holyrood - with Labour on the brink of being overtaken by Reform

I was just about to give you the full figures from tonight's new Norstat poll, but the archived page I was relying on has stopped working (probably temporarily).  What I can tell you for now from memory is that the poll shows the SNP and Greens on course to retain a narrow pro-independence majority at Holyrood, with 65 seats between them, and unionist parties on 64.  Labour and the Tories are both dangerously close to being overtaken by Reform - they are on 18 seats apiece and Reform are on 15.

Once again, Alba are not projected to win any seats, and their list vote share has dropped by one point.

The independence question shows an exact 50-50 tie.

I'll update this post once I find the full numbers.

UPDATE: Here are the figures...

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot (Norstat / Sunday Times, 11th-14th February 2025):

SNP 35% (-2)

Labour 18% (-3)

Conservatives 15% (+1)

Reform UK 14% (+2)

Liberal Democrats 11% (+1)

Greens 6% (+1)

Scottish Parliament regional list ballot: 

SNP 30% (-2)

Labour 17% (-1)

Conservatives 15% (-1)

Reform UK 13% (+1)

Liberal Democrats 11% (+1)

Greens 10% (+2)

Alba 4% (-1)

Seats projection: SNP 55, Conservatives 18, Labour 18, Reform UK 15, Liberal Democrats 13, Greens 10

I noticed Alba HQ's resident wonderbairn Robert Reid sniffing around Ballot Box Scotland on Bluesky the other day, and one possible reason for that may be that BBS contradicted John Curtice's official seats projection from the previous Norstat poll by suggesting Alba might actually win one seat.  Alba have since been flogging that unofficial BBS projection for all they're worth, but I'm fairly sure there's no way BBS will be projecting Alba to have any seats now that their list vote is down to 4%.  Remember that since 2021, Norstat (and their predecessor Panelbase) have had a house effect that consistently overestimates Alba's list support, so although 4% would be an encouraging vote share for Alba if another polling firm reported it, in the context of Norstat it's a disappointment for them.

Across all polling firms, this is the fourth out of the last five Holyrood polls to have shown a pro-indy majority on the seats projection, so there's no point in anyone suggesting that it's a fluke at this stage.  The odd one out was the Survation poll, but even that had the SNP and Greens combined on 63 seats - just two short of a majority.

Should Scotland be an independent country?

Yes 50% (-4)

No 50% (+4)

It's now pretty clear that the previous Norstat poll putting Yes on 54% was a bit of an outlier, and that may well explain why the SNP's vote has dipped a little in the Holyrood numbers - the previous poll may just have had too many Yes and SNP supporters in the sample due to random sampling variation.  But I'm actually fairly encouraged by a 50-50 tie, because the data tables from the Survation poll a few weeks ago gave the impression of quite a substantial No lead on the unpublished independence question, so at least there's no sign from Norstat of a swing to No apart from the natural reversion of an outlying result.  Norstat/Panelbase have been a relatively No-friendly polling firm in recent years, and 50% for Yes is very much on the high side from them.

Net ratings of leaders:

John Swinney (SNP): -2

Anas Sarwar (Labour): -17

Russell Findlay (Conservatives): -24

Donald Trump (US Republicans): -32

Keir Starmer (Labour): -34

Kemi Badenoch (Conservatives): -37

And those net ratings are a strong clue that the SNP's lead over Labour is highly unlikely to be overturned in time for next May unless there is some kind of major disruptive event - by which I mean something on the scale of the Falklands War, the Covid pandemic, or a change of Prime Minister.

Nigel Farage is a slightly odd omission from the above list - as intriguing as it is to see where Trump slots in, Farage's rating would have been of greater significance.

There's also a Westminster question in the poll - for some reason the Sunday Times have only published sketchy details of it, but it must be favourable for the SNP because the seats projection is: SNP 38, Labour 8, Liberal Democrats 6, Conservatives 5.

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I launched the Scot Goes Pop fundraiser for 2025 a couple of weeks ago, and so far the running total stands at £1491, meaning that 22% of the target of £6800 has been raised.  If you'd like to help Scot Goes Pop continue with poll analysis and truly independent political commentary for another year, donations are welcome HERE.  Direct Paypal donations can also be made - my Paypal email address is:   jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Reform's Scottish votes are coming from unionist parties to a much greater extent than from the SNP

Yesterday people were looking at the result of the Kirkintilloch by-election, and because there was a Reform surge and an SNP collapse, they were rather simplistically assuming there must have been a big direct swing of votes from SNP to Reform.  Of course it doesn't necessarily work like that, and especially not in a low-turnout local by-election.  Reform could have gained their votes mainly from unionist parties or from people who abstained last time around, while the SNP could have lost votes to Labour, the Greens and abstentions.

