Was Rachel Reeves weeping for the failure of her political project, or for the shame of knowing it was never worth fighting for in the first place?

It now appears (although we'll have to wait for people's memoirs to know for sure) that Rachel Reeves' tears at PMQs yesterday may have been triggered by something that loveable ol' Lindsay Hoyle said to her.  But when it seemed more likely that she was weeping for the political failure of both herself and the Labour government, and in particular for the gutting of the welfare reform legislation, I couldn't help but think it perfectly summed up the tragedy of the modern Labour party.  To try to transform society for the better, and to fail, as many progressive politicians have done in the past, would be something to take immense pride in.  But to be so bereft because you betrayed everything your party once was by trying to make life worse for the most vulnerable people, and were thwarted, speaks to a kind of hollowing out of the British left's soul, which will leave Reeves' generation of Labour ministers with a sense of total emptiness when they reach the end of their careers.  What they fought for wasn't worth having and they didn't get it anyway.  I suppose the flipside is that the flame of Labour values does continue to burn, albeit as no more than a dull flicker, among the wider PLP - but unfortunately the only positive practical effect of electing a Labour majority to parliament is that it might sometimes be able to resist the right-wing excesses of the very Labour government that it pointlessly sustains in office.

There was an extraordinary quote on Tuesday from an anonymous Labour loyalist, attacking the welfare rebels: "What did they think the job was? They all think they're JFK because they delivered some leaflets while Morgan McSweeney won them the election."  If the job description of Labour MPs has been revised from creating a fairer society to total unthinking loyalty to the unelected Morgan McSweeney, then I think it's high time this modern day JFK was subjected to some proper public accountability, because I'm not sure I've ever even heard the sound of his voice.  I presume he still has a southern Irish accent, which would be rather jarring given what he's come to represent.  On the face of it, he strikes me as a total political dud, for three reasons -

* He forced Labour to abandon all of its values on the premise that doing so would increase the party's popularity, but ended up with roughly the same share of the vote that Jeremy Corbyn took in 2019, and a significantly lower share of the vote than Corbyn took in 2017.

* His strategic advice has led to the Starmer government's popularity plummetting further and faster than any other newly elected government in British history.

* He purged the PLP as best he could of all free thinkers and replaced them with drones to ensure that his right-wing programme would face no substantive resistance, and yet the Starmer administration with its landslide majority has still ended up functioning like a minority government that cannot carry its business without negotiations and massive concessions.

Now that really is political failure.  To misquote Senator Lloyd Bentson: "Morgan, you're no Jack Kennedy...although let's hear what your voice sounds like just to be sure."

Ipsos poll confirms that the end is nigh for Alba

I didn't get around to giving you the party political voting intentions numbers from the Ipsos poll yesterday, so here they are...

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot:

SNP 34%

Labour 23%

Reform UK 14%

Conservatives 10%

Liberal Democrats 9%

Greens 9%

Alba 1%

Scottish Parliament list ballot:

SNP 26%

Labour 22%

Reform UK 16%

Greens 15%

Conservatives 10%

Liberal Democrats 8%

Alba 2%

Scottish voting intentions for next UK general election:

SNP 31%

Labour 22%

Reform UK 16%

Conservatives 10%

Greens 10%

Liberal Democrats 9%

Alba 1%

If the Alba vote shares are accurate, and I don't particularly doubt that they are likely to be reasonably accurate, Alba have made no progress at all since 2021 when they were light-years short of winning any seats.  One of the several dishonest points in Jim McEleny's email to party members after resigning as convener of Alba's Inverclyde branch was that he tried to make out that things had fallen apart since the good old days when his son/brother (I think it's son but I'd better cover all the options) was General Secretary - ie. that opinion polls showed the party on course for seats back then but no longer do.  In fact there has been no change in the polls at all - Alba have always been on course for zero seats and they remain on course for zero seats.  To be blunt, Alba members were cynically deceived by Chris McEleny with his ridiculous "poll after poll" catchphrase - it was a downright lie that Alba were ever on course for seats, and yet it was obvious from social media that many Alba members were successfully duped.

