Scot Goes Pop Fundraiser 2024: The Final Push

Click here to go straight to the fundraiser page.

This is 'take two' for the 2024 fundraiser's final push, because as you might remember I attempted a post like this a couple of weeks ago, but literally just an hour after I published it, the tragic news came through that Alex Salmond had died.  However, I can't put off returning to the issue for any longer, because financial realities are what they are, and I think realistically I would need to raise a minimum of an additional £800 within the next two weeks or so to keep the blog afloat on the same basis that it's been operating for many years.  I can't delay the decision beyond that very tight timescale, because I'm in a situation that will be horribly familiar to many of you, ie. the numbers are just not quite adding up, and if I'm going to keep going, I'll need to keep the lights on and I'll need to eat.

To reiterate the points that I always make about fundraising: no, Scot Goes Pop is not my sole income, in spite of the constant "why not get a job" sneering from the trolls.  I'm sure that's self-evident to most sensible people, because the target figure for the annual fundraiser is always well below what is generally needed to live on.  I have multiple other income streams, but for a variety of reasons they aren't bringing in as much as they did prior to the pandemic, and unfortunately that sharp downward turn coincided with the problem of the post-2021 fundraisers repeatedly failing to meet their targets.  It's been a perfect storm, and consequently for the last three years I've been lurching from mini-crisis to mini-crisis.  What the fundraiser money always used to do was give me enough flexibility to just drop everything and blog at length whenever a poll came out or whenever a major story broke, regardless of whether that was at 11am on a weekday or midnight on a Saturday.  In other words, the non-blogging work that I do is mostly freelance and ad hoc, and I fit it around the blogging when required.  

Why are the fundraisers proving such a struggle these days, when they never were prior to 2021?  I'm sure it's partly due to the cost of living crisis, but it must also be partly down to my decision to join the Alba Party in the spring of 2021.  That seemed to displease almost everyone, because SNP supporters didn't like it but strangely many Alba supporters weren't much happier either.  I was a relative moderate within the party - I didn't think we should be waging total war against Nicola Sturgeon or attempting to totally destroy the SNP, and I was very troubled about the chatter over restricting the voting rights of English people living in Scotland.  Some of the harder line Alba members clearly didn't think there should be room for someone like me in the party, and regarded me with severe mistrust.

Hopefully, if there's one silver lining from Chris McEleny's apparent determination to expel me from Alba, it's that nobody can mistake me any longer for a partisan drone.  I literally have no idea what I will do after my likely expulsion.  There are three basic options - a) apply to rejoin the SNP, b) apply to join a smaller pro-indy party, or c) try to assist in setting up something new, and I am genuinely and totally undecided about which of those three would be best.  My mind has almost been like a war zone trying to work it out, and I wish to goodness the Alba powers-that-be would just do the decent thing and drop the malicious proceedings against me so that my dilemma would vanish in a puff of smoke, but I very much doubt that will happen.  So there's little point trying to pin labels on me just now when none really fit.

If I'm unable to raise enough over the next couple of weeks and I have to "stop" blogging, I'm sure it wouldn't be a complete cessation, because I would always get a bee in my bonnet about something or other and have a burning desire to blog about it.  However, Scot Goes Pop would revert to being a hobby as it was when I started it way back in 2008, and I would imagine there might be two or three posts a month at the absolute most.

But let's accentuate the positive.  What can readers look forward to if the fundraiser does raise just about enough to keep things going into 2025?  Above all else, of course, there'll be extensive polling analysis from a pro-independence perspective.  We're potentially in quite an exciting phase of the electoral cycle, as the public seem to have decisively concluded that the Labour government is a dud, meaning that instead of the SNP being caught in the death spiral that so many unionist commentators predicted prior to the general election, they're actually showing signs of recovery.  That could set the scene for a much more favourable outcome in the 2026 Holyrood election than we dared to hope for even a few weeks ago.  I'd like Scot Goes Pop to be around to tell that story - because I'm not sure we can rely on the unionist mainstream media to tell it for us.

Secondly, although I'm not impartial about independence, you can rely on me to blog about my own honest views without fear or favour.  I've resisted the menacing demands (which you've probably seen repeatedly in the comments section) for me to turn Scot Goes Pop into an Alba propaganda blog in return for avoiding expulsion, and neither am I interested in being an SNP leadership drone.  I just call things exactly as I see them, and frankly that does set me apart from some (but not all, I hasten to add) of the most prominent pro-indy bloggers.

