The in-built features of the British political system that have led to Labour's war against the most vulnerable

I've been asked quite a few times how I know that Chris "Mad Dog PRIMUS" McEleny actually instigated the Alba expulsion proceedings against me, rather than him just acting as the monkey to the Tas organ grinder.  My answer has always been that I don't know for sure that he was one of the instigators, but what I do know for sure is that expelling people is something that he really enjoys doing.  It gives him immense personal satisfaction and pleasure.  I could see it in his eyes during Colin Alexander's expulsion hearing, and I see much the same look in Liz Kendall's eyes as she talks about destroying the lives of disabled people, and people who suffer from mental health problems.  

For Starmerites, this is the stuff that really turns them on.  They didn't enter politics because they thought big business was a problem or because they wanted the wealthy to pay their fair share.  They entered politics because they feel an utterly irrational level of resentment and anger towards the most vulnerable in society.  When they look back on their careers, they want their legacy to be a "solution" to the "problem" of vulnerable people's existence.  Perhaps even a final solution, if Kim Leadbeater gets her way.

However, there are two other factors specific to the British political system which have greatly contributed to us reaching this point - 

1) The funding model for political parties.  When Rachel Reeves is presented with a choice between taxing the wealthy or getting the funds from disabled people instead, and she reacts as if the latter is the easy option and the former is utterly unthinkable, that must in part be due to Labour's reliance on wealthy donors.  If you had state funding for parties, or a cap on spending, or a cap on the size of donations, the range of policy options open to governments would suddenly and radically expand, because left-wing parties wouldn't have to fear losing their level playing-field if they genuinely pursued social justice.

2) The absence of proportional representation.  If we had PR, a socialist party to the left of Labour would be viable.  As is the case in Germany, it might take around 5-10% of the vote and thus take around 5-10% of the seats.  That would mean there would always be a price to pay for Labour in tacking too far to the right, because left-wing voters would have somewhere else to go.  As it is, Labour just ignore their left flank because most of the left are still sitting powerlessly within the Labour party itself.  (OK, that's an over-simplification, because the Green Party is stronger than ever before and Labour are also threatened by left-wing independents in certain areas.  But Starmer, Reeves and Kendall continue to think and act as if they needn't worry about the left.)

Can anyone imagine the "Rearm Britain" brigade sending troops to fight the Americans if Greenland is invaded?

Even twelve long years after I last posted there, I'm desperately sad to see what's happened to my old haunt of Political Betting, affectionately known as "Stormfront Lite" due to the excessive number of borderline-fascist nutjobs in the comments section.  It's now been completely taken over by "TSE", notorious for once inventing a family tragedy to avoid having to settle a private bet - which I suppose those with a sense of irony would say makes him the ideal man to edit the UK's best-known political betting site.  But it's actually not so much his welching that's the problem, it's the dismal standard of his political analysis and his puerile sense of humour, which I know he honestly thinks adds an "inimitability" to the site but is in reality making it too excruciating to read.  The saving grace is that there are often lengthy, thoughtful guest posts at the weekend, and it might almost be better if TSE just ran those and didn't even try to fill in the gaps in between.  His dreadful weekday posts are absolutely wrecking the site.

I believe he's a Tory member in Manchester or somewhere like that, and like so many clueless Tories south of the border he fancies himself as a bit of an expert on Scotland and Scottish politics.  His latest pronouncement is that Donald Trump's second term has killed Scottish independence stone dead - and he's tried to ward off suggestions that he's guilty of wishful thinking by pointing out that other people have in the past been guilty of wishful thinking on the subject.  But no, I'm afraid this is no more than yet another round of wishful thinking on stilts from a bog-standard Greater England imperialist perspective.

If he was actually immersed as most of us are in what is happening in Scotland, he'd realise that the issue of Trump is a red herring because by far the biggest barrier to independence at present is the SNP leadership's own reluctance to press the issue.  That is not an insurmountable barrier in the long run, but would anyone confidently bet on it being overcome during Trump's four-year term?  Most of us would regard it as an immense luxury if we could start thinking in terms of what external factors might get in the way of an SNP leadership that is seriously trying to win independence in the short-term.  (And any chance of a non-SNP route to independence has been completely ended by the insanely destructive behaviour of the Alba Party elite.)

By the time the independence campaign is fully back on track, it's likely that either there'll be a Democratic president and normal service will have been resumed, or JD Vance will be president, in which case independence will be a moot point because we might all want to take up Musk's offer of emigrating to another planet.