I've been getting asked for a while to write a blogpost about where the polls suggest Reform's Scottish votes are coming from, so this may be as good a time as any.  The most recent Scottish poll was from Find Out Now, whose data tables have their limitations, so instead I've looked at the next most recent poll, which was from Survation.

How current Reform UK supporters voted on the 2021 Scottish Parliament constituency ballot:

Conservatives 44%

SNP 16%

Labour 10%

Liberal Democrats 4%

So above all else it's the Tories who are taking a hammering from the Reform surge, and the Kirkintilloch result (which saw the Tories lose two-thirds of their vote share) is consistent with that.  I know some people will instantly leap on the fact that Reform are taking more votes from the SNP than from Labour, but remember the baseline here is the 2021 result, when the SNP took 48% of the vote and Labour only took 22%.  So pound-for-pound, Labour are losing more votes to Reform than the SNP are.  Specifically, Labour have lost 7% of their 2021 vote to Reform, while the SNP have lost only 5% of theirs in the same direction.

That point can be underlined by using the 2024 general election result, when Labour were slightly ahead of the SNP, as the baseline instead.

How Reform UK supporters (ie. people planning to vote Reform in Holyrood 2026) voted in the 2024 Westminster general election:

Reform UK 42%

Labour 23%

Liberal Democrats 10%

Conservatives 7%

SNP 1%

It's hard to escape the impression here that quite a lot of voters who switched from Tory to Labour in 2024 are now switching from Labour to Reform.

Another way to get a sense of the impact of Reform on the SNP's fortunes is to look at the breakdown of the SNP's 2021 vote - ie. how those people are planning to vote next year.

How people who voted SNP on the 2021 constituency vote are planning to vote now:

SNP 71%

Labour 9%

Greens 7%

Reform UK 5%

Liberal Democrats 3%

Conservatives 3%

Alba 1%

So although Reform UK are a non-trivial problem for the SNP, they're not quite the giant monster at the window that people are imagining.  Farage remains disproportionately a threat to the unionist parties.

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I launched the Scot Goes Pop fundraiser for 2025 a couple of weeks ago, and so far the running total stands at £1491, meaning that 22% of the target of £6800 has been raised.  If you'd like to help Scot Goes Pop continue with poll analysis and truly independent political commentary for another year, donations are welcome HERE.  Direct Paypal donations can also be made - my Paypal email address is:   jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

ALBA CLUEDO, THE SEQUEL: So who did it to Tasmina, with the mobile phone, in the Balkan country? Who could *possibly* have a strong enough motive to want to end her political career with a damaging leak? Investigators narrow it down to a list of 6572 prime suspects.

The remaining members of the Alba Party, colloquially known as NYEs (Not Yet Expelleds), have been gripped once again today by Whodunnit fever after yet another catastrophic leak of sensitive information to Paul Hutcheon of the Daily Record.  As before, the information can only have come from an extremely high level of the party, and the leak was undoubtedly calculated to damage or to end the political career of a specific Alba politician.  The previous target was Kenny MacAskill, while today it was Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh.  That's a fascinating twist, because of course MacAskill is standing for the vacant leadership and Ahmed-Sheikh is not.  However, it makes perfect sense, because as I've outlined in previous installments of "THE ALBA FILES", Ahmed-Sheikh has used her role as Party Chair to function as the power behind the throne, and has been largely responsible for the unmitigated disaster of Alba degrading into a narrow, paranoid, authoritarian sect, which regularly carries out 'purity purges' or bullies people out of the party.  The concern of many is that, regardless of whether MacAskill or Ash Regan wins the leadership race, they may keep Ahmed-Sheikh on as Chair and the real power will remain in exactly the same destructive hands as before.

The leak reveals, bizarrely, that Ahmed-Sheikh refused to return Alex Salmond's phone to his widow after his death in North Macedonia, despite repeated requests to do so.  I'm still in touch with many current and former Alba members, and there's been considerable bewilderment today about what could possibly have motivated Ahmed-Sheikh to effectively confiscate the phone.  Questions I've heard range from "was there material on the phone that she didn't want anyone but herself to see?" to "did she want to mine the phone for valuable information?".  I've no idea of the answers to those questions and there is very little point speculating.  But what does interest me is the identity and motivation of the senior figure who leaked the story to the Record.  