And no promises, but it would be nice to revive the Scot Goes Popcast - it was going really well for a year or so, with some cracking guests, but again, that was another victim of my decision to join Alba, because SNP and Green people started to blanket-refuse my invitations, not wanting to be associated with an "Alba blogger".  But if I'd been more persistent, I probably could have found some takers, so I might have another crack at it.  

And of course there's the possibility of another Scot Goes Pop poll at some point.  In fact I'll have to get that done eventually even if I do stop blogging, because my last attempt at fundraising specifically for a poll ended up in no-man's-land with some funds raised but not enough to go ahead.  One way or another I'll get it done somehow!

To put in perspective what would be needed to keep Scot Goes Pop going, as I write this the running total on the fundraiser page is £3764.  Another £800 would take it to £4564, so that's a rough guide to where the total would need to be two weeks from now if this final push is to be just about a success.  Obviously more would be better and would give me more of a cushion, but I've got to be realistic and we'll see if another £800 can be managed.

Thank you to everyone who has already donated.  If you haven't donated yet and would like to, there are three main options.

To donate by card, please follow this link to the fundraiser page on GoFundMe.

To donate via PayPal, simply make a direct payment to my PayPal email address, which is:  jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

To donate via direct bank transfer, please contact me by email and I'll send you the necessary details.  My contact email address is different from my PayPal address and can be found on my Twitter profile or in the sidebar of this blog (desktop version of the site only).

People sometimes ask about fees: GoFundMe now rely on tips to make a profit, but the payment processor they use does still directly deduct a small percentage from donations.  So if you want to avoid fees completely, please select either the PayPal or bank transfer option (and if you choose PayPal, select the non-fee option from the menu).  PayPal also has the advantage of (usually) transferring the funds instantly, whereas with GoFundMe there is a delay of at least several days.

Find Out Now! Find Out How? Find Out HOLY COW!!! A majority of the Scottish public want independence in bombshell new poll

It's actually only four months since the last time an opinion poll showed a clear pro-independence majority - that was a telephone poll conducted by the UK's gold standard firm Ipsos, no less, but a lot of water has passed under the bridge since June, particularly the SNP's setback in the general election.  So it's incredibly heartening to discover that Find Out Now still have Yes in the lead.  I say "still" because for years Find Out Now polls have tended to show Yes majorities, as indeed have Ipsos polls - if those two companies are right, we've been in 'settled will' territory for quite some time.

Should Scotland be an independent country?  (Find Out Now)

 

Yes 52% (-)

No 48% (-)

So far I haven't found the fieldwork dates, but they must be fairly recent because the poll is billed as being "the first since Alex Salmond's death".

As far as I can see this is the ninth poll Find Out Now have conducted on independence, and of those no fewer than eight have shown a pro-independence majority.  The sole exception was the poll commissioned by Independent Voices in September 2023, although oddly some sources list even that one as showing a Yes majority.  That'll be because of the way the data was presented by the client at the point of initial publication, which must be an almost unique example of a pro-independence client, as opposed to a unionist client, pulling a fast one and getting away with it.

Essentially the message of this poll is that the general election has had no effect - pollsters that have previously shown a small Yes lead can be expected to continue to show a small Yes lead, while the bulk of online pollsters that have tended to put Yes in the high 40s can be expected to continue doing that too.  So for all of KC's endless propaganda about "Statista polls" ("Statista" is not a BPC-affiliated polling firm, you won't be surprised to hear), it looks like the popularity of independence is untouched.

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SCOT GOES POP FUNDRAISER 2024: I took a prolonged break from promoting the fundraiser during the general election period, but I'll have to make some serious progress over the coming days and weeks if the blog is to remain viable.  Many thanks to everyone who has donated so far.  Card donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE, or direct donations can be made via Paypal.  My Paypal email address is:  jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

The paradox for the most radical independence supporters is that they will act most effectively if they go against their own natural instincts, and instead of talking about "national liberation", start speaking the language of voters' real world concerns

A few weeks before the general election, I used my iScot column to bemoan the fact that there was no billboard ad campaign from the SNP (or any other pro-indy party or organisation) hammering Keir Starmer and Labour.  I felt Labour's narrow poll lead in Scotland was potentially highly vulnerable if voters became better acquainted with Starmer's well-documented history of lying, cheating and breaching trust, and indeed with how right-wing Labour's programme had become. However, I did concede that if the SNP simply didn't have the money to run such a campaign, there wasn't much that could be done.