But in any case, TSE is making himself look more than faintly ridiculous by suggesting that campaigning for independence while Trump is president is like trying to do it during the Battle of Britain.  If we're supposed to believe that Trump's trade wars and his threats to invade Greenland are an existential threat on a par with 1940, one that puts an end to politics as usual for the foreseeable future, I'd suggest we'd first need to have a British government that recognises the existence of such a threat.  Instead, Starmer is still sycophantically paying homage to Trump as the leader of a Euro-Atlantic alliance and indeed as someone without whom no way forward in Ukraine is even possible.  If anything, all that does is make Scottish independence look more attractive, because the world order that Starmer is offering is plainly bankrupt.

There's now a Canadian Prime Minister who is using extremely belligerent language and talking of "the Americans" as an aggressor that his country needs to be defended from.  If Starmer was bold enough to verbally "stand with Canada" against the US threat, that might start to change perceptions in Scotland and make people feel that we've moved into an emergency situation which crowds out domestic issues like independence.  But I doubt if there's a single person reading this who can imagine Starmer actually having the guts to do that.  

Britain and other European countries are supposedly rearming so that they can act more independently in future, but does anyone seriously think that Starmer would send troops to fight against the US if there was a border incursion in Canada or a full-scale annexation of Greenland?  Of course he wouldn't.  He'd suddenly rediscover the realpolitik that he's thrown to the wind as far as Ukraine is concerned.  He'd say that a military solution was in the realms of fantasy given America's military strength.  He'd say a dispute between two valued allies was a matter of great regret, and he'd urge a diplomatic solution.  He'd argue that escalation must be avoided at all costs, and he'd suggest that until an amicable agreement can be reached, life wouldn't be so bad for those living under occupation.  After all, the Americans aren't a bad sort, and Donald is a great personal friend of his.

Not exactly the sort of Churchillian rhetoric that will inspire solidarity and put the Scottish independence cause on hold.

Counting down the five greatest moments in British comedy history

At NUMBER FIVE, it's..."Deny everything, Baldrick"

 

Holding steady at NUMBER FOUR, it's...Del Boy falls through the bar

 

Climbing to NUMBER THREE, it's...Bernard is both for and against National Service

   

So near and yet so far: at NUMBER TWO, it's...Morecambe and Wise meet André Previn

 

And a new entry, straight in at NUMBER ONE, it's...Kevin McKenna says the Alba Party's disgraced former General Secretary Chris McEleny is "likeable"

It's a form of instant immortality, Kevin.

In case you're wondering, he's not being ironic or sarcastic or even playful.  He actually means it.  There's a lengthy section later in the article in which he expresses his total mystification that this thoroughly "likeable" chap is so loathed within the Alba Party, and the only possibility he can even think of is that it might have something to do with anti-Catholic bigotry.  Hmmm.  Yes, Kevin, I'm sure that's a far more plausible explanation than the purges and the lying and the cheating and the abuses of power and the "Andy Swan" incident that landed him in Greenock Sheriff Court on a charge of threatening behaviour.  

Incidentally, Kevin, I'm a Catholic too.  If you go back far enough, two-thirds of my ancestry is Irish, and some of the rest of it is French-Canadian (also Catholic).  I went to Catholic schools all the way from the age of four to the age of seventeen.  I've been through baptism, first communion, confirmation, the full works.  And yet I was still one of the targets for the McEleny Purges last year.  Perhaps I should take some sort of action against McEleny for bigotry against his own kind?  After all, he can't possibly have had any other motivation...

There is, though, a serious point in all this, which is that Kevin's article has finally produced the smoking gun proving beyond all doubt that Ash Regan regards McEleny as an ally.  Some of Regan's supporters have until now been in denial about this, and have insisted that McEleny's vocal support for her is a one-way street.  I can understand why, because she might be a more attractive proposition if you could have her as leader without McEleny tagging along, but the quote makes clear that you can't, and that she is absolutely determined to bring him back in a senior position.

It really is an impossible choice for the remaining non-expelled Alba members.  Elect MacAskill and you'll still be lumbered with Tasmina and the Corri Nostra, but if you elect Regan you'll be re-lumbered with "Mad Dog".  I don't envy you that decision.

SNP storm to a belter of a Broxburn by-election win

The straws in the wind yesterday about Reform UK performing extremely strongly in the Broxburn by-election, both organisationally and in terms of voter response, made me wonder if they were getting close to outright victory territory. So it's something of a relief to discover that, for now at least, they're still stuck in the strong third place zone.