This is why independence supporters must ignore the siren voices, such as the controversial "Stew" blogger, which are trying to convince them to throw their list votes away on fringe parties that cannot in the real world win any list seats.  Given how evenly spread their vote is, Alba would need to at least double their support to even have an outside chance of nicking a seat somewhere.  If anyone were to say "oh of course the SNP can achieve objective X or Y, all they need to do is double their vote", Stew would be the first to mock the naivety and the dishonesty of that position - so why it should supposedly be any different with Alba or with the wilder fringe elements represented by Liberate Scotland is a complete mystery.  There are only two pro-independence parties capable of winning list seats, namely the SNP and the Greens, and frankly the task facing anyone who is serious about electing a pro-indy majority at Holyrood next year is to choose between those two parties.  Voting for anyone else increases the chances of a unionist majority without a shadow of doubt.

Incidentally, I heard an extraordinary story last week about a senior figure within Alba, possibly even one 'of Salmond blood', trying to get the police involved in her vendetta against a female NEC colleague who recently left the party.  The story was so garbled that it was hard to fully make sense of, but there's a real whiff of 'the last days in the bunker' about Alba at the moment.  NEC or other committee members who are the subject of the leadership's paranoid suspicions about "treachery" should probably just count themselves lucky if they escape the firing squad.

Stew was gloating yesterday about John Swinney's net approval rating of -17.  It's true that's unusually low by the standards of other recent polls, but nevertheless it still leaves Mr Swinney with slightly better ratings than Mr Sarwar.  There was speculation at the Holyrood Sources event last week that Labour's position might improve once voters turn their attention away from Westminster and towards Holyrood, just as there was a big swing towards the SNP in 2011 once voters actually remembered it was a Holyrood election.  But that swing in 2011 was driven by two factors - a) the fact that Alex Salmond was regarded as a far more credible leader than Iain Gray, and b) the fact that the SNP were more trusted than Labour to stand up for Scotland.  Well, in the new Ipsos poll, John Swinney is slightly more popular than Anas Sarwar, and the SNP are more trusted than Labour to stand up for Scottish interests, by a margin of 37% to 12%.  If the hypothetical Labour fightback is going to happen, what exactly will it be built on?

More analysis of the Ipsos poll showing a pro-independence majority

Just a quick note to let you know that I have an analysis piece at The National about the new Ipsos poll, which shows Yes in the lead by 52% to 48%, and a substantial SNP lead in both Westminster and Holyrood voting intentions.  You can read the article HERE.

Ipsos abandon a decades-long tradition of phone polling in Scotland - but continue to show a Yes lead on the independence question

As you'll remember from a few days ago, there was a GB-wide poll from Ipsos which used a new methodology.  Ipsos announced they were moving away from telephone polling in favour of using an online panel which had been recruited offline (making it significantly different from most online polling panels).  I wondered at the time whether there would be a similar methodological change in the next poll in the long-running Ipsos series for STV, which has always previously been conducted by phone, and which in recent years has produced much better results for Yes on the independence question than most online firms.  It didn't take long to find out - a new Ipsos / STV poll was released today, and it has indeed switched to online fieldwork, but crucially it still shows a Yes lead.

Should Scotland be an independent country? (Ipsos / STV News, 12th-18th June 2025)

Yes 52% (+1)

No 48% (-1)

More details and analysis to follow...

A question for Mandy Rhodes: who has killed the most women over the last year, Iran or Israel?

I saw a furious response on Twitter to a Mandy Rhodes article about the Israeli assault on Iran, and having taken a look I can understand where her detractor is coming from.  Ms Rhodes seems to have heartily embraced the prevailing London media narrative of "when Israel is committing a genocide, the priority is clear - we must denounce left-wing activism at Glastonbury".  Specifically she thinks activists have no right to champion Iran over Israel-Trump, given Iran's appalling human rights record.  She cites the high number of executions in Iran, and in particular the number of executions of women - although oddly the main thing she succeeds in doing is demonstrating that the number of women executed is only a very small percentage of the overall number of executions in Iran.  As in most countries with the death penalty, the people most affected, to a vastly disproportionate degree, are men - and to be clear, that does not make it any the more excusable.