However, now that we're on the other side of the general election, the independence movement has a golden second chance, because if Labour were vulnerable before July, they're even more vulnerable now - voters have spontaneously started to notice Starmer's true nature and his popularity has fallen off a cliff.  We'd now be pushing at an open door with billboard ads that make voters think about how Labour presented themselves as 'change without independence' and have utterly failed to deliver or have even been a change for the worse.  That effectively leaves voters with nowhere to go other than independence if they're looking for a radical change for the better.

So my heart started to sing this morning when Believe in Scotland sent out an email announcing that they intend to run another two billboard ads and are giving followers a chance to choose between three options, two of which are in line with what I think is the correct messaging.  One points out that Labour's own research shows that 4000 pensioners will die as a result of the winter fuel allowance being cut, adding that "Scotland didn't vote for this".  Another says "Starmer gets freebies while your granny freezes - Britain is broken".  I think "Scotland didn't vote for this" is the more effective of the two, because "Britain is broken" is open to interpretation and not everyone will realise that the nudge is towards independence.  They might think they're being urged to "fix" Britain with a new government.

Nevertheless both are good, and therefore I was dismayed when I submitted my vote and saw that the runaway leader in the poll was the only one that doesn't tackle Labour, and instead reverts to the independence movement's comfort zone by portraying the saltire as "dreaming big" and the Union Jack as "living small".  That doesn't really do anything at all - it's affirming and feel-good for the hardcore of already committed independence supporters, but doesn't hit any buttons for people who have yet to be convinced.

This is where I think potentially bad campaigning decisions are made when they're taken by radical independence supporters who assume that the rest of Scotland think like themselves.  I recently took a look at small pro-indy parties to see if any of them would be a suitable political home for me in the event that Yvonne Ridley's boast proves true and a decision has already been taken to expel me from the Alba Party.  But I found that almost all of them were making the same kind of mistakes as Alba, but on an even bigger scale - lots of talk about "national liberation" and "salvation", which in my view sounds like alien language to most voters.

Not long before Alex Salmond died, I was asked why I thought Alba had failed thus far, and I said that I thought perhaps the party's branding had been conceptually flawed from the start.  Although I'm passionate about the Gaelic language, from a hard-headed point of view the name Alba may have been a mistake, because for many voters it may have conjured up an image of a romantic, "Celticist" party, far removed from their own day to day concerns.  The smaller parties aren't learning from that error as far as I can see.  If a non-SNP, non-Alba party of independence is ever going to emerge as a serious contender, I suspect its messaging will have to go in a very different direction from the natural instincts of those who set it up.  It'll have to promote itself as a party primarily concerned with solving specific economic or social problems (or seeking to rejoin the EU, or whatever), but one that just happens to be utterly uncompromising in viewing independence as an essential part of the solution to those problems.  

As it turns out, there just isn't enough of a gap in the market for a party catering for voters who think the SNP isn't going far enough or fast enough on independence.  The SNP have well and truly monopolised the market as "the party of independence", and that isn't about to change. But where there may be a gap is by first speaking the language of voters' real world preoccupations, and then tying those preoccupations to the urgent necessity of independence.  That way you might even get soft No voters backing a Yes party, and help build a pro-indy majority in the Holyrood popular vote without directly harming the SNP much.  (From a more Machiavellian point of view, there's also a clear gap in the market for a pro-independence version of Reform UK, ie. one that blames everything on immigrants, but that's certainly not something most of us would ever touch with a bargepole.)

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SCOT GOES POP FUNDRAISER 2024: I took a prolonged break from promoting the fundraiser during the general election period, but I'll have to make some serious progress over the coming days and weeks if the blog is to remain viable.  Many thanks to everyone who has donated so far.  Card donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE, or direct donations can be made via Paypal.  My Paypal email address is:  jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Is Green party activist Allan Faulds right to claim Alba is now finished?

My eye was caught by an article in the Herald entitled 'Salmond's death signals end for Alba, pollster predicts', because if the pollster in question had turned out to be someone like Martin Boon or Anthony Wells, I might not necessarily have agreed with the assessment but it would certainly have been worth listening to.  Comically, though, it turns out that the individual is not actually a pollster at all, but is instead the Green party activist Allan Faulds, whose bitter dismissal of Alba is long-standing and clearly rooted to at least some extent in his own partisan politics.  He once claimed Alba needed to ditch Alex Salmond to have any chance, which self-evidently makes a nonsense of his new claim that Alba are finished specifically because they no longer have Mr Salmond.

Faulds does of course run a website which is purported to be politically neutral (but isn't - his own views and prejudices constantly leak through) and which sometimes analyses polls and has commissioned a couple of crowdfunded polls, but that's not what a 'pollster' is.  A pollster is either a person or organisation that actually conducts polls, which to the best of my knowledge Mr Faulds has never done.  Admittedly it's probably not his fault that he's been falsely billed in that way, because the same word has been used about me at times.

My own reading of the situation, for what it's worth, is that one of Alba's most long-standing problems has just been solved, although a counter-balancing problem has just been created, and it remains to be seen which of the two problems is/was more significant.  The problem that has been solved is the negativity associated with Alba's brand, which to a large extent derived from Alex Salmond's deep personal unpopularity, something that was consistently seen in polling from 2021 until this year.  The rapid reappraisal of Mr Salmond's legacy since he died means the party's association with him is suddenly no longer such a negative and may even have become a net positive.  But the new problem is of course that Alba will no longer attract media interest from being led by one of the true heavyweight politicians of the age, and once the coverage of Mr Salmond's death subsides, they may find it a lot harder to get noticed than they did before.

The one remaining big asset that they have, the sole factor that still sets them apart from a fringe party, is that they have a member of the Scottish Parliament.  I don't know whether Ash Regan will run for leader, but even if she doesn't, she'll need to be pushed firmly to the forefront if Alba are going to be recognised by the media as relevant.

Because Chris McEleny arbitrarily suspended my own party membership a few weeks ago after he took exception to my public calls for the party to be democratised, I am barred from viewing the party website and am thus somewhat in the dark about what is going on.  (My so-called "disciplinary" hearing was postponed after Mr Salmond's death to an unspecified date but my suspension was not lifted, so the longer this drags on, the more it feels like constructive expulsion from the party at Mr McEleny's whim.)  However, I've been told that there has been a boost in Alba's membership numbers in recent days.  If that's true, the party needs to think long and hard about how it is going to retain those new people.  The pattern so far has been that the only Alba members who have truly been happy are the ones who see their membership as a kind of 'fan club' status and just want to applaud whatever the leadership says or does.  Anyone with ideas of their own who wanted to play a part in (for example) policy formation has tended to become quickly disillusioned because they've been regarded by the party as 'problematical'.  Members have even sometimes been talked of with extreme suspicion as 'possible infiltrators' - although in their heart of hearts I don't think anyone in the leadership group truly believes that nonsense, it's just a handy excuse to treat members with 'undesirable' views as an 'enemy within'.

Alba desperately needs a cultural shift to make members feel both valued and empowered.  That can't wait a couple of years, it needs to happen right now - otherwise the current boost in member numbers may be the last one that ever happens.

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SCOT GOES POP FUNDRAISER 2024: I took a prolonged break from promoting the fundraiser during the general election period, but I'll have to make some serious progress over the coming days and weeks if the blog is to remain viable.  Many thanks to everyone who has donated so far.  Card donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE, or direct donations can be made via Paypal.  My Paypal email address is:  jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

All of the last six GB-wide polls have put Labour in the 20s - that's the sort of unpopularity associated with Michael Foot, John Major and William Hague

A new GB-wide poll from Techne shows that Labour's lead is down to just three points, which is the lowest that any firm with the exception of More in Common has shown since the Trussmageddon of autumn 2022.

GB-wide voting intentions (Techne, 16th-17th October 2024):

Labour 28% (-1)

Conservatives 25% (+1)

Reform UK 19% (-)

Liberal Democrats 13% (+1)

Greens 7% (-)

SNP 2% (-)

And although the changes from the previous Techne poll are well within the margin of error and thus statistically insignificant, there's no real doubt that Labour's popularity has taken a further significant hit within this calendar month.  Until early October, all but one poll from every firm had put Labour at 30% or higher, whereas all of the six polls conducted since 4th October have put Labour on 29% or lower - that's well below anything Jeremy Corbyn scored at a general election, it's closer to the levels of unpopularity suffered by Michael Foot, John Major and William Hague (although even Major and Hague managed to just about stay in the 30s, at least in general elections).  

