See the pandas, get a Severin Carrell for free

This is just a public service announcement (although I'm sure you'll have seen this on the news) that if you want to see the giant pandas before they return to China, you literally only have a couple of hours left.  I went along yesterday, because I wrongly got the impression that was the last day.  Weirdly, as I was watching the pandas, it suddenly dawned on me that I was standing right next to Severin Carrell of the Guardian, who was conducting a very earnest ten or fifteen minute interview with a panda enthusiast he had randomly waylaid.  In fact I accidentally recorded about half of it as I was videoing the main attraction.

As a poll had just come out, it reminded me that the angriest I've ever seen Severin on social media was when he was complaining about the truthful reporting of an independence poll, which he regarded as deliberately misleading because it stripped out the Don't Knows.  Of course he wasn't worried about the No vote being inflated, just about the Yes vote, because he wanted to imply that the No vote and the Don't Knows combined amounted to the real opposition to independence - a trick also beloved of Michael White.  We seem to be heading back to those bad old days - it's becoming harder and harder to locate independence polling numbers that exclude Don't Knows, even though that's the only metric by which a direct comparison with the indyref can be made.

Thank you to the Edinburgh Zoo employee who took the first of these pictures, although the reflection on the glass does its best to obscure the panda!  The visibility was far better in reality.

Scot Goes Popcast Episode 19: Calton Jock, blogger and Alba founder member, discusses the Alba internal elections with me

First things first - I have an analysis piece on The National's website about the two new Scottish polls (one from Ipsos and one from Redfield & Wilton) - you can read it HERE.

I've heard quite a bit of frustration about the upcoming Alba NEC elections, in which I will be a candidate (depending on whether or not I'm elected as Membership Support Convener).  In particular, I've heard dismay that there isn't a publicly available and exhaustive list of who is actually standing.  To the best of my knowledge, there has also been precious little engagement between the candidates - the whole thing is a bit atomised.    I've been hoping to make a small contribution to changing that by arranging a small series of podcasts/videocasts in which I informally debate and discuss with other candidates - not necessarily just the ones I'll be standing against, but just anyone standing in any of the internal elections.  Time is now getting very short if that's going to happen, which is my own fault because I was too tentative about reaching out to too many candidates in case too many said "yes" and I became snowed under.  I now realise the danger was firmly in the opposite direction!  So I'll now blitz the candidates that I know of and see if I can get two or three to agree - it would have to be over the next couple of days, but we'll see what pans out.

I did have a guest tentatively arranged for tonight, but through no fault of that person it didn't work out - that's the danger of me trying to sort things out too hurriedly.  So having already set up the Zoom link, I decided to try something a bit different.  I posted the link publicly on Twitter and just invited anyone to join me.  It took quite a bit of persistence, but after a while I'm delighted to say I was joined by the renowned blogger and Alba founder member Calton Jock.  As you'll see, we didn't recognise each other at first but after the introductions it all became clear.  For the first thirty minutes or so, Calton Jock holds forth on a matter he's blogged about extensively and I just allowed him to speak more or less uninterrupted.  From thirty minutes on, we started discussing the Alba internal elections, and so that's the point to scroll to if you want to hear more about my pitch - in particular my proposal for the entire NEC to be directly elected by the whole membership, and what I think Alba's general election strategy should be.

It was a magical mystery tour tonight but it worked!  It probably wouldn't work a second time, though, so I'll see if I can make some firm arrangements with other candidates.  

Staggering sensation as UK's "gold standard" polling company shows big majority for independence - and a settled will

Ipsos poll:

Should Scotland be an independent country?

Yes 54%

No 46%

Details and analysis to follow...

VIDEO: Vote James Kelly #1 for Alba's Membership Support Convener - at this moment of maximum opportunity for Alba, let's nip factionalism and cliquishness in the bud

 

* Voting in the re-run of the Membership Support Convener election is now open and all Alba Party members can vote.  The online voting link should have arrived in your email inbox on Friday.  The previous running of the election a few weeks ago was voided, so you need to vote again if you want your vote to count.