There could of course be a benevolent motivation - ie. to put an end to the Tas Tyranny once and for all, and ensure that the party can make a genuine fresh start under its new leader.  But I have also heard an alternative theory being darkly whispered.  "What if", people say, "there's a disgruntled senior employee out there who faces disciplinary action, and who knows that in the Mafia-esque world of Alba, that can only ever mean a one-way ticket to expulsion.  What if he's decided that if he can't control the Alba Party, nobody else should be able to either, and has decided to bring the whole house crashing down in an act of raw vengeance."

I'm not sure who they could be referring to but it's certainly an interesting thought.

Strange happenings on Twechar Beach as Labour flatline but still make a by-election gain

So let me once again take you by the hand and try to navigate you through the wacky world of STV by-elections.  The Liberal Democrats were technically defending the seat in Kirkintilloch and Twechar, even though they only finished third in the ward last time around behind the SNP in first place and Labour in second.  Labour have won the seat tonight, so whichever way you cut it, this is a genuine gain for them.

Kirkintilloch East and North & Twechar by-election result on first preferences (13th February 2025):

Labour 30.2% (+1.0)

SNP 22.9% (-16.0)

Liberal Democrats 21.3% (+2.6)

Reform UK 15.0% (n/a)

Conservatives 4.1% (-7.9)

Greens 4.0% (n/a)

Alba 2.0% (n/a)

Sovereignty 0.6% (n/a)

It may seem strange that Labour have made another by-election gain at a time when they're dropping like a stone in national opinion polls and the SNP are doing pretty well, but you have to remember the baseline for the percentage changes is the 2022 local election results, when Nicola Sturgeon was still in her pomp and Labour were still well behind.  As you can see, Labour have barely progressed from that baseline, with a mere one percentage point improvement, so their performance is actually in line with the current polls.  It's the SNP that have underperformed poorly, and I can only assume that comes down to local factors or a below-par campaign.  The swing is consistent with a Scotland-wide Labour lead over the SNP of almost five percentage points, so I think we can safely assume that's misleading.

It's another strong showing for Reform UK, although not quite matching the remarkable 23% they got in Bannockburn a few weeks ago.  Alba have had a poor result, which looks like normal service being resumed after a few OK-ish results towards the end of last year - although there may have been an element of smoke and mirrors to those better results, because Alba were sitting out most by-elections and concentrating all their resources into a very small number of good prospects.  And the Tories seem to be suffering horrendously from the Reform surge.

For the uninitiated, Sovereignty are a right-wing pro-independence party which some have touted as a kind of 'indy Reform', but they certainly aren't getting much traction so far.

By the way, Twechar is very close to Queenzieburn, which was within the catchment area of my secondary school and I was therefore baffled for years by the "Twechar Beach" references.  I thought it was high time for you to be baffled too.

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I launched the Scot Goes Pop fundraiser for 2025 a couple of weeks ago, and so far the running total stands at £1281, meaning that 19% of the target of £6800 has been raised.  If you'd like to help Scot Goes Pop continue with poll analysis and truly independent political commentary for another year, donations are welcome HERE.  Direct Paypal donations can also be made - my Paypal email address is:   jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Nigel Farage on course for Downing Street as cataclysmic Find Out Now poll sees Reform move into record-breaking six point lead

GB-wide voting intentions (Find Out Now, 12th February 2025):

Reform UK 29% (-)

Labour 23% (-2)

Conservatives 21% (+3)

Liberal Democrats 12% (-1)

Greens 9% (-1)

SNP 3% (-)

Plaid Cymru 1% (-)

Scottish subsample: SNP 34%, Reform UK 25%, Conservatives 13%, Labour 12%, Liberal Democrats 9%, Greens 6%

As the data tables are already available, I've given you the Scottish subsample numbers for the sheer hell of it, but bear in mind that non-YouGov Scottish subsamples are unlikely to be statistically reliable.

This is the biggest lead Reform UK have ever had in any poll from any pollster, although interestingly they've achieved it while remaining on a static vote share - remember this week's More In Common poll also suggests a more or less static picture for Reform, so it remains to be seen whether the bandwagon is still relentlessly rolling.