Again, the fact that Labour are nominally still ahead with such an abysmally low vote share may be almost irrelevant, because it's hard to believe that the right-wing vote will still be as heavily split in four or five years' time - one way or another, it's surely going to coalesce more behind one particular political force.

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SCOT GOES POP FUNDRAISER 2024: I took a prolonged break from promoting the fundraiser during the general election period, but I'll have to make some serious progress over the coming days and weeks if the blog is to remain viable.  Many thanks to everyone who has donated so far.  Card donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE, or direct donations can be made via Paypal.  My Paypal email address is:  jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

So, Tory voters of Falkirk South: what was it that first attracted you to Keir Starmer's hard-right Labour party?

I'm slightly puzzled that one or two people are defending Labour's false claim to have "gained" the seat in yesterday's Falkirk South by-election.  It's true that it was one of those paradoxical situations which frequently crop up in STV by-elections, where Labour had to try to "hold" the seat even though the SNP were well ahead in the ward last time around.  But there are two fatal problems with the claim of a Labour "gain".  Firstly, a lack of consistency - there have been any number of times in the past where Labour have claimed to have "gained" a seat in a by-election even when they had been in the lead in the ward at the previous election, so they can't have it both ways. And secondly, what is actually the alternative to determining "gain" or "hold" by looking at the party that held the seat before it fell vacant?  The only one I can really think of is to tot up the first preference votes for all of a party's candidates in the ward at the previous election, see which party had the most first preference votes overall, and then see if there's any change at the by-election.  And if you do it that way, if anything the Falkirk South by-election comes out as an "SNP hold" rather than a "Labour gain" or even a "Labour hold", because the SNP were the leading party in the ward in 2022 and also narrowly won the first preference vote yesterday.

Falkirk South by-election result on first preference votes, 18th October 2024:

SNP 31.3% (-10.3)
Labour 30.5% (+8.1)
Conservatives 14.7% (-13.9)
Reform UK 9.9% (n/a)
Independent - McKean 5.5% (n/a)
Greens 4.5% (-1.1)
Liberal Democrats 3.6% (n/a)

A 0.8% lead on first preferences was never likely to be enough for the SNP to hold on for the win given that there were so many Tory and Reform UK votes waiting to be transferred, but as ever the sheer extent of the affection of right-wing voters for the Labour party is quite the sight to behold.  Excluding non-transferable votes, 85% of Tory voters transferred to Labour and only 15% to the SNP.  Better news is that Green voters once again broke more for the SNP, although not overwhelmingly so - 65 Green voters transferred to the SNP, and 42 to Labour.

I think the SNP can take some consolation from topping the poll in a central belt location, because that wasn't happening much (arguably not at all) on 4th July.  That said, this result is poorer for the SNP than last week's results in North Lanarkshire and the previous week's results in Dundee, because the swing of around 9% to Labour would be enough to put Labour approximately six points ahead Scotland-wide - very much in line with the general election result.  

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SCOT GOES POP FUNDRAISER 2024: I took a prolonged break from promoting the fundraiser during the general election period, but I'll have to make some serious progress over the coming days and weeks if the blog is to remain viable.  Many thanks to everyone who has donated so far.  Card donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE, or direct donations can be made via Paypal.  My Paypal email address is:  jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Find Out Now! Find Out How? Find Out WOW!!! Sensational MRP projection suggests SNP would win a 2019-style landslide victory if another general election was held now

There was a brief moment of hope for Robert Jenrick in the Tory leadership contest a couple of days ago when a Find Out Now MRP projection suggested he would win more seats in a general election than Kemi Badenoch would (although the results for both of them were fairly dire).  That hope has now been snuffed out by last night's head-to-head GB News debate, which like all normal people I didn't watch, but which seems to have been a clear win for Kemi Badenoch.  Hilariously, ConservativeHome's verdict on the debate was "that's two hours of our lives we won't get back".

Nevertheless, the Find Out Now results are still of interest for other reasons, because the hypothetical questions about whether Jenrick or Badenoch is Tory leader shouldn't really affect the SNP v Labour battle in Scotland, and in both scenarios the SNP are projected to score a landslide victory (remember 29 seats is the target for a majority in Scotland).