Broxburn, Uphall and Winchburgh by-election result on first preferences (13th March 2025):

SNP 31.8% (-10.1)
Labour 29.2% (-0.4)
Reform UK 18.7% (n/a)
Conservatives 7.5% (-10.2)
Liberal Democrats 5.3% (+1.6)
Greens 4.3% (-0.1)
Alba 3.1% (+1.7)

The percentage changes above are measured from the 2022 local elections, but there's actually been another by-election in the ward since then, which Labour won.  So that's an indication of how the weather seems to have turned back in the SNP's favour, albeit partly by default because Labour have become so unpopular since taking power in London.

That said, the SNP came extraordinarily close to losing yesterday's by-election on transfers in spite of their decent lead on first preferences.  They held off Labour by just seventeen votes on the final count.  

Assuming a uniform swing, the result is consistent with a small Scotland-wide SNP lead over Labour of around three percentage points.  (In reality, opinion polls suggest it's likely to be better than that.)

The Tories continue to suffer more than any other party from the Reform surge, which is logical enough.  There must now be a very real chance that they will slip to fourth place (or worse) at the Holyrood election next year.

Alba can console themselves that their vote has gone up rather than down, but this result isn't really any use at all to the Alba leadership, who need a vote of 6%+ in by-elections to try to hypnotise their members into thinking they're on course for list seats next year, which they clearly aren't.  However, just a word about the Alba candidate Frank Anderson, who as anyone who has encountered him will tell you, is one of the rapidly dwindling group of decent people in the upper reaches of the party.  He's an elected member of Alba's Appeals Committee, and at my own appeal against expulsion in January, he stood out a mile as literally the only person on the committee who seemed to be taking his responsibilities seriously and carefully weighing up the evidence in front of him (or lack of evidence), rather than just unthinkingly rubber-stamping whatever the leadership wanted.

Mr Anderson is currently standing for Local Government Convener in Alba's internal elections.  Although my horrific time as an Alba member is now mercifully over, all of us who care about decency and high standards in politics will be wishing him well - not least because his opponent is Chris Cullen, who exemplifies the absolute worst of machine politics.

I'm actually in this photo (at the top, towards the left). You've gotta love Josh - he's basically advertising his election campaign by saying "And here I am posing with just *some* of the people I've expelled as Disciplinary Chair. Chris told me to and I said 'sure, baby!'" https://t.co/MM9WYaplTV

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) March 13, 2025

Home births and surrogacy are weaponised in Alba's latest vicious round of internal "elections"

As has been discussed a number of times on this blog over the last year or so, one of the gaping plot-holes in the ludicrous claim that Alba is a "member-led party" is that it's absolutely impossible for members to democratically control the party unless they democratically control the Conference Committee, and they simply don't.  It's the annual conference that formally determines policy, and the Conference Committee is the gatekeeper of what can and cannot be discussed, voted upon and decided at conference.  The committee is not directly elected by rank-and-file party members.  Some of the people on it are elected by the tiny selectorate of a few dozen members who attend National Council, but others, including the committee chair Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, are directly appointed by the leadership.  Additionally, meetings of the committee are often flooded by office bearers who the leadership have unilaterally decreed "have a right to be there" even though nothing in the party constitution says they do.  When this extraordinary state of affairs has been challenged, the reply has been that the NEC has certain powers to "interpret the constitution", which essentially means the NEC has taken upon itself the right to see things in the constitution that simply aren't there.  Exactly the same excuse was of course used by the leadership as they ignored their own rule-book while pursuing the McEleny Purges last year.  The constitution is, bluntly, not worth the paper it's written on.  

However, it's been pointed out to me that it doesn't actually matter how many members of the committee are appointed or elected, or how many non-members of the committee its meetings are routinely flooded with, because by far the most important problem is that the committee never actually holds any votes anyway.  It's supposedly "consensus-led", which is code for "Tasmina makes the decisions and the committee is obliged to silently agree with her".  This guiding principle was exemplified by the legendary incident eighteen months ago when a motion was submitted proposing the establishment of a policy development committee, to try to get a grip on Alba's chaotic, ad hoc, top-down approach to policy formation.  Tasmina bellowed "THAT'S A BIG NO FROM ME!!!!", which apparently was supposed to be the end of the matter.

If any Alba members were naive enough to think that the spotlight that has been shone recently on the leadership's abuses of power would at least lead to a touch more circumspection from now on, the list of motions accepted by the committee for discussion at this month's conference should disabuse them of that notion.  It's a threadbare list of mostly very bland, sometimes utterly pointless motions, that makes Alba look like a party that has completely run out of ideas.  That's not entirely fair, because plenty of weightier motions of far greater consequence were submitted, but of course they were insta-blocked by the Tas Tyranny on the Conference Committee, with boilerplate excuses being given (some of which actually contradicted each other).