23% is not quite a post-election low for Labour - they've been on both 22% and 23% in previous Find Out Now polls, but not at a time when Reform UK were as high as now - hence the record-breaking Reform lead.  Now that Reform have pulled away from the pack somewhat, it's probably a good moment to attempt a seats projection and see just how close Farage is (or isn't) to an absolute majority.  Drumroll please...

Reform UK 269

Labour 141

Conservatives 106

Liberal Democrats 60

SNP 46

Greens 4

Plaid Cymru 2

Others 22

That leaves Reform a hefty 57 seats short of a majority, but on those numbers there's no plausible permutation that doesn't put Nigel Farage in 10 Downing Street.  Even Labour and the Tories in combination don't outnumber Reform.  Ah, the joys of first-past-the-post.

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I launched the Scot Goes Pop fundraiser for 2025 a couple of weeks ago, and so far the running total stands at £1281, meaning that 19% of the target of £6800 has been raised.  If you'd like to help Scot Goes Pop continue with poll analysis and truly independent political commentary for another year, donations are welcome HERE.  Direct Paypal donations can also be made - my Paypal email address is:   jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Second YouGov poll in a row shows Reform ahead - with an enormous SNP lead in the Scottish subsample

When Reform UK took the lead in a recent YouGov poll, I pointed out the oddity that in doing so, they hadn't quite matched their all-time high vote share with YouGov.  Or at least not technically, because Reform are a legal continuation of the Brexit Party, which hit 26% in YouGov polls during a brief purple patch in mid-2019.  However, in the new YouGov poll published a couple of days ago, Reform have now equalled that previous record, while maintaining their one-point lead over Labour, and increasing their advantage over the Tories to five points.

GB-wide voting intentions (YouGov, 9th-10th February 2025):

Reform UK 26% (+1)

Labour 25% (+1)

Conservatives 21% (-)

Liberal Democrats 14% (-)

Greens 9% (-)

SNP 3% (-)

Plaid Cymru 1% (-)

Scottish subsample: SNP 38%, Reform UK 19%, Labour 17%, Liberal Democrats 12%, Conservatives 10%, Greens 3%

As ever, the standard point that Scottish subsamples from YouGov are of more interest than those from other firms, because they appear to be correctly structured and weighted (albeit they still have a very large margin of error due to the small sample size).

This week's other GB-wide poll from More In Common shows a superficially similar picture, with Reform gaining a point to tie with Labour for the lead.  However, they're simply returning to the same vote share (25%) they've been on in two previous More In Common polls since the start of the year, so there's not necessarily any evidence of an ongoing bandwagon.

There's been increasing chatter recently about either a merger between Reform and the Tories, or an electoral pact between the two parties.  The instinctive reaction of many to that prospect is "oh my God, that would put the right-wing coalition in an unassailable position".  In practice it wouldn't be quite as simple as that, because Reform are currently attracting a lot of "economically left, socially right" voters - and as soon as those voters feel they'd be "voting Tory" by backing Farage, a lot of them would return to the Labour fold (and in Scotland there would even be some returning from Reform to the SNP).  

Nevertheless, it's fair to assume a Reform-Tory merger would leave Labour with a substantial deficit in the polls.  My guess is that if a deal does happen, it'll be years from now, because Farage will want the Tories to get used to being firmly in third place so he can negotiate from a position of strength.

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As you may have seen, I've updated this blog's masthead, which now states that Scot Goes Pop is one of the three most-read Scottish political blogs.  That's based on the latest estimates for January 2025 from Stuart Campbell's favourite comparison site, which shows that Scot Goes Pop has overtaken Robin McAlpine.  As I've previously rehearsed, there are very good reasons for not trusting these estimates, but as Campbell's fan club treats them as absolute gospel, I may as well take advantage of them when they're favourable.  The only Scottish political blogs with a bigger readership than Scot Goes Pop are now Wings and Wee Ginger Dug - unless you count Craig Murray, but he hasn't posted about Scottish politics since October, so for the time being at least (things may change) it's fair to say that his blog is no longer a Scottish politics blog.  I know some unkind souls would say the same is true of Wings, which by his own definition would now be better titled "Gender Stuff Over Somerset", but he does still post about Scottish politics occasionally, and I gather he comes from Bathgate originally, so we'll stretch the point for now.