Seats projection if Badenoch is Conservative leader:

Labour 332

Conservatives 151

Liberal Democrats 63

SNP 48

Reform UK 25

Plaid Cymru 4

Greens 4

Seats projection if Jenrick is Conservative leader:

Labour 311

Conservatives 178

Liberal Democrats 58

SNP 48

Reform UK 24

Plaid Cymru 4

Greens 4

Although polls asking hypothetical questions are always problematical, I'd suggest it's reasonable to assume that a standard MRP poll would show the SNP at roughly the same level, which would put them right back to where they were at the time of their 2019 landslide.  Labour would appear to have completely blown it in Scotland in the space of just three or four months.  

On the face of it this looks like a case of Labour proving resilient in England but not in Scotland, but that's actually not true - their share of the GB-wide vote in this poll is just 29% (if Badenoch is Tory leader) or 28% (if it's Jenrick).  It's only the split in the right-wing vote that is keeping them afloat in England, but I doubt if they'll be able to rely on that indefinitely.

The GB-wide sample size was 6000, which means the Scottish sample won't have been that far short of what is normal for a full-scale Scottish poll.

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SCOT GOES POP FUNDRAISER 2024: I took a prolonged break from promoting the fundraiser during the general election period, but I'll have to make some serious progress over the coming days and weeks if the blog is to remain viable.  Many thanks to everyone who has donated so far.  Card donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE, or direct donations can be made via Paypal.  My Paypal email address is:  jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

The Gaza genocide could be a watershed moment in the relationship between the BBC and its viewers - from now on, social media may start to become more trusted than the state broadcaster

With the recent 'generation anniversary' marking the passing of exactly one generation since the independence referendum was held in 2014, I was thinking back to the day after the referendum, when a conspiracy theory went viral on Facebook about the vote having been rigged.  A friend of mine posted it, and we probably all know at least one person who did that - feelings were raw, and a touch of wishful thinking was inevitable.  The story wasn't even mentioned on the BBC, and people probably - and with some justification - saw that as an example of why the mainstream media could be trusted far more than social media.  If an allegation is essentially without foundation, the mainstream media will ignore it, while it'll still be plastered all over social media if enough people want to believe it.

But contrast that incident with what happened the other day, when once again a story was all over social media but ignored by the BBC. For about 24 hours, every third or fourth post I saw on Twitter was a photo of Palestinian civilians being burned to death in a hospital tent by the Israeli military. I didn't watch the BBC that day, but I'm reliably informed that news bulletins didn't mention the story, even in passing.  That wasn't because the story was in any sense a conspiracy theory, or because there was a lack of evidence to confirm what had happened, or because there was any doubt that Israel was responsible for it.  The BBC simply made an editorial decision to ignore the atrocity, and it's extremely hard to see that it could have had any other reasoning than that the image of the Israeli state must be protected.  If any other state's military had burned civilians to death, and if it had been so well documented, it would plainly have been deemed newsworthy and might well even have been the lead headline.  The conclusion people are likely to draw from having been far, far better informed by social media is that the BBC is now less trustworthy than sites like Twitter and Facebook, because it is serving the agenda of a foreign power and acting against the interests of viewers by deliberately withholding important information from them.

This is one reason why the small minority of independence supporters who say "we're sick of hearing about Gaza, let's focus on independence" are so misguided.  Obviously the main reason for not ignoring Gaza is that we're all human beings and you don't turn your eyes away from an ongoing genocide.  But it's also the case that faith in British institutions such as the government and the BBC is being undermined before our eyes by the response to the genocide.  The penny is beginning to drop for many voters, particularly young voters, about how power is exercised in the United Kingdom and in the service of whom.  That process could indirectly lead to Scotland becoming an independent country, or at least prove to be a significant contributory factor.  

We've seen a similar effect before - I have no doubt that the SNP wouldn't have crept over the line for their narrow win in 2007 if trust in the Labour party hadn't been severely eroded by the illegal invasion of Iraq four years earlier.