So which motions has Tas decreed are far more important than, for example, discussion of a policy development committee?  One of the motions that has made the cut, and I'm sure this is just an astounding coincidence, was submitted by none other than Shannon Donoghue, the notoriously immature thirtysomething daughter of the party's new General Secretary (or is she just the acting General Secretary?) Corri Wilson.  And it was seconded by Corri Wilson herself.  It calls for expectant mothers to be better informed of the benefits of home births, in order to relieve the burden on NHS maternity services.  

Everyone I've spoken to about this is unanimous that Shannon's motion is somewhere on a continuum between utterly redundant and downright harmful.  It's redundant in the sense that pregnant women are already fully informed about the home birth option, and it's harmful in the sense that home births can almost double the risk of adverse outcomes in a first pregnancy.  It would plainly be irresponsible to relieve the burden on the NHS by pushing too hard for women to select a non-clinical option that will result in a greater number of deaths.

The widespread view is that Shannon knows perfectly well that her motion adds no value whatsoever, and she's only doing this to give herself a readymade excuse to deliver a "moving personal experience" speech to the conference about her own home birth.  The speech will of course coincide with the running of the pay-per-vote "election" for Ordinary NEC Members, in which Shannon is a candidate.  She seems to have calculated that making an "emotional connection" with conference delegates is her ticket to electoral success.

But isn't that a bit of an amateurish way of doing it, Shannon?  If you want to get on the NEC that badly, why not just bulk-buy a few dozen votes like You-Know-Who did last time around?  That's what the system is there for, surely?  

Maybe Shannon is a bit short of cash at the moment, who knows. Meanwhile, there's an 'r' in the month, so she must have been breaching Alba's Code of Conduct yet again - behaviour which would, if equal treatment was applied, lead to her being hauled before the Disciplinary Committee to face possible expulsion from the party.  The social media policy is absolutely explicit that Alba members are forbidden to "target individuals" in social media posts, regardless of whether those individuals are current members of the party or not.  And yet behold...

I actually can’t stomach it any more.

These randoms on X claiming to know what Alex would have wanted yet you have his family and those closest to him, all publicly supporting Kenny.

How about you stop using the man’s name and actually get somewhere on your own merit?

— Shannon Donoghue (@shannon_talks_) March 10, 2025

You know it’s toxic as f**k when Denise is involved.

The woman inserts herself into EVERYTHING. The behaviour is troublesome. https://t.co/qUN6Xrp1mR

— Shannon Donoghue (@shannon_talks_) March 10, 2025

Exactly this. Even for Denise is a new low. https://t.co/aIlCC4ng2R

— Shannon Donoghue (@shannon_talks_) March 10, 2025

The article was in response to the article Ash put out claiming Alex would want her with some very vile comments about Kenny. Denise doing a Denise and not living in the real world while dangerously twisting reality.

— Shannon Donoghue (@shannon_talks_) March 11, 2025

No im not attacking Denise. I can’t stand Denise for her behaviour and what’s she’s done. The difference with you and me, is I just say it.

— Shannon Donoghue (@shannon_talks_) March 11, 2025

And you want to ask those people’s opinions on Denise now…. https://t.co/BLV8d8tv28

— Shannon Donoghue (@shannon_talks_) March 11, 2025

While we might chortle at the spectacular lack of self-awareness of someone lecturing others on the need to "get somewhere on their own merit" when she herself owes her position on several committees to the fact that her mother is a senior party functionary, and while we might marvel at the sheer brazenness with which she regularly breaches the Code of Conduct knowing her mum's status will always protect her, there is of course a deadly serious point here.  Shannon is one of the people who jointly submitted the initial complaint against me which ultimately led to my expulsion from Alba.  Although the disciplinary referral document drawn up by Chris McEleny was ludicrously vague about what I was supposed to have done wrong, one of the few points of specificity was that I was being charged with having breached the social media policy - the very thing that Shannon, one of the complainers, regards as very much an optional extra in her own life.  

Alba really is nothing more than a racket set up for the benefit of a few elite families and friends.  My advice to Alba members is to either put an end to that racket by means of an internal democratic revolution, or if that proves to be impossible (as I strongly suspect that it will) stop wasting your time on a party that is going absolutely nowhere and start seeking more useful avenues for pursuing independence.

Incidentally, not to be outdone by Shannon, one of the dividing lines drawn by the disgraced Chris McEleny (aka "that's Prime Dog MADDUS to you") in his self-indulgent but doomed campaign to be depute leader is a ban on surrogacy.  Although I don't necessarily disagree with that in principle, it's an odd choice of policy to run on, given that McEleny concedes himself that Holyrood has no power to implement a ban.  But it's been pointed out to me that McEleny's opponent Neale Hanvey is known to have attempted surrogacy with his partner on three occasions.  Is that why McEleny is doing it?  Given what we know about the nature of Alba internal politics, that possibility certainly cannot be ruled out.  What a lovely kind fluffy party I used to be a member of, to be sure.

No, of course Sturgeon's departure doesn't end the independence campaign for a generation. Don't be silly.

Iain Macwhirter has concluded his (predictably scathing) Spectator piece about Nicola Sturgeon's departure from the Scottish Parliament by declaring that hopes of independence are now finished for the next generation.  That's obviously nonsense, and it reminds me of the STV reporter who concluded his report on the Livingston by-election in 2005 by declaring "the SNP's dreams of taking power at the next Holyrood election now lie in TATTERS".  Of course the SNP did actually take power at the following Holyrood election less than two years later.  The lesson is that pundits are often extremely bad at predicting the medium-term future, not least because it's not as simple a task as just crudely extrapolating from present-day trends.  Those trends can often go into complete reverse (as we've already seen in the last few months), totally unexpected events can occur and the prevailing political mood can turn on its head.

It's not even clear that Nicola Sturgeon doesn't still have a role to play in bringing independence about.  She's occasionally been touted as a potential figurehead for a future Yes campaign, and she could just as easily do that from outside parliament as from within.  Such a prospect wouldn't even particularly fill me with horror as long as she wasn't making strategic or policy decisions and was just lending her immense communication skills to the cause.  However, whether it would be a good idea or bad idea depends on whether her reputation recovers.  Polling a few months after her resignation as First Minister suggested her popularity had plummeted.

There are two potentially positive aspects to her departure: a) it might draw a line under the Salmond v Sturgeon war and allow the schism in the independence movement to be at least partially healed, and b) it might bring an end to her 'overlordship' over the present-day SNP and ease the sense that the faction she controls never truly left power.  Obviously those two points are linked, because the Salmond v Sturgeon war will never be truly over if one of the main combatants is still pulling the strings.  There's no guarantee that the Sturgeon Raj will end simply because she is no longer in the debating chamber, but we've seen in the past that backseat drivers can only drive for so long, especially from outside parliament, so perhaps this is the defining moment when John Swinney and Kate Forbes can start to fully break with the shackles of the past and shape the Scottish Government in their own image.

Ironically, there are negatives to that, because towards the end of her tenure, Sturgeon had it basically right on independence strategy (backing a de facto referendum) while Swinney, Forbes, Yousaf, etc all had it wrong.  But the chances of Sturgeon returning to the top job on a platform of radicalising the independence strategy were always negligible, so perhaps there's nothing to really be lost at this point as she vacates the stage.  And of course it neatly shields the SNP from any fallout if she and people close to her run into any legal complications.  

"Mad Dog" is Primus Suspect for yet another leak to the Sunday Mail about the chaos within the Alba Party

Those of you who have read my lengthy email exchange with Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh from last spring will already have a sense of perhaps the most grotesque feature of the sickness at the heart of the Alba Party.  Before his dismissal, the disgraced former General Secretary Chris McEleny had dictatorial powers over Alba members.  He could suspend any party member at his own personal whim - making them instantly ineligible to stand in internal elections, for example, or to participate at conference.  He could also - and frequently did - arbitrarily veto any official complaints lodged by rank-and-file members about the behaviour of people in the party's elite.

And yet he was totally immune from accountability in a way that people with a tiny fraction of his powers were not.  As you can see from my exchange with Ms Ahmed-Sheikh, at the first hint of anyone trying to hold McEleny to account for blatantly abusing his powers, they were informed that they were not allowed to do so, because that would constitute beastly victimisation of someone who was no more than an 'umble, vulnerable employee, and the party simply couldn't afford to be taken to an employment tribunal by him.  It's not a bad set-up if you can wangle it, is it?  Having dictatorial powers over all members of a party, while being able to treat those members as your employers and use employment law against them if they try to fight back against your abuses.

Of course McEleny was only in this absurdly protected position because it suited the wider leadership for him to be there - it was of immense assistance in conducting the Stalinist purges of people who displeased them in whatever small way.  So there was a kind of poetic elegance to it when McEleny ended up using that cosy set-up as a weapon against the leadership themselves.  Although Alba look set to be nothing more than a footnote in Scottish political history, they will always, absolutely always, have the unique distinction of being the party in which the leader tried to sack the General Secretary, and the General Secretary responded by trying to suspend the leader on the grounds that sacking the untouchable General Secretary is a grievous disciplinary offence.  (Or to put it in McEleny's own terms, sacking him would expose the party to significant financial liabilities if he took legal action against them and won, and thus creating such exposure 'injured' the party and was a serious disciplinary matter.)