One thing that can be said to Israel's credit is that it is 'abolitionist in practice' on the death penalty - it has only executed two people in its history, and the last one was Adolf Eichmann well over half a century ago.  But how much of a virtue is that in the real world, when Israel's allies allow it to commit extra-judicial killings on an industrial scale with absolute impunity?  Who has killed the most people over the last year - Iran or Israel?  Who has killed the most women over the last year - Iran or Israel?  Who has killed the most children over the last year - Iran or Israel?  It's not even a contest.

The US, by contrast, is very much on the same page as Iran in its enthusiastic application of the death penalty against both men and women.  In fact, the three countries with the highest number of verified executions in 2023 were Iran, Saudi Arabia and the US.  The list would undoubtedly be topped by China if the number of executions there wasn't kept secret, but nevertheless the US is almost certain to be in the top seven or so.  Donald Trump has of course lifted the moratorium on the use of the federal death penalty.  If Mandy Rhodes thinks a country's retention of capital punishment means it can never be actively supported in military conflicts regardless of any other circumstances, I trust we'll find that she's been morally consistent over the years by refraining from showing any support for military action taken by the US in the aftermath of 9/11, for example.

A key point that left-wing activists who have expressed sympathy for Iran in recent weeks would make is that Iran was the victim of unprovoked aggression from Israel, and indeed aggression motivated by a desperate wish to distract the world's attention from the genocide in Gaza - a tactic of breathtaking cynicism that Ms Rhodes seems only too keen to reward Netanyahu for.  If a country's poor human rights record means that the normal sympathies can't be extended to it when it is the victim of unprovoked aggression, I trust we'll find Ms Rhodes consistently applied the same principle immediately after the Hamas attacks of 7th October 2023, and refused to express any sympathy for Israel due to its brutal occupation of Gaza and the West Bank since 1967.

As for any suggestion that the Israeli and US bombing of Iran can be justified as a pre-emptive strike against Iran's nuclear programme, don't make me laugh.  Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.  It does not possess nuclear weapons and according to America's own intelligence assessment of only a few weeks ago, it was not seeking to acquire nuclear weapons.  By contrast, Israel is one of a tiny number of countries to have refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and it has possessed nuclear weapons for decades.  If belligerent Middle Eastern countries possessing nuclear weapons is deemed to be a problem, the first step towards a solution is pretty obvious - Israel must be disarmed at all costs.

A gentle hint to the non-Sovereignty contingent within Liberate Scotland: the tactic of "slinging a deefie" at any questions about the electoral pact with a far-right nativist party is not going to work for a whole year, and especially not when the mainstream media start asking the questions

As I understand it, Liberate Scotland view the SNP as an anti-independence party, hence the decision to split the vote on the constituency ballot. Until they break out of that mindset (and I doubt if they will) it can only be a destructive exercise.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) June 29, 2025

Who is going to provide the credible plan?

— eva comrie (@mickbrick54) June 29, 2025

Certainly not Liberate Scotland. I'm astonished that you're standing for an alliance that includes a nativist party like Sovereignty. You were Alba's Equalities Convener - surely the most fundamental equality of all is equal citizenship rights?

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) June 29, 2025

Diversion James. It doesn’t work with me. Who’s providing the credible plan? #IndependenceNothingLess. BTW you don’t need to remind me of the content of my own CV.

— eva comrie (@mickbrick54) June 29, 2025

Great, you remember. So what the hell are you doing in alliance with Sovereignty? Do you have any red line? Would you go into alliance with the BNP if they were pro-indy? This is not diversion - this is fundamental. I have no interest in ushering in fascism in the name of indy.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) June 29, 2025

As I said your attempts at diversion don’t work. Who’s producing the credible plan?

— eva comrie (@mickbrick54) June 29, 2025

Barrhead Boy, presumably. #sarcasm

You *seriously* have no answer to what you're doing in alliance with the far right? You really think that just refusing point blank to answer is going to work for the next *year*? Good luck with that.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) June 29, 2025

I asked you who’s providing the credible plan because I genuinely want to see one. I cannot help if you cannot answer.

— eva comrie (@mickbrick54) June 29, 2025

But not only do you not have an answer to my question about what you're doing in an electoral pact with fascists, neither do you have an answer to *your own* question either. If you demand a "credible plan", who in Liberate Scotland is providing it? Barrhead Boy?

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) June 29, 2025

I understand that you desire independence and that’s why you rejoined the SNP. I’d really like to know how you think they can achieve independence. However I respect Gil’s view and wonder if you think there’s a credible plan up John Swinney’s sleeve ?

— eva comrie (@mickbrick54) June 29, 2025

If you're asking me whether I think John Swinney has a more credible plan than Barrhead Boy or the far right nativists of Sovereignty, which is the only relevant question given who you've thrown in your lot with, the answer is yes. An extremely low bar, admittedly, but yes.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) June 29, 2025

As you know, I'm far from content with the SNP leadership's current approach to independence, but the point is that pretty much any plan is superior to the Barrhead / Barcelona brew of a) uniting 0.2% of the independence movement under a "big tent", b) demonising the other 99.8% of the independence movement as "saboteurs", c) fiddling the franchise so English people living in Scotland can't vote, d) strolling effortlessly to a landslide election triumph, and e) marching on the UN to beg them to decolonise us.

This is the first time I've had any contact with Eva since she made what I can only describe as the dreadful error of joining Liberate Scotland.  If she had stayed as a genuine independent candidate and stood on the list only, I think she would have had a small outside chance of becoming an MSP, but she's blown it by associating with a brand that is likely to become as toxic as Alba (if not more so).  But as I hadn't previously spoken to her about her decision, I expected she'd have some kind of thoughtful answer to the question of what on earth had possessed her to enter into an electoral pact with Sovereignty.  Her refusal to even acknowledge the question, let alone answer it, stunned me.

I was on the Alba NEC with Eva for a year in 2021-22, and two things stood out for me about her.  One was her absolute commitment to the equalities role - she was extremely passionate about aspects of it that have been neglected by others, most notably justice for Scotland's Travellers community, which is an issue that has been in the news very recently.  It's hard to believe that someone who feels so strongly about equality for one of the most marginalised segments of our society would have much truck with the idea that some residents of Scotland should be denied citizenship after independence on arbitrary ethnic grounds, but that appears to be the Sovereignty position.

The second thing that stood out was Eva's hardheaded realism about electoral strategy.  When she was concerned about the deficiencies in Alba's preparations for the 2022 local elections, she spoke up volubly and identified exactly what she thought the shortcomings were.  She was nobody's yes-woman - she cared about independence and about the party above all else, and if she thought that Alex Salmond and Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh needed a forceful dose of reality, she was more than willing to provide it.  I find it very hard to believe that she's naive enough to think that the questions about Sovereignty and its nativist policies will go away if they're just studiously ignored.  It's one thing fobbing off fellow independence supporters on social media, but when the mainstream media start asking the same questions, Liberate Scotland are going to be absolutely crucified if they can't find a more convincing and respectful way of answering.  (That's assuming the mainstream media pay them any attention at all - and if not, all of this becomes totally academic because Liberate will be lucky to get 0.1% of the vote.)

To me, the obstinacy of just repeatedly ignoring the questions has more of a "made in Barrhead" or "made in Barcelona" feel to it than "made in Clackmannanshire".  Barrhead Boy is by all accounts the de facto leader of Liberate, and Eva may be reluctantly going along with the dubious wisdom of a "just sling a deefie" directive imposed by HQ in sunny Catalonia.

Now we've established that Stew doesn't want Holyrood to have any say on foreign affairs (meaning by definition that he opposes independence), can he clarify whether he agrees with his own retweet that Israel's 1967 invasion and conquest of the Arab town of Bethlehem was "the liberation of Bethlehem"?

As mentioned in the previous post, my devoted Somerset stalker "Stew" has been continuing to fire off tweets about me over recent days, faster than I can really keep up with, even though in some cases he has been directly demanding responses from me.  And this is the guy who just a few months ago innocently claimed to mention me on Twitter only a couple of times a year at most.  One might almost be tempted to say that he's finally dropped the pretence, although actually that's not true, because in most cases he's still doing his usual thing of making clear by indirect means that he's referring to me but without mentioning me by name.  He repeatedly does the same thing on his blog - the idea being that in a few months' time he can successfully shove what he's been doing down the memory hole by inviting his readers to search Wings or his Twitter account for my name, and say "You see?  I've barely even mentioned the guy!"

While I have a few spare moments, I may as well work my way through a few 'highlights' of his tweets about me from the last week or so, although frankly there aren't enough hours in the day to deal with all of them.  First up, there's a multi-tweet thread in which he critiques the question I asked of Anas Sarwar the other night.  You'll be dumbfounded to hear that he's not a fan of it.

Look, Stew, I'm truly sorry if I dismayed you by asking a question that departed from the women-with-beards issue.  Like all of us, I do know the lyrics of the reworked Elton John cover I Guess That's Why They Call It The Stew off by heart: "time wasted asking non-women-with-beards-related questions could be time spent asking women-with-beards-related questions".  Very true.

Leaving aside my blasphemy in neglecting the Sacred Topic, however, I'm rather surprised that Stew was so unhappy with my question, because I saw him earlier in the week imploring anyone who attended the Swinney/Sarwar event in Edinburgh to ask the two leaders whether there were any policy areas that divided them apart from independence.  I had already submitted my question by then, but I was confident that what I had put forward fulfilled a very similar function, because Gaza has been one of the points of difference between the SNP and Labour.  "Give us points of difference, but not THAT one" seems to be Stew's message.  "Don't even mention that one, because Bibi must be allowed to get on with the genocide in civilised peace and quiet."

So here's the remarkable thing. I asked Anas Sarwar whether he thought the Scottish Government should think small, "get back to the day job", and stop talking about foreign affairs.  His answer on all three of those points was essentially "no", and he promised to speak out about foreign affairs if he becomes First Minister, because he said his social justice values do not end at the Scottish border.  So having set out to find a dividing line between Mr Swinney and Mr Sarwar, the irony is that I ended up finding a dividing line between Mr Sarwar and Stew instead.  Despite opposing independence, Mr Sarwar believes, or at least claims to, that the Scottish Government should not be restricted to concerning themselves with the limited number of devolved powers imposed on them by Westminster.  Whereas Stew absolutely thinks they should be restricted in that way, and that they should stop getting ideas above their station, which is an extraordinary worldview for any self-styled 'independence supporter' to hold.  But there again, it's a statement of the obvious that if you don't think foreign affairs should be the province of the Scottish Government, you don't actually support independence at all.  

Let's stop pretending black is white, shall we?  Stew probably was a genuine independence supporter eleven years ago, but he no longer is.  He's a unionist now, and a devo-sceptic unionist at that, albeit one who ties himself up in knots trying to convince people that he still supports independence in some sort of convoluted, upside-down manner - because he knows he would lose readers otherwise.

Aw, bless.  You gotta love Stew, he's apparently convinced himself that his latest cosplay "psephologist" blogpost was some sort of killer effort that has left everyone totally stunned and that no-one can think of a response to.  Stew, I don't know how to break the news to you, dear heart, but apart from the first few sentences I haven't even read your precious blogpost yet.  I deliberately didn't read it, because I knew I might not have time to respond for a few days and I didn't want my mind cluttered up with gibberish while I was getting on with other things.  But rest assured I will find the time to read it and respond at length.  A little patience, if you please.  Although I do love the fact that you've clearly been frantically hitting the refresh button over the last week in the hope of seeing my reply.  A proper stalker badge is on its way to YOU, my friend.

This one isn't a Stew tweet about me, but instead a Stew retweet of a Stephen Daisley tweet about an anonymous comment on this blog.  What's deeply disturbing about it is that Daisley presents screenshots of a Spectator article he wrote about Winnie Ewing's supposed ties to Israel, and in which he describes Israel's 1967 invasion and conquest of Bethlehem as "the liberation of Bethlehem".  

Long-term readers of Scot Goes Pop will know I've made numerous references to an extraordinary article that Daisley wrote many years ago, long before he was even employed by STV, in which he similarly said the 1967 invasion and conquest of East Jerusalem was "the liberation".  But to talk of the liberation of Bethlehem is even more offensive, because throughout modern history Bethlehem hasn't been a Jewish town at all.  The censuses in the 1920s and 1930s found literally just two Jewish people in the whole town.  Traditionally the population was overwhelmingly Arab Christian, and more recently has been overwhelmingly Arab Muslim, ie. Palestinian.  The vast majority of countries in the world regard Bethlehem as part of the sovereign (but illegally occupied) territory of the State of Palestine, and the minority that don't recognise the State of Palestine instead regard Bethlehem as part of the 'Occupied Palestinian Territories'.

The only way of making sense of Daisley's barmy claim that Bethlehem was liberated in 1967 is that he means it was promised to Israel in the Bible thousands of years ago, and therefore it needed to be annexed and its population expelled or exterminated, so that the rightful ethnoreligious owners could take over.  Now, we all know the standard disclaimer that "retweets are not necessarily endorsements", but if I was retweeting content that contained such an outrageous claim, I would go out of my way to make clear I disagreed with it.  Stew very noticeably did not do so, and I think we could do with some clarity from him about whether he agrees with Daisley about Bethlehem or not.  Even if he read Daisley's words and didn't think they were controversial, that speaks volumes too.

Elsewhere, Stew's newest obsession seems to be retweeting derogatory comment about Zohran Mamdani, the progressive and rather wonderful Democratic nominee for Mayor of New York...

Presumably Stew was cheering on the disgraced and God-awful "centrist" Andrew Cuomo in the primary, and in November will be keeping his fingers crossed for the Republican incumbent Eric Adams.

There's also this immigrant-bashing dog-whistle of a retweet, presumably preparing the ground for Stew's inevitable endorsement of Reform UK next year...

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Crossbreak cornucopia as SNP stun rivals with epochal lead in Scottish subsample from Find Out Now

GB-wide voting intentions (Find Out Now, 25th June 2025):

Reform UK 30% (-1)

Labour 22% (-1)

Conservatives 18% (+2)

Liberal Democrats 13% (+1)

Greens 11% (-)

SNP 3% (-)

Plaid Cymru 1% (-)

Scottish subsample: SNP 37%, Reform UK 16%, Labour 14%, Liberal Democrats 11%, Conservatives 9%, Greens 8%

You know the drill by now: only YouGov are known to correctly structure and weight their Scottish subsamples correctly, so subsample numbers from Find Out Now and other firms have less credibility.  Nevertheless, there has been a lovely consistency to the SNP's commanding position in subsamples across multiple firms recently, including YouGov themselves, so I don't think it's too outlandish to hope that there may be more than a grain of truth in it.

At GB level, the impression that Labour may have been recovering a bit has been dented - they're back down closer to their post-election low once again. However, it remains to be seen what the effect of the climbdown on benefits cuts will be - that's too recent to be factored in yet.

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For those that have been asking, yes I'm aware that my devoted Somerset stalker has been tweeting about me relentlessly in recent days and seems desperate for a reply.  That's kind of what he does all the time anyway, but I promise, I AM NOT IGNORING YOU STEW, and you'll get some of the attention you've been craving in due course.

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The running total in the Scot Goes Pop 2025 fundraiser currently stands at £2780, meaning it is 41% of the way towards the target figure of £6800.  If you'd like to help the blog keep going, donations by card are welcome HERE, or alternatively you can cut out fees altogether (depending on which option you select from the menu) by making a direct donation via PayPal.  My PayPal email address is:  jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Scot Goes Pop puts Anas Sarwar ON THE SPOT

Well, sort of.  I had a little cameo last night at the Holyrood Sources podcast recording in Edinburgh where both John Swinney and Anas Sarwar were questioned at length - albeit separately, they didn't debate each other directly.  Audience members were invited to submit questions in advance, and I was lucky enough to have my question for Anas Sarwar selected.  I just read it out exactly as I had submitted it a few nights ago, and it was this - 

"The Scottish Government, especially under Humza Yousaf but also under Mr Swinney, has taken a principled stance against Israel's actions in Gaza.  That stance differs sharply from the UK Government and has given a voice to countless people throughout Scotland and the UK who feel that Keir Starmer and David Lammy do not speak for them on this issue.  Wouldn't something precious be lost if Mr Sarwar wins the election and the new Scottish Government thereafter just parrots the UK Government line on Israel and Gaza?  Would Mr Sarwar even accept that the Scottish Government should be speaking out on foreign affairs, or does he think small like so many other Scottish Labour politicians before him by insisting that devolved governments should 'get on with the day job' and not concern themselves with reserved matters at all?"

You can watch both the question and answer HERE or on the embedded YouTube player below, starting at around 5 minutes in. 

 

In reality it didn't put Mr Sarwar on the spot to any great extent, because what I didn't anticipate was that in the seconds before I read the question out, he made an extremely strong statement that "Benjamin Netanyahu is out of control", which lent him greater credibility in answering my question by saying he would "continue" to speak out on foreign affairs.  Where he was on much weaker ground, though, was in arguing that I had unfairly characterised the UK Government's position, when in fact all I had actually said was that the Scottish Government's stance had differed sharply from the UK Government's - which is pretty much unarguable, given the contrast between Humza Yousaf's strong condemnation of Israel as First Minister and Keir Starmer's repeated insistence that "Israel has every right to defend herself".  If you listen to Mr Sarwar, you'd think the Starmer government has been fearless from day one in standing up to Israel - and that, I'm afraid, is the depiction of events in a parallel universe.  I also remain unconvinced that Mr Sarwar, in the unlikely event that he ever becomes First Minister, would be given the latitude by London Labour to use the type of language about Israel that he did last night.  If he can just about get away with it now, it's only because no-one thinks he is important and no-one is paying much attention to what he says.

Geoff Aberdein said at the start of the event that, barring miracles, one of the two men we'd be hearing from would be elected First Minister next year.  I think that gives a slightly misleading impression - it would be more accurate to say that, barring miracles, John Swinney will be re-elected First Minister next year.  To the extent that Anas Sarwar does still have a small percentage chance, it's probably comparable to the small chance of Reform being elected to lead the Scottish Government next year - although in fairness, it would have been very difficult to devise a three-way event incorporating Reform, because no-one seems to have a scooby who Reform's candidate for First Minister is going to be.  

Andy Maciver channeled his inner Stuart Campbell by spending much of the evening talking up the chances of an SNP-Labour coalition government.  His basic argument is that the current relationship between the SNP and Labour is analogous to the previous relationship between the CDU and SPD in Germany, and to the previous relationship between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil in Ireland - ie. they agree on most policy areas apart from independence but can't imagine going into government with each other because of supposed historical baggage.  Mr Maciver points out that in both Germany and Ireland, the historical baggage was pretty easily dispensed with when grand coalitions were required to freeze out the Left Party and Sinn Féin respectively.  But the operative words are that there is broad agreement between the SNP and Labour except on independence - which is not exactly a trivial matter, and as far as I am aware there was no equivalent massive dividing line between the CDU and SPD, or between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil.  My guess is that in Mr Maciver's case, the expectation of an SNP-Labour deal is coming from the centre-right perspective that the SNP's prioritising of independence is a bit of nonsense that can and will be set aside as part of a sort of 'maturing' process.  In reality, the SNP's support base is highly unlikely to allow that to ever happen.

Incidentally, there is at least one other extremely weighty point of division between the SNP and Labour which has nothing to do with independence, and which Mr Sarwar touched on briefly last night - namely new-build nuclear power.  Labour are in favour of it, and the SNP are viscerally opposed to it (quite rightly).

Mr Swinney did not explicitly rule out an SNP-Labour coalition, but Mr Sarwar did, saying it was going to be a parliament of minorities and that the only way he'd be going into power was as head of a Labour minority government.  The hosts instantly picked up on that and pointed out that it meant he was giving up on any chance of winning a Labour majority, but perhaps more interesting is that it also seems to exclude any possibility of a Labour-led unionist coalition government.  When Labour have been in power in Holyrood in the past, it's always been in coalition with the Lib Dems, so it seemed a bit odd to take that possibility off the table, given that any narrow path to power left open to Mr Sarwar is almost certain to involve the Lib Dems (and indeed the Tories) in some shape or form.

I think last night was the first time I've seen Professor John Curtice in the flesh, and the one thing that doesn't come across on TV is just how remarkably tall he is.  He has quite a commanding presence when he walks into a room.  As for Anas Sarwar, I saw him pressing the flesh with the people sitting close to me during a break in the recording, some of whom he seemed to know and others he didn't, and it's fair to say that he has an easy-going charm about him that I don't think you really see on TV when he is trying to look all slick and polished.

My off-peak return train ticket from Cumbernauld to Edinburgh for some reason specified that travel via Glasgow is not valid, which is a complete nonsense because there are times at night when the quickest way back is via Glasgow, and by that time obviously the trains are all off-peak anyway.  So I had to wait an extra hour for a train to Falkirk, but that gave me a chance to enjoy walking around Edinburgh only a few nights after the Summer Solstice in what I believe is known in Shetland as 'the simmer dim'.

Astounding YouGov MRP poll puts the SNP within eight seats of overtaking the Tories UK-wide - and with a 26% chance of holding the balance of power

The title of yesterday's blogpost was 'Using an election to double as an independence referendum is the ONLY way independence can and will ever be won. Resisting it just delays the inevitable and causes needless pain along the way.' I realised afterwards that I'd inadvertently 'done a Stew' and completely contradicted myself in the space of a few days - what I should have said is 'using an election to double as an independence referendum is the ONLY way independence can ever be won, unless the SNP get lucky and hold the balance of power at Westminster'.  The first YouGov MRP poll since the general election confirms that there's a non-trivial chance of the latter happening, because in 26% of simulations a centre-left Labour-led coalition can be cobbled together, but only with the SNP's help.  In most cases this would have to be a five-party coalition involving Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the SNP, the Greens and Plaid Cymru, but there's an 11% chance of four parties being enough and a 3% chance of three parties being enough (ie. Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP).  So it would just be a question of whether the SNP are willing to play hardball and to make an independence referendum a condition of installing a Labour PM.

Remarkably, the seats projection shows the SNP within just eight seats of overtaking the Conservatives UK-wide - 

Reform UK 271 (+266)

Labour 178 (-233)

Liberal Democrats 81 (+9)

Conservatives 46 (-75)

SNP 38 (+29)

Greens 7 (+3)

Plaid Cymru 7 (+3)

The SNP would have roughly two-thirds of Scottish seats, and once again it's important to stress that this is in no way inconsistent with the result of the Hamilton by-election.  The Westminster seat of Hamilton & Clyde Valley would be one of the one-third of seats staying in unionist hands, with Labour projected to hold it by a margin of 30% to 27%, and with Reform in a strong third place on 23% - pretty much bang in line with the by-election result.

Most of the crude uniform swing projections from standard opinion polls have Reform failing to win any Scottish seats at all, but that is categorically not the case here - Reform would actually construct a 'mini light blue wall' in the south of Scotland, taking Ayr, Carrick & Cumnock, Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale & Tweeddale and Dumfries & Galloway.

One thing that is consistent with the uniform swing projections, though, is that Labour are shown to be on course to hold Na h-Eileanan an Iar by some distance, with the SNP not even in second place.  I'm fairly sure that's a wonky projection caused by the unusual baseline figures in the constituency from last year's election.  In reality, if the SNP take two-thirds of Scottish seats, Na h-Eileanan an Iar is pretty likely to be one of them unless Torcuil Crichton has built up a really sizeable personal vote.

Although the Tories are projected to hold a couple of Scottish seats, both of them are on a knife edge.  The SNP are only one point behind in Berwickshire, Roxburgh & Selkirk, while in Gordon & Buchan there is effectively a three-way tie between the Tories, the SNP and Reform UK on 24% apiece - with the Tories only ahead by a tiny fraction.

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