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SCOT GOES POP FUNDRAISER 2024: I took a prolonged break from promoting the fundraiser during the general election period, but I'll have to make some serious progress over the coming days and weeks if the blog is to remain viable.  Many thanks to everyone who has donated so far.  Card donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE, or direct donations can be made via Paypal.  My Paypal email address is:  jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

The Famous Hypocrisy of the Grouse

So it's a curious thing - as you may have seen on Twitter, I've been receiving some totally unprovoked abusive DMs from Grouse Beater of all people. I did have problems with him many years ago, but someone interceded to end the rift, I had a long phone conversation with him and we made our peace with each other.  Since then, I've gone out of my way to tread gingerly with him, and when I've seen him have blazing arguments with other people (including in the comments section of this blog), I've just stood right back and let him get on with it, even when I thought he was in the wrong. But even those precautions weren't enough, it seems.

So what's his foul-mouthed harrumphing about this time?  To be blunt, it's just sheer hypocrisy on his part.  As you may remember, he was expelled from the SNP several years ago for alleged anti-semitism.  Countless numbers of us defended him at the time, because his words were actually extremely ambiguous and were open to plenty of alternative innocent explanations.  But no good deed goes unpunished, as the saying goes, and he seems to now have a visceral loathing of many of those who defended him most strongly, because some of them have since fallen foul of strikingly similar abuses of the Alba disciplinary process and have dared to speak up about it, just as he spoke up about the SNP's ill-treatment of himself. Suddenly he's become a born again Stalinist, saying that anyone who has been trampled on should just shut up and slink away where he doesn't have to think about them or remember their existence, because it's just so darn inconvenient to the party that large numbers of people should actually know that abuses of power have taken place.  As long as he isn't the one on the receiving end, and as long as the people being silenced are ones he dislikes and would prefer to shut up, it's all totally fine.

In fact, let's be honest: he would be an enthusiastic cheerleader for someone being expelled for exactly the same reason he was expelled from the SNP, just so long as you first stick a blue Alba rosette on the Conduct Committee.

Bizarrely, what seemed to trigger him tonight was that the people he calls "the Famous Five", which seems to be an alternative name for Shannon Donoghue's "wee gang of malcontents", have been paying generous tribute to Alex Salmond and saying very complimentary things about him. 

I asked Grouse Beater if he would prefer them to be making disrespectful comments about Mr Salmond at a time like this.  Unsurprisingly, he didn't have much of an answer.

Could I just say to @Grouse_Beater, who has been sending me totally unprovoked abusive DMs and blocking me before I could reply: you, sir, are a hypocrite. You, sir, are a coward. I'm not going to tolerate this behaviour from anyone, no matter what my previous respect for them.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) October 15, 2024

So where does the independence movement go from here?

Robin McAlpine's latest piece presents the independence movement as having been "orphaned" by Alex Salmond's death, with a sudden realisation that "we're going to have to do it on our own", and with no sign of a new generation of Salmond-like charismatic leaders to guide us to the promised land.  Others have expressed similar sentiments, but I must say I don't see it that way.  If the orphaning occurred, it was several years ago.  When Mr Salmond appeared on mainstream media in recent years, it was generally only to commentate on the fortunes of his former colleagues, in much the same way that Roy Hattersley used to pop up now and again to give his thoughts on New Labour.  Mr Salmond was no longer really seen as an active participant in the political process, even though on paper that's exactly what he was.

It's possible that he could yet have become an active participant once again on more than just paper, and that was what all of us in Alba hoped for, but my own view was that was becoming less and less likely due to Alba's direction of travel - in other words its drift towards authoritarianism (with accompanying mini-purges), which made it more and more of a narrow sect centred around a few closely-knit families and friends, rather than the open, welcoming space for everyone on the radical end of the independence movement that it really needed to be to have any hope of creeping up to the level of support that might win it Holyrood list seats.  Now is not the moment to be commenting in detail on the extent to which Mr Salmond's own decisions contributed to Alba going down that wrong path, although in fairness he may sometimes have been faced with impossible dilemmas given his heavy reliance on those who were keeping the party afloat financially.  

So even without the tragic loss of Mr Salmond, it's highly likely that independence would have had to be won by a new generation of talent within the SNP's own ranks.  (Unless of course John Swinney actually *does something* in his remaining time as leader, but we all know he won't.)  Realistically, that probably means Kate Forbes and Stephen Flynn.  The current ruling faction clearly want Flynn to be the next leader with Forbes in a lesser role, whereas I firmly believe it should be the other way around - Forbes as leader, Flynn as second-in-command.  But either way they look like being the two key figures.  Charisma-wise, how do they compare with Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon at a similar stage in their careers?  I would actually say extremely well.