By that point McEleny had got so drunk on his own power and importance, and had got so used to the pseudo-legalistic justifications for his diktats going unchallenged, that he didn't anticipate what should have been blindingly obvious - ie. that the NEC were never going to allow an 'umble employee to suspend the *party leader* simply on the grounds that the party leader had tried to sack him.  Having received his long-overdue rude awakening, McEleny's faulty thinking has continued, and he's tried to take exactly the same hopeless case to the court of public opinion, or rather the court of the Alba membership.  Over the last few weeks, he's leaked a series of stories to the unionist press, the latest being the one in the Sunday Mail today, revealing the advice Alba received about the potential financial consequences of sacking him if he tried to appeal.

Apparently he genuinely anticipates that Alba members will react to this information by thinking to themselves: "WHAT?  MacAskill actually tried to sack the untouchable McEleny?  Has he taken leave of his senses?!  Our eyes were shut but now they are open!  We must rise up against the despot MacAskill and replace him with Ash Regan, who will restore the virtuous McEleny to his rightful place!"  Whereas anecdotally Alba members are in fact reacting in the opposite way - they think McEleny is a jumped-up little nobody and that MacAskill should be congratulated for belatedly cutting "Mr Unsackable" down to size.  They are appalled that McEleny is willing to drive Alba to financial ruin due to his own self-importance.

Whether McEleny realises it or not (and seemingly he doesn't), he's completely run out of road in the Alba Party and if he wants a political future it will have to be elsewhere.  But the person who does still have something to lose, and who is being tremendously damaged by McEleny's antics, is Ash Regan.  Somehow she's allowed herself to be convinced that embracing McEleny as some sort of martyr figure is the ticket to popularity in Alba, but it's actually going to cost her masses of votes in the leadership election, because party members are terrified (and with absolutely full justification) that she is intending to reappoint him to a senior position - perhaps Party Chair, perhaps 'Director of Operations'.  They're breathing a monumental sigh of relief for having got rid of him at last and the absolute last thing they want is a Mad Dog Restoration.

*. *. *

Among those who have been bullied out of Alba over the last couple of years, there are mixed feelings about Craig Murray's recent blogpost. They are grateful to him for acknowledging that something has gone seriously wrong in the party, but they think he's falling into the trap of "both siding" the issue, by saying that the problem was caused both by an authoritarian leadership group and by an attempted insurrection against that group.  In reality there was no attempted insurrection - there was just Tasmina exploiting Alex Salmond's deep paranoia after his legal ordeal by cynically convincing him there was a faction within Alba trying to overthrow him.  That supposed rebel faction were actually the people who were most loyal to him - they practically idolised him and would have walked through fire for him, which was precisely why Tas regarded them as so much of a threat to herself.

There has also been deep disquiet about the revelation in the blogpost about how Mr Salmond reacted when Craig brought up the concerns that had been raised about the rigged NEC elections of December 2023.  Mr Salmond apparently said that one faction had been out-organised by another faction, and that they had nobody to blame for that but themselves.  Well, I can tell you that Mr Salmond claimed to me on the phone in September 2021 that the reason for the pay-per-vote system for NEC elections was to ensure that better-known people such as myself didn't have an unfair advantage, and that other candidates could level the playing field by mingling with conference delegates as the vote was taking place.  He certainly didn't mention anything about the real intention being to enable "factions" to jostle against each other with bulk vote-buying strategies.  That would have sounded like a somewhat less high-minded ideal.

Labour's uncertainty transformed into despair using empirical strategies: Reform UK take the lead for the first time ever in any "Freshwater poll" (nope, me neither)

I'm slightly baffled by this poll, because it's billed as the latest in a monthly series of polls by a firm called "Freshwater Strategies" on behalf of City AM, but I can't find much trace of the previous polls in the series.  Freshwater are not listed as a member of the British Polling Council (although amazingly there are members called "Walnut Unlimited" and "Yonder Consulting").  They appear to be an Australian firm, albeit with a secondary office in London, and their Twitter self-description is soul-destroying corporate gibberish: "we transform uncertainty into opportunity using empirical strategies".  Of course you do, guys.

