This is the corner unionist politicians have ludicrously backed themselves into with their anti-referendum extremism - they've left themselves with no option but to argue that opinion polls have more constitutional legitimacy than real elections, and are then going into complete meltdown when opinion polls show a pro-independence majority

Immediately after the Supreme Court verdict, I predicted that it would be unionist politicians who would try to resurrect the prospect of an independence referendum.  That seems paradoxical, but in winning the court case they've killed something that was actually far more valuable to them than it was to us.  They needed the bogeyman of a referendum to motivate their base through fear, and they also needed it because it gave them power - the power to say "no", or "not yet", or "we'll set the conditions".  If the independence movement's attention now shifts to a scheduled election, there's nothing unionists can do to stop the vote taking place - all they can do is try to prevent us winning the vote, which understandably they find a much scarier task.  Of course they can still refuse to recognise the outcome of any democratic vote (as Keir Starmer has threatened to do), but in that case they're tacitly admitting that the UK is indeed a prison and Scotland has no democratic means of choosing to leave, which as we've seen in recent days is likely to thoroughly rile up the Scottish electorate.

My prediction came true much earlier than I expected it to, because within around 24 hours of the ruling, the former Tory MSP Adam Tomkins seemed to suddenly realise the self-made trap he and his fellow travellers had just blundered into.  He quietly deleted an earlier triumphalist tweet in which he had declared a "5-0 victory" for the Supreme Court justices over independence - as I pointed out, that had seemed to suggest that judges were more important than voters, and that persuading judges to prevent people from voting was an equivalent achievement to actually winning a referendum.  It was very easy to predict how the public were likely to view that kind of astounding arrogance.  After the deletion, Tomkins hastily tried to repair the damage by seeking to bring back the prospect of a referendum from the dead, but having already dismissed any idea that the Scottish electorate could simply use the ballot box to trigger a referendum, he had to come up with an alternative mechanism.  And literally the only place he'd left himself to go was opinion polling.  He absurdly suggested that the UK government could be trusted to monitor the polls and grant a referendum out of the goodness of their hearts once it was clear that there was sufficient demand in Scotland for independence.

This means that Tomkins is saying that an opinion poll of 1000 people from a volunteer online panel has greater democratic legitimacy, and should carry more constitutional weight, than elections in which the entire adult population of Scotland can vote.  That is a barking mad position for any politician to adhere to, let alone a Professor of Public Law at Glasgow University.  It means, of course, that polling methodology can no longer be considered a private matter for private polling firms, because sleights of hand like YouGov's infamous "Kellner Correction" (which artificially reduced the reported Yes vote in the indyref campaign due to Peter Kellner's entirely subjective opinion that Yes couldn't possibly be doing so well) could end up determining the destiny of a whole nation.

And then of course there's the question of what unionists do when the polls actually start showing a pro-indy majority.  In the last 48 hours, we've seen them running around like headless chickens trying to discredit Ipsos UK's polling methodology, because they simply can't cope with the reality of a credible poll showing 56% support for independence - on the terms Tomkins has set down, that's literally enough to call into question the legitimacy of London rule in Scotland, so Ipsos apparently now have to be destroyed or brought to heel.

In the old days, when Stephen Flynn did what he did on Wednesday and mentioned the results of the Ipsos poll in parliament, it would have been easy to shut him down by saying "the honourable gentleman may be obsessed with polls, I'm more interested in how millions of people vote for real on the day". But if there is no "day" on which real votes can be cast, if opinion polls are literally the only way Scotland can express its democratic will, it's entirely legitimate for Flynn to say to Rishi Sunak: "Ipsos / Redfield & Wilton say we want out, so what are you going to do about it?"

As the dust starts to settle on the Supreme Court verdict, it’s incredibly important that Nationalist and Unionist alike understand there remains a lawful, constitutional and democratic path to independence for those who wish to pursue it 1/

— Adam Tomkins (@ProfTomkins) November 24, 2022

Yesterday’s ruling did nothing to change that. Ever since Margaret Thatcher was PM the UK state has been perfectly clear that it will not seek to obstruct the settled will of the Scottish people. Opinion polling will tell us what the people want 3/

— Adam Tomkins (@ProfTomkins) November 24, 2022

"Of course it's a voluntary union! You can leave any time you want."

"OK, so how do we leave?"

"We interpret your desires for you. It's a job for experts, and the unique expertise required is only really found in Westminster."

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) November 26, 2022

Adam, you have said some pretty ludicrous things in your time, but your attempt to turn YouGov into part of the British constitution takes the biscuit. You are *literally* saying that the result of polls of 1000 people carry more weight than an election in which millions voted.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) November 24, 2022

Is there a single country in the world that has gone down the road you're suggesting? And can you imagine the implications? There would have to be state regulation of polling methods - you can't have the constitution decided by the whim of Peter Kellner or Martin Boon or whoever.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) November 24, 2022

Interesting division opening up within the unionist camp. "This is still a voluntary union and the 2014 referendum is the proof of that" is not *really* consistent with "why the f*** did we even allow the Jocks to vote in 2014?"https://t.co/AWwGV9UQnU

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) November 25, 2022

Ipsos POLL SCANDAL DEEPENS: Page 39 tables show that (Base: All, weighted results, excluding those who didn't vote) 479/(1065-157) = 52.8% of respondents voted YES in 2014. The actual percentage was 44.7%, a difference of 8.1 percentage points. @benatipsos @KellyIpsosUK 1/13 pic.twitter.com/p0ikR53QTe

— The Majority (@themajorityscot) December 8, 2022

The numbers are the numbers now as recalled by a representative sample - not the results from the last election. We aren’t weighting to past vote because of false memory problems (ie Labour had won in 1992 in all polls post 1993)

— Ben Page (@benatipsos) December 8, 2022

That response from Ipsos is incