I launched the Scot Goes Pop fundraiser for 2025 a couple of weeks ago, and so far the running total stands at £1281, meaning that 19% of the target of £6800 has been raised. If you'd like to help Scot Goes Pop continue with poll analysis and truly independent political commentary for another year, donations are welcome HERE. Direct Paypal donations can also be made - my Paypal email address is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk
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A pro-independence blog by James Kelly - one of Scotland's five most-read political blogs.
Sunday, February 9, 2025
Blue Sky Thinking
Labour slump to new post-election low in Opinium poll - plus Alba civil war intensifies as Ash Regan blasts the MacAskill leadership as a "vacuum" that has led to "chaos" and "drift"
In a sense, this weekend's Opinium poll has bucked the trend of a Reform UK bandwagon, because it shows Reform down a point on two weeks ago. However, that's statistically insignificant, and Reform are still at a higher level than in all but one of Opinium's previous polls. Where the recent trend is clearly continuing is in the ongoing slippage of Labour, who have dropped to a post-election low of 27% with Opinium, and remain only one point ahead of Reform. Bear in mind that Opinium have been pretty much the most Labour-friendly pollster in recent times, so 27% is worse for Labour in an Opinium poll than it would be in a poll from another firm.
GB-wide voting intentions (Opinium, 5th-7th February 2025):
Friday, February 7, 2025
SNP open up massive lead in new MRP poll - while Reform hit yet another new all-time high in GB-wide survey
I was initially puzzled by the poll reported on the front page of The National today, but it turns out that it's the Scottish component of a GB-wide MRP poll. The full sample size of the poll across Britain was just over 5000, which may mean the Scottish sample was around 500, which would be about half the size of the typical sample for a full-scale Scottish poll. But MRP polls don't always have evenly spread samples, so it may not be as simple as that. I'll see if I can find out more when I have more time.
The poll is billed as having been conducted by "PLMR / Electoral Calculus". PLMR is some sort of communications outfit and is not a member of the British Polling Council. Electoral Calculus is a member of the BPC, but I'm not aware of it having the capacity to carry out its own polling fieldwork, so it would be interesting to know how the fieldwork was sourced.
The vote intention percentages are fairly typical of what we've become used to recently, albeit with Reform's surge reaching the point where they are now closer than ever before to overtaking Labour in Scotland (unless you count the inaccurate numbers from the recent Find Out Now poll that were reported by the Herald).
Scottish voting intentions for the next UK general election:
I launched the Scot Goes Pop fundraiser for 2025 a couple of weeks ago, and so far the running total stands at £1251, meaning that 18% 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
Thursday, February 6, 2025
Cos tonight is the night when 1 becomes 2 - has Ash Regan crossed the Rubicon with her resignation and made it inevitable that Alba will split into two separate parties?
Ash Regan, the Alba Party's sole remaining parliamentarian, has given an extraordinary interview in which she reveals that she stepped down from the party's NEC a month ago (despite apparently never having actually attended any NEC meetings!) in protest at the original week-long suspension of Chris McEleny. Short of announcing their engagement, it's hard to see how Regan and McEleny could make it much clearer that they are mutual allies of each other - any lingering suspicion that McEleny's support for Regan is a one-way thing has been well and truly dispelled.
I heard someone make an interesting point in response to the interview. They recalled that the action McEleny took against me was initially explained (albeit in extremely vague terms) by a claim that I had breached party confidentiality in a blogpost, although it was never explained what the confidential information was supposed to be or in what form I had disclosed it. And yet Regan has very explicitly in her interview breached the confidentiality of NEC decisions, and arguably also breached the terms of the party's social media policy by severely criticising the current leadership. So if consistency is to be maintained, disciplinary action would have to be taken against Regan. Probably consistency will not be maintained, although who knows - given that the General Secretary is currently taking disciplinary action against the acting party leader, and the acting party leader is currently taking disciplinary action against the General Secretary, anything must be considered possible. Perhaps every single member of Alba will be expelled, and that's how the party will end.
But it's starting to look like the party will cease to exist in its current form anyway. The best recent precedent I can think of for such irreconcilable differences opening up within a party is the SDP (Social Democratic Party) in 1987-88, when a narrow majority of members wanted to merge with the Liberals and a substantial minority wanted to remain an independent force. The SDP leader David Owen actually proposed that there should be an amicable separation, with the party agreeing to divide itself in two and split its resources proportionately. The pro-merger majority rejected that proposal, but Owen partly got his way anyway - as soon as the merger went through, he simply reconstituted the SDP with the same name, the same logo, himself as leader, and with three of the party's five MPs. There was also, of course, the UKIP-Brexit Party split in 2018.
I wonder if Ash Regan's resignation is setting in train a similar non-amicable parting of the ways for Alba. If, as I expect, she loses the leadership election, we might see a new party being set up with herself as leader and McEleny as deputy. It might attract a significant number of current Alba members due to Regan's feminist credentials. It sort of half makes sense if you think about it, because it would resolve McEleny's dilemma that we discussed last night - how does he still stand for a Holyrood list seat if he's burned his bridges with Alba? A new party might be the only way he can do it without renouncing independence and throwing in his lot with Farage. The new party would even start with a modicum of credibility due to having a serving MSP in Regan, although I doubt that would get them very far. Alba's current chances of winning seats are slim, but Alba divided in two would surely have no chance.
Alba only have two other elected representatives - the local councillors Chris "Lieutenant Columbo" Cullen in Ayrshire and Karl Rosie in the Highlands. Cullen is part of the so-called "Corri Nostra" which is backing Kenny MacAskill, so he would undoubtedly stick with official Alba in the event of a split. I've no idea which way Rosie would jump.
THE ALBA FILES, Part 8: The examples of gross misconduct that should *really* be on Chris McEleny's charge sheet
Wednesday, February 5, 2025
BREAKING: Chris McEleny is fired as General Secretary of the Alba Party for "gross misconduct" after his hapless coup attempt ends in total catastrophe, both for himself and the party as a whole - which has now entered a state of outright civil war
As his idol across the water would have said in his Apprentice days: "Christopher, you're fired."
I hate to say "I told you so", but none of this would have happened if the Alba top brass had simply listened to the "wee gang of malcontents" - not just me, but so many others as well who have either been expelled or driven out of the party by bullying. None of the chaos that Chris McEleny has unleashed within the party in recent weeks would even have been possible if our calls for internal democratisation and for reform of the Kafkaesque disciplinary procedure had been heeded. McEleny has only been able to act with such impunity because of Alba's toxic authoritarian culture, which has allowed the constitution to be breached and party officials to exceed the limits of their powers again, and again, and again.
Technically the situation now is that McEleny is "suspended" from his position of General Secretary, so theoretically he could return if the disciplinary proceedings work out in his favour, but clearly that is not going to happen. Make no mistake - he has been fired by Kenny MacAskill and that's an end to it. There is no way back for him as General Secretary, and there is no way back for him in any form whatsoever within the Alba Party. If you launch a coup against your own party leader (even an acting leader), you have to get it right within the first five seconds, otherwise you've blown it forever.
McEleny's dreams of acting as the éminence grise for an Ash Regan-led Alba, and of becoming an Alba list MSP next year, now lie in tatters. He is extraordinarily ambitious and is highly unlikely to abandon his personal goals even at this stage, but to fulfil them he's going to have to join another party - which leads me to the inexorable conclusion that he will strongly consider renouncing independence in order to join Reform UK, because that is the only party he could plausibly join which would offer him a realistic chance of winning a seat at Holyrood.