GB-wide voting intentions (Freshwater Strategies / City AM, 28th February - 2nd March 2025):

Reform UK 27%

Labour 24%

Conservatives 23%

Liberal Democrats 15%

Greens 7%

SNP 3%

Whoever did the write-up for City AM was fairly clueless, because they described the SNP as being on "just" 3%, whereas in fact that's a healthy showing for the SNP in a GB-wide poll.  It's clearly stated that Reform UK have "surged" and are in the lead for the first time in the monthly series, which is surprising, because other firms are suggesting Reform may have dropped back just a touch recently.

*  *  *

I launched the Scot Goes Pop fundraiser for 2025 in January, and so far the running total stands at £1661, meaning that 24% 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 UK lead in Find Out Now poll for EIGHTH time in a row

Reform UK went "Full Alba" today by removing the whip from one of their five MPs and referring him to the police.  In a small way that's good news for the SNP, because it now becomes slightly less likely that Reform will overtake them as the fourth largest party in the Commons during this parliament due to by-elections or defections.

It's obviously too soon for any impact of this incident to show up in the opinion polls, but I wouldn't automatically assume there'll be one.  Pretty much every parliamentary grouping Farage has ever been part of has fallen apart to some extent, and yet he always seems to come bouncing back as if nothing really changed.  In the meantime, a Find Out Now poll published today showed Reform with an outright lead yet again, albeit a sharply reduced one, which was perhaps inevitable due to the bounce for Labour caused by the Trump / Ukraine crisis.

GB-wide voting intentions (Find Out Now, 5th March 2025):

Reform UK 26% (-2)

Labour 25% (+2)

Conservatives 21% (-)

Liberal Democrats 12% (-1)

Greens 10% (-)

SNP 3% (-)

Plaid Cymru 1% (-)

By now, the pattern is pretty well established - three of the last four polling companies to report showed a two-point increase in Labour support, and the other showed a three-point increase.  So it does look like Trump's antics have benefited Labour a bit, but the effect has been far too modest to get Starmer out of the deep hole he was in.  The likelihood is, I would guess, that international affairs will eventually fade from view and even the small boost Labour have enjoyed will be reversed.

By my count, this is either the seventh or eighth Find Out Now poll in a row to show an outright Reform lead - it all depends on whether you count the MRP poll from late January or not (and I'd suggest there's no good reason not to).

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As Mhairi Black has come out and publicly said what we always suspected, ie. that she would have left the SNP if Kate Forbes had become SNP leader, it might be worth reminding ourselves that Ms Forbes is relatively well-regarded by the public and is probably the one person who could take over from John Swinney without it being a backward step as far as voters are concerned.  Here are the latest net ratings for leading politicians published by Ipsos only a few days ago - 

Kate Forbes (SNP): -8

John Swinney (SNP): -8

Anas Sarwar (Labour): -23

Russell Findlay (Conservatives): -31

Keir Starmer (Labour): -32

Nigel Farage (Reform UK): -43

Kemi Badenoch (Conservatives): -44

Donald Trump (US Republicans): -53

Elon Musk (US Republicans): -58

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Interestingly only watched one, Oppenheimer, and was very bored and bitterly disappointed that it didn’t really cover any of the engineering https://t.co/lk6mS0zQco

— Christopher McEleny (@ChrisMcEleny) March 8, 2025

As the film is actually largely about a kangaroo court with a predetermined outcome, I'd have thought it would be right up your street, Chris. Or are you less enthusiastic about such things now the shoe is on the other foot? https://t.co/fKnnlfOQDF

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) March 8, 2025

Some genuine good news for the independence cause: it seems that Alba will *not* be splitting the Yes vote in constituency seats next year, no matter who wins the leadership election

On Monday night, a commenter on this blog asked for my objective verdict on the STV mini-debate between Ash Regan and Kenny MacAskill for the Alba leadership.  I was planning to write a blogpost giving my thoughts, but that plan was overtaken by other events.  However, one of the things I had been intending to pick up on was that Ash Regan was surprisingly direct in saying she wanted Alba to be a "list-only party" in the Holyrood election next year.  Kenny MacAskill said something very similar, although his language wasn't quite as unambiguous, which arguably left him a get-out clause if he had a change of heart.

Nevertheless I was initially very encouraged by this.  Alba can only do harm if they stand in first-past-the-post constituency seats, because it would split the Yes vote and make it easier for unionist parties to win, and yet until recently there was every indication that was exactly what they planned to do.  In August, I directly heard Chris McEleny suggest that Alba would be standing in at least one constituency seat per electoral region, which would mean a minimum of eight across Scotland.  I know others heard him say exactly the same thing on other occasions.  And famously, Christina Hendry told the newspapers that her much-vaunted "Salmond Blood" gave her the right, Game of Thrones style, to stand in her uncle's former constituency seat in the north-east.  So Monday's debate implied there had been a very welcome change of heart on both sides of the Alba divide.

