SCOT goes POP!
A pro-independence blog by James Kelly - one of Scotland's three most-read political blogs.
Tuesday, March 18, 2025
The in-built features of the British political system that have led to Labour's war against the most vulnerable
Monday, March 17, 2025
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.
Saturday, March 15, 2025
Counting down the five greatest moments in British comedy history
Friday, March 14, 2025
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):
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)
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
Thursday, 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.
— Shannon Donoghue (@shannon_talks_) March 10, 2025
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?
You know it’s toxic as f**k when Denise is involved.
— Shannon Donoghue (@shannon_talks_) March 10, 2025
The woman inserts herself into EVERYTHING. The behaviour is troublesome. https://t.co/qUN6Xrp1mR
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.
Wednesday, March 12, 2025
No, of course Sturgeon's departure doesn't end the independence campaign for a generation. Don't be silly.
Sunday, March 9, 2025
"Mad Dog" is Primus Suspect for yet another leak to the Sunday Mail about the chaos within the Alba Party
Saturday, March 8, 2025
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)
Friday, March 7, 2025
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):
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
Thursday, March 6, 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.