This episode must finally put an end to the ludicrous pretence from the MacAskill faction of the party that Alba has been functioning as a normal political party over the last eighteen months. McEleny was the driving force behind numerous malicious expulsions and lengthy suspensions - not just me, but also Geoff Bush, Sean Davis, Denise Somerville and Colin Alexander. All of those spurious "upheld complaints" should now be overturned and apologies issued, and anyone who wishes to rejoin Alba should be allowed to do so. That includes the larger list of people who McEleny falsely certified as having "publicly resigned from the party" in order to bypass the disciplinary machinery altogether. I've rejoined the SNP since my expulsion and am extremely happy with that decision, but I believe the others are for the most part politically homeless at present. That is totally unfair on them and a dreadful injustice should now be put right.
I can't help but raise a rather ironic smile at the revelation that a specific component of the "gross misconduct" charge against McEleny is that he gave the impression that Alba supported the Tories in their bid to deprive asylum seekers of free bus travel. Er, didn't I raise concerns on this blog at the time that McEleny was flirting with far-right rhetoric and that Alba consequently risked mutating from its social democratic roots? And wasn't I shouted down and ridiculed for that by Alba HQ's Robert Reid, known to be a strong MacAskill supporter? If you're reading this, Robert - what total hypocrisy on your part. Total hypocrisy, and you should hang your head in shame.
I was speaking last night to some former Alba members, and I said to them that there was a strange paradox about McEleny. Most of us had sat in committee meetings with him at some point or another and seen how he remains completely calm and collected when he sticks the knife in. He never raises his voice or shows any emotion. You'd think such a man would have brilliant tactics to match his icy temperament, but that's where it all falls apart - his cunning plans are all Baldrick-like and invariably blow up in his face. Did he really not foresee that absolutely everyone would work out within two seconds that he was the "disgruntled senior employee" quoted by the Sunday Mail briefing against Mr MacAskill? Did he really believe that he would get away with taking bogus "disciplinary action" against the acting party leader - an action I struggle to think of any precedent for in any UK political party?
It was an attempted coup, that's for sure - the idea would have been that Mr MacAskill's leadership bid might prove untenable if he was suspended in some form or another. But as I've mentioned quite a few times, 75% of the four members of the Disciplinary Committee who voted for my own expulsion in early December were Robert Reid's mum (Jackie Reid), or Robert Reid's girlfriend (Christina Hendry), or Alex Salmond's niece (Christina Hendry again), or directly appointed to the committee by Alex Salmond (both Christina Hendry and Josh Robertson). The idea that those people were ever going to suspend Kenny MacAskill is just barking mad. Maybe McEleny thought a temporary suspension pending the disciplinary hearing would be enough to do the trick? Well, no, that makes no sense, because Mr MacAskill always had enough supporters on the NEC to overturn a temporary suspension. It was just never going to work. It was the sort of coup Mr Bean or Frank Spencer would have attempted, and the outcome is utterly predictable to everyone apart from the man himself.
A slightly more detailed reply to Ballot Box Scotland on his denunciation of Find Out Now polls
I launched the Scot Goes Pop fundraiser for 2025 around ten days ago, and so far the running total stands at £1251, meaning that 18% 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
Tuesday, February 4, 2025
Power-crazed McEleny pushes Alba to the brink of destruction by launching yet another bogus "disciplinary" action - this time against the party's ACTING LEADER
YouGov put Nigel Farage in pole position to be the next Prime Minister as Reform jump into the lead in apocalyptic new poll
Labour 24% (-3)
Conservatives 21% (-1)
Liberal Democrats 14% (-)
Greens 9% (-)
SNP 3% (-)
Plaid Cymru 1% (-)
I launched the Scot Goes Pop fundraiser for 2025 around ten days ago, and so far the running total stands at £1201, meaning that 18% 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
Monday, February 3, 2025
BREAKING: It appears the Find Out Now poll has been misreported, with support for independence actually on 52%, not 51% - but in a huge blow for Alba, they appear to be on 5% of the list vote, not 7%
I launched the Scot Goes Pop fundraiser for 2025 last weekend, and so far the running total stands at £1201, meaning that 18% 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