But I was much less encouraged after I then took a look at Chris McEleny's blog.  (That's the kind of crazy thing I force myself to do sometimes, just so no-one else has to.). There's a post from around a week ago in which he states that he wants Alba to be a "list-only party", but weirdly he then goes on to say - 

"Alba should at most only defend the new seat of the constituency incumbent Alba Party MSP Ash Regan currently holds and potentially at most a small handful of other seats"

Whatever else that might describe, it self-evidently does not describe a "list-only" party.  In fact it suggests that Mr McEleny has an extremely complex relationship with the word "only".  So my heart sank again - I assumed the plan was still to stand in several constituencies, but to dishonestly package that as a "list-only strategy" for window dressing purposes.

However, tonight I had a totally unexpected opportunity to clarify matters.  The National hosted a leadership hustings on YouTube, and viewers were able to submit questions via the live chat.  So I tried my luck and put forward a question asking whether "list-only" meant standing in no constituencies at all, because Mr McEleny's blog suggested otherwise.  I'm very grateful to Hamish Morrison, who was moderating on behalf of The National, for reading the question out, and the answers did actually take us forward.  Ms Regan was extremely specific that she didn't want Alba to stand in any constituencies, including her own.  Mr MacAskill essentially said the same thing, although once again he maybe left himself with just a touch more wiggle room than Ms Regan did.

So that's really good news for all independence supporters, no matter which party you support.  It'll make it easier for the SNP to hold off the Tory / Labour challenge in marginal constituencies and thus increases the chances of retaining the pro-independence majority at Holyrood.

I don't think there's much doubt Ash Regan "won" tonight's hustings.  She's a much more relaxed and fluent speaker than Mr MacAskill and as a result she came across as more sincere - even though on several points I knew perfectly well she was being disingenuous.  But sadly, sounding sincere when you're actually being insincere seems to be an indispensable skill for politicians these days.

I don't think her relatively strong performance will make any concrete difference, though.  All that matters in the Alex Salmond Memorial Party is who has the backing of Alex Salmond's widow and family, and that lucky designated winner is Mr MacAskill.  However, he had a bit of a shocker tonight and there was one point in particular where he totally lost the plot.  The question after mine was asking about the people who had been bullied out of the party and what could be done to bring them back, and Mr MacAskill responded by just flatly denying that anyone at all had been bullied out - which at this stage is a Comical Ali level of denialism given how well-documented the bullying and subsequent resignations have been.  He then went on and on about how awful it was that the question had been anonymously submitted, as if anonymity on the internet is a far more heinous affair than actual bullying and harassment.  

In fact, the question wording was perfectly polite, and I think most people would feel that anonymity is only a problem if somebody hides behind it while being abusive.  My guess is that the questioner simply happens to use a pseudonym for their YouTube account, and therefore wasn't being anonymous just for the purposes of the hustings.  Mr MacAskill making such a song and dance about the questioner's anonymity thus looked like a rather weak and desperate attempt at deflection.  I also got the distinct impression that he may have got the questioner mixed up with me, because he called him or her "an anonymous former party member", whereas in fact they hadn't identified themselves as a former party member.  (Hamish Morrison had introduced my question as being from "former member James Kelly".)

By contrast, Ash Regan did acknowledge that some former members, particularly women, had felt unhappy at the way they had been treated.  The problem is, of course, that her ally Chris McEleny was the guy responsible for a lot of that ill-treatment.

The bottom line is that there is no good outcome to this contest.  A MacAskill win would probably keep Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh and Corri Wilson in harness and would maintain the paranoid bunker mentality that the only problem Alba have got is that people keep having the temerity to speak out about their horrific experiences in the party.  But a Regan win would probably mean a senior role for Chris McEleny, who has been the single most baleful influence within Alba.  Ms Regan made clear she would accept Mr McEleny's resignation as General Secretary, but very noticeably didn't rule out appointing him to a different role.

Incidentally, YouTube lets you know how many people are watching at any given time, and it seemed to hover at around 40 or 45.  That's perfectly respectable for a small party's leadership hustings, but the snag was that you could see from the live chat that a lot of viewers were not current Alba members, but disenchanted former members such as Fiona & Neil Sinclair and Leanne Tervit.  Poor old Mr MacAskill and Ms Regan - they slog their guts out trying to win votes, and the only people listening (virtually) are what Zulfikar Sheikh calls "the Wee Gang of Malcontents".  There's some sort of poetic justice in that, I feel.