* I have nothing to do with the factionalism and cliquishness and secret plotting that led to the original election being voided.  I think you all know that if I want to say something, I say it openly and publicly, and I don't skulk around in cowardly fashion plotting on secret Whatsapp groups.  So voting for me is a good way to quickly move away from this nonsense at a moment of maximum opportunity for the Alba Party.

* If I win, I will use my long experience as one of Scotland's leading pro-independence bloggers to engage with members creatively and re-engage with inactive members to make it less likely that they will drift away and leave the party.

* I will also try to help ease some of the communication problems that have bedevilled the party.

* I support the democratic empowerment of *all* Alba members.  Roughly half of the NEC are currently only elected by conference attendees - those voting rights should be extended to all members.  All other national committees should also be elected by the whole membership, which is not the case at present.  And all members should be able to vote on conference resolutions, regardless of whether they are in the hall or not - this is perfectly achievable by online vote.

* A fully democratised party will have a far better chance of attracting new members, who will know that they're not just joining a fan club or a chat show.

* Only full democratic empowerment of Alba members can protect against a "Sturgeon / Starmer scenario" in which a future new leader comes in and bypasses the members to take the party in a new direction, for example by putting independence on the backburner.  Once that happens it's too late to put the genie back in the bottle - the only protection is to get the structures right *before* it happens.

Take 2! Vote James Kelly for Alba's Membership Support Convener for radical democratisation of the party

In just a few hours' time, the vote will open again for Membership Support Convener and all Alba members will be eligible to vote (or all who joined before a very recent cut-off date).  Please note this is a complete re-run of the election, so if you voted for me or any other candidate a few weeks ago, that vote no longer counts and you'll need to vote again to make sure your voice is heard.

I haven't been entirely sure what I am and am not allowed to say about the decision to nullify and re-run the Alba internal elections, because presumably the explanation was made in closed session for a reason.  However, the email that went out today contained more detail than has previously been publicly available, and it's also now possible for members and the wider public to read an account - and I make no comment on its accuracy - from an anonymous source quoted in The National.  As one of the claims is that various NEC candidates were engaged in "vicious attacks" on each other on private group chats, I want to make abundantly clear that I was not involved in that in any way.  I haven't been on any Alba-related Whatsapp groups since I left the NEC chat just over a year ago after I failed in my bid to be re-elected, and I certainly didn't have any proxies fighting my corner on any chats (chance would be a fine thing!).  I can honestly say that every single point I made during the campaign, whether you agreed with my pitch or not, was made entirely openly and transparently via this blog, my Twitter account, and one short YouTube video.

I was particularly shocked and saddened to hear a few days ago that Jacqueline Bijster, the incumbent in the election I'm running in (Membership Support Convener) has decided to withdraw as a candidate in the interests of her mental health.  I can only imagine how grim things must have been to trigger a decision like that, and it's a dilemma she should never have had to face.  Whoever is now elected, whether it's me or one of the other two remaining candidates, will have an important part to play in ensuring members have somewhere to turn if they fall victim to bullying, regardless of whether it's low-level stuff or something much worse.

One specific example of alleged bitchiness cited by The National piece is the suggestion that one of the NEC candidates would "prop up the SNP".  That reminded me of the reaction of an Alba member (I can't remember who it was) to my election to the NEC in 2021 - she said something like "I was gutted when I saw he'd been elected, I don't trust him at all".  Normally personal attacks are water off a duck's back, but that one did sting a bit, because she clearly meant it - and yet I know I can be trusted.  There are lots of things I probably wouldn't trust myself to do, but I know for certain I can be trusted to always act in the way that I think will maximise the chances of independence.  If I occasionally get it wrong, it'll be through honest miscalculation rather than malice.  The same is undoubtedly true of other candidates in the internal elections who may be the objects of suspicion and scorn for not being "ultra" enough.

Because Alba is the most radical party of significant size on the question of independence, it's perhaps inevitable that it's attracted a few trenchant folk who sincerely believe there is only one true path to independence, and who thus try to hold other party members to purity tests.  Essentially what we're all supposed to believe is that the SNP must be totally destroyed and replaced.  Well, that's a point of view, but there is an alternative view which can be held in good faith by those who are just as passionate and sincere about independence.

Basically the problem is that replacing the SNP would take a long time, and Scotland needs independence quicker than that.  There are two very clear methods by which electoral success for Alba could lead directly to independence within a few years without the SNP having to be completely overhauled.  Firstly, if Alba win a good few list seats at the 2026 Holyrood election (say between five and eight) and as a result hold the balance of power, the SNP could be forced into a formal or informal deal (probably the latter, for reasons we all understand) involving a more realistic and much more urgent strategy for independence.  Think the SNP wouldn't deal with Alba in those circumstances, even informally?  Think again.  The fury of SNP members if their leadership went down the alternative route of an accommodation with Labour, kicking independence even deeper into the long grass, is not hard to predict.

Alternatively, if the SNP realise they are shedding votes to Alba, they might voluntarily radicalise on independence to get those votes back.  And even if they succeed in doing so, that would be a win for us, because the objective is independence and it doesn't really matter how we get there.  Nothing that actually works, and especially that works quickly, can or should be regarded as a sell-out, and I'd just ask people to bear that in mind.  The reality is, though, that the method will take care of itself.  We just campaign for as many Alba votes as we can possibly get and see where it takes us.  If we replace the SNP as the leading party, great.  If we don't replace the SNP but do secure enough leverage with them to put independence firmly back on the agenda, also great.

These are exciting times for Alba - we now have credibility as never before due to our new presence at Holyrood via Ash Regan, plus representation at all three tiers of government for the first time.  So it seems strange to say we need a fresh start at a moment like this, and yet in some ways we plainly do.  When internal elections are scrapped, apparently due to vicious factional infighting and plots and counter-plots, it's a statement of the obvious that not everything in the garden is rosy.  I'd respectfully suggest that part of the remedy is to elect someone who has had nothing to do with the factionalism and who has no time for it whatsoever.  Let's put our house in order speedily to take full advantage of this moment of maximum opportunity.  

And I don't think we should lose sight of the fact that the best way to entice SNP members to follow Ash Regan's example is with the promise that the party they join will be one that they as members are in full control of.  That means that every member of the NEC, and indeed every member of other national committees, should be directly elected by the whole Alba membership.  At present only National Office Bearers are elected by one-member-one-vote, while ordinary NEC members are elected only by conference delegates, and members of other committees are elected only by National Council delegates.  An additional reason for putting myself forward for Membership Support Convener is to give members an opportunity, if they wish, to express support for the view that we should move to one-member-one-vote across the board in future.

Incidentally, I was heartened earlier today to see someone challenging other NEC candidates to match what I'm saying on party democratisation, and getting a positive response from at least one candidate.  It just goes to show that sometimes simply standing in an election is sufficient to move the conversation forwards.  (But I do also want to win, guys!)

Polling respectability for Alba after the Ash Regan defection

Someone made a sarcastic comment on my previous post about the new opinion polls, along the lines of "Alba cooking with gas, James?"  No idea what that was all about, because the numbers are actually perfectly decent for Alba in the wake of Ash Regan's defection - 

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot (Redfield & Wilton) :

SNP 34% (-1)

Labour 30% (+1)

Conservatives 22% (+2)

Liberal Democrats 8% (-2)

Alba 2% (+2)

Reform UK 2% (+1)

Greens 2% (-1)

Scottish Parliament regional list ballot:

SNP 28% (+2)

Labour 27% (+2)

Conservatives 21% (-4)

Greens 9% (-3)

Liberal Democrats 8% (-4)

Reform UK 4% (+2)

Alba 3% (-)

Of course this underscores what I was saying a couple of weeks ago that there is no evidence that Alba are currently on course to win list seats, but with two-and-a-half years still to go until the Holyrood election it's plainly not an impossible task - doubling their list vote from 3% to 6% should get them a fair number of seats, while one or two seats might conceivably be won even if they were on only 4%.

There's also a point worth making here about the repeated taunt that defectors to Alba are refusing to trigger by-elections because they think they would lose.  Even leaving aside the fact that very, very few defectors in history have resigned their seats (Dick Douglas MP certainly didn't resign when he defected from Labour to the SNP in 1990), there's also the fact that Ash Regan would be fighting a first-past-the-post by-election if she resigned her seat, whereas if she waits until 2026 the most likely route for her re-election is via the list, which is many orders of magnitude less difficult.  Similarly, if Chris Cullen resigned his council seat, he'd effectively have to win his ward outright in the subsequent by-election, which is far more difficult than the task he'll face in a multi-member election in 2027.  People are being a bit mischievous and not comparing like with like.

A couple of other points of note from the Redfield & Wilton poll - firstly, although Keir Starmer has a significant lead over Humza Yousaf on net approval ratings, his lead over Rishi Sunak on the "who would make the best Prime Minister?" question is weirdly low at just 40% to 30%.  This is Scotland we're talking about, where Tory leaders are loathed at the best of times, and this is not the best of times for the Tories.  Starmer, it's safe to say, is not setting the heather alight.

Secondly, one of our resident trolls claimed earlier that the poll showed Yes on 45% of the vote on the indyref question, ie. no improvement since 2014.  'Fraid not, chum.

Should Scotland be an independent country?

Yes 47% (-2)

No 53% (+2)

Two more post-Rutherglen polls: one has the SNP six points behind, the other has them level

The evidence is now beginning to suggest that the SNP did not get away with their Rutherglen defeat, and at least in the short-term it was never particularly likely that they would.  In terms of seats, at least, they are clearly heading for defeat next year, and it seems likely that only drastic action will avert that outcome.  Perversely, though, the SNP leadership are in steady as she goes mode.

Scottish voting intentions for the next UK general election (YouGov / Scottish Election Study, 20th-25th October 2023):

Labour 38%

SNP 32%

Conservatives 16%

Liberal Democrats 5%

Greens 4%

Scottish voting intentions for the next UK general election (Redfield & Wilton, 29th-30th October 2023):

SNP 32% (-2)

Labour 32% (-)

Conservatives 23% (+2)

Liberal Democrats 8% (-1)

Greens 2% (-)

I haven't included percentage changes for the YouGov poll, because on past form the Scottish Election Study's involvement will probably be claimed as meaning that it doesn't technically count as an official YouGov poll.

Someone attempted to post a comment on this blog the other day claiming that Humza Yousaf is now "the most popular politician in Britain".  I didn't publish it because I assumed it was disinformation, albeit of the wishful thinking variety - it must be tempting for Yousaf's supporters to assume that their admiration of his handling of the situation in Gaza is bound to be shared by the wider public and must have transformed his image entirely.  The truth seems to be somewhere in the middle - Redfield & Wilton show his net personal ratings improving to their highest level so far, but he's still in negative territory at -4.  That puts him fifteen points behind Keir Starmer.  So, no, I'm afraid he's nothing like the most popular politician in Britain, even if Starmer plainly does not deserve to be ahead of him.

That said, it's obviously harder to make the case that Yousaf is the SNP's biggest problem (even though ultimately he is) when he's had something of a bounce.  It's a nightmare combination, really - the polling simultaneously shows why the SNP can't just carry on as they are while giving them a ready-made excuse to do just that.

Alba are starting to cook with gas

I've made this point before, I think, but the Wikipedia article on the Alba Party is an abomination, obviously written by people who are extremely hostile. The first paragraph concludes with the words "No Alba Party candidate has been elected at any election", which is a reasonable point to make, but not with such pejorative wording and with such gratuitously prominent placement.  There's a section about criticism of the party, which again is totally reasonably and normal, but the length of it and the proportion of the article that it takes up is absurd - it's an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach.  There's also a potentially catty reference to Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh being a right-of-centre politician, which I'm not sure is an accurate characterisation, notwithstanding the different political allegiance she had in her youth.

But in one particular way the article has just improved tremendously, because the graphic box at the top now displays the fact that Alba for the first time have representation at all three tiers of government - local councils, Holyrood and Westminster.  Three days ago, it was only one.  People who were looking forward to Alba's demise will now have to start to accept that it isn't going to happen any time soon.  Of course they'll continue making the point that none of Alba's representatives were elected under Alba colours, and that's a hurdle the party will have to get over sooner or later, but what all of this has done is buy Alba some time.  Ash Regan will be in office until at least 2026, and Chris Cullen will be there until 2027.

*  *  *

What puzzles me about Lorna Slater's now-notorious comment about independence not being a red line for any deal between the Greens and Labour is the vehemence with which she said "absolutely not".  Why not "never say never" or "who knows what might happen"?  It's like she thinks it's still pre-indyref days when Green supporters used to actively reward their leaders for blasting the presumptuousness of anyone who thought the SNP should be regarded as the only game in town due to independence.  I remember James Mackenzie back in the early 2010s openly preaching the gospel of equidistance between the SNP and Labour, and not running into any trouble for it.  But the world has moved on - many, many Green supporters see their party as every bit as much an independence party, every bit as much a vehicle-for-delivering-independence, as the SNP itself.  To hear such enthusiastic talk about parking independence for five years to install a Labour government is going to make some supporters wonder if their perception of what the Greens are quite matches the reality.

Greater Alba: Angus MacNeil squares the circle of being aligned while remaining independent

In his warm-up for Alex Salmond's speech yesterday, Kenny MacAskill said that it was taking place early because there were more highlights than usual to come later on in the conference.  Within 30 or 40 minutes it became clear that one of those highlights was the dramatic announcement of Ash Regan's defection, but I did wonder if his use of the plural meant there might be more of the same to come on Day 2.  And in a sense there was - although Angus MacNeil didn't join Alba, it was announced that he and Alba would be cooperating under a joint banner.

One of my concerns about Mr MacNeil's departure from the SNP was that even if he held his seat at the next election, it would be an ephemeral achievement without any wider national legacy because of his decision to run as an independent and not join Alba.  This new arrangement may be a neat way of squaring the circle because he'll still have the local advantages of independent status, while any win will now be seen as a victory for a "Greater Alba" electoral alliance and may contribute to a snowball effect in Alba's favour.  It also helpfully creates a bigger tent that other SNP parliamentarians might consider joining even if they have reservations about defecting direct to Alba.

The media reporting of this development was strangely vague, and I couldn't work out whether Alba and Mr MacNeil were setting up a formal joint parliamentary group at Westminster, or whether the arrangement is looser than that.  On the face of it a joint group would make perfect sense, because I seem to vaguely recall three MPs is the minimum threshold to form an official group in the Commons.

Update on the Alba internal elections

Ash Regan's defection was in fact the second big surprise of the day for me in the Alba conference hall, because I had been waiting to hear my own result in the Membership Support Convener election, and also for the start of the Ordinary Member ballot for the NEC.  Neither of those things happened in the end - all of the Office Bearer elections have been nullified and will be re-run in the coming weeks, with the NEC election taking place during National Council (although I presume that will still be an online vote for anyone who registered for conference).

There was a lengthy explanation given for this totally unexpected decision, but it was given during private session (before the livestream commenced), so I'd better not repeat what it was.  But the bottom line is that I'm afraid you'll have to put up with yet more shameless self-promotion from me in the next few weeks!  From a personal point of view, I have mixed feelings about this development - no matter whether I'd had a good result or a bad result today, any votes I received would have been hard-won and honestly-won, and it's frustrating they haven't even been recorded.  But on the other hand, there's now an opportunity to do better on the second bite of the cherry.  When I arrived in the hall this morning, every single seat had a huge pile of glossy, professional-looking leaflets from various NEC candidates, and I suddenly thought "how was I ever supposed to compete against this?"  I now have a bit of time to try to come up with an answer to that question.