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Alba members have finally been sent the report of the Constitution Review Group - this may be your one and only chance to seize democratic control over your own party, and please pay special attention to the vital need to democratise the Conference Committee in particular

I went to my first SNP branch meeting tonight since rejoining the party, and while no political party will ever be perfect, it was something of a relief to symbolically 'turn the page' on my horrific experience in Alba.  Ironically, while I was sitting in the meeting, it looks like Alba members were at long last being sent the recommendations of the Constitution Review Group, which I was an elected member of until September - a fact that ultimately led to my ejection from Alba due to me pushing 'too hard' for internal democratisation.  So although I no longer have any stake in what happens in Alba, I was obviously very curious tonight to see the document and to discover whether it bore any resemblance to what was agreed at the final meeting of the group before McEleny suspended me out of the blue.  I'm grateful to the Alba member (for obvious reasons I won't name her but she knows who she is!) who sent the document to me.

First thoughts: bravo to Mike Baldry.  He was the one remaining pro-reform member of the group after I was removed, and it looks like he's somehow held the line and kept what was agreed last spring more or less intact.  I should also give some grudging credit to the group's anti-reform chair Hamish Vernal, who doesn't appear to have exploited my removal as an excuse to water the document down.

What that means essentially is that where the group was not unanimous or almost unanimous, both the majority and minority positions have been presented in the document for Alba members to consider and choose between.  So that in theory opens up an opportunity for Alba members, if they wish, to decide that the elected members of the National Executive Committee (NEC), the Conference Committee, the Conduct Committee, the Appeals Committee, and the Finance & Audit Committee, should be directly elected by all party members on a one member, one vote basis - as opposed to the current set-up where only a tiny minority of members get to vote.  There are also options presented (sort of) for the Party Chair to become a de facto elected position by being reserved for one of the two people who finish top of the male and female ballots for Ordinary NEC members, and for an expansion in the number of Ordinary NEC members from eight to twelve, thus allowing for a greater range of voices to be heard.  The leadership will presumably lean extremely hard on the rank-and-file membership to reject those options, and of course one of the paradoxes of so many members having left in disgust is that the people who are still left in the party are disproportionately likely to be leadership cheerleaders.  But go on, Alba members - prove me wrong, and reclaim democratic control of your own party.  It may well be the only chance you'll ever get to do that, and if you don't take it, you may be dooming the party forever (whether the leadership realise that or not).

People who support one member, one vote for NEC elections sometimes used to say to me that they worried it might somehow be 'overkill' to extend that to the other national committees.  If you're one of those people, I really do urge you to think again, because the Conference Committee is in practice far more powerful than the NEC.  Alba members theoretically control the party's policy and strategy via the national conference - but that theory is utterly meaningless if they don't also control the national conference's agenda, and they can only do that if they directly elect the Conference Committee.  Although the Conference Committee is the only national committee I was never a member of, I've heard reports from those who were members, and they all agree that in its current form it's a one-woman Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh dictatorship.  She insists on "consensus decisions", which in practice means the committee is required to agree to whatever she wants without a vote.  

Famously (and to Daniel Jack's displeasure I brought this incident up in the Constitution Review Group), Tasmina responded to a proposal that national conference should consider the introduction of a policy development committee by bellowing "THAT'S A BIG NO FROM ME!!!!", which apparently was supposed to be the end of the matter.  Good luck, Alba members, in trying to democratically control your own party unless you transform the Conference Committee from a Tas dictatorship into a directly-elected body.

The case for the Conduct and Appeals Committees to be elected by one member, one vote is pretty straightforward - it's not fair for any party member to be expelled or suspended unless they've had an opportunity to elect the bodies making that decision.  I suppose I would concede it may not be the end of the world if the Finance & Audit Committee is not directly elected, but in principle I do think it should be.

I'm slightly disturbed by one of the documents that has been distributed along with the main report, which appears to set out proposed revisions of how the Disciplinary Committee should operate.  I'm not totally sure whether that originates from the Constitution Review Group itself or from somewhere else, but amazingly it makes an already bad situation even worse in some respects.  It limits the 'defendant' in any disciplinary case to just five minutes for an oral presentation, and it also limits each committee member to "approximately" just two questions.  As you may remember, I was only permitted to be present at my own disciplinary hearing for twelve minutes, and a big part of the reason for that is the leadership loyalists on the committee had very obviously been instructed not to ask me any questions at all in case it gave me ammunition.  So only one person was interested in asking me questions, and if that person had been restricted to only two questions, I'd have been there for an even shorter period than twelve minutes.

It hardly seemed possible that such an awful disciplinary procedure could be made even worse, but they seem to be managing it somehow.