In my blogpost in the minutes after Mr Salmond's death was announced, I mentioned that he single-handedly converted me to the cause of independence with his persuasiveness in a 1992 episode of Election Call hosted by Nick Ross.  That's absolutely true, but I have other memories of his TV performances from around that time which are much more mixed. When he stood for SNP leader in 1990, I was very, very young, but I was just about old enough to be taking a tentative interest in politics, and I remember him taking part in an informal debate with his opponent Margaret Ewing on Left, Right and Centre - Kirsty Wark's show, although Brian Taylor was the moderator for the debate.  Taylor asked the two candidates how they differentiated themselves from each other, and Ms Ewing was extremely clear - she felt she had a stronger focus on social justice.  But Mr Salmond kept speaking on her behalf, saying that Taylor was going to fail to identify any divisions because Ms Ewing actually agreed with him about absolutely everything.  I found that tactic slightly irritating, and I bet I wasn't the only viewer who reacted like that.  

Mr Salmond himself used to recount an incident from the late 80s, when he got annoyed with Robin Day for shutting him down on an episode of Question Time.  Day asked him to watch the programme back and see if he felt the same way afterwards.  He took that advice and phoned Day later to apologise, because he realised that he had gone too far and had been in danger of losing the audience, and that if anything Day had done him a massive favour by stopping him.  So in a nutshell Mr Salmond was not the finished article in the late 80s and early 90s, and we tend to forget that.  He was a good debater but he still had plenty left to learn, and plenty of rough edges to smooth off.  Even by around 1995, when he was 40 years old and had started to rack up a few electoral breakthroughs, he wasn't yet being talked about as one of the finest politicians of his generation.  He grew in stature over the late 90s, and even during the four years in the early noughties when he was no longer leader.

The pattern was similar for Nicola Sturgeon.  Before Mr Salmond's dramatic comeback, she had been intending to stand in the 2004 leadership election, but no-one was in any doubt that she would have lost to Roseanna Cunningham.  That seems incredible in retrospect, but the 34-year-old Sturgeon simply wasn't seen as the political titan she later became.  I've said myself that I never rated the younger Ms Sturgeon - I thought she mimicked Mr Salmond's style of delivery but lacked his charisma.  I felt she came across as an automaton.

Which is as much as to say that politics isn't tennis - ie. it's not necessarily a young person's sport, and there's no reason to assume thirtysomethings like Forbes and Flynn have yet reached their peak.  They're already highly regarded and as they become older they could easily emerge as statesmen/stateswomen on a par with Salmond and Sturgeon.  My question is not whether they're charismatic enough, but whether they're sufficiently committed to do what it takes to bring about independence, or whether other priorities will get in the way.

I had a long conversation with Alex Salmond during the 2023 SNP leadership election.  Although that was eighteen months ago, I think that was the second-last time I spoke to him before he died - relations subsequently cooled after I started taking a stand against the Alba leadership's increasing authoritarianism.  I don't think I'm revealing any state secrets in saying that he regarded Humza Yousaf as having no interest at all in delivering independence, and that he broadly sympathised with the strategy Ash Regan had set out (although he was at pains to point out that Ms Regan was genuinely not 'his' candidate and she was not doing his bidding - it was just a natural convergence of views).  However, I knew Ms Regan had next to no chance of winning, so I asked Mr Salmond the only question that seemed to matter: "what about Kate Forbes?"

He paused for a moment, chuckled, and said "well, I think she does support independence".  OK, that's a start, I said.

As far as Alba's own potential role is concerned, I and others have tried over the last year to democratise the party but hit a brick wall, which leaves power heavily concentrated in the leader.  That means absolutely everything depends on who is elected to replace Mr Salmond.  It shouldn't need to be as 'all or nothing' as that but unfortunately it is.  If an authoritarian machine politician becomes leader, the party will be essentially finished.  A reforming leader might just give it a fighting chance.

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SCOT GOES POP FUNDRAISER 2024: I took a prolonged break from promoting the fundraiser during the general election period, but I'll have to make some serious progress over the coming days and weeks if the blog is to remain viable.  Many thanks to everyone who has donated so far.  Card donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE, or direct donations can be made via Paypal.  My Paypal email address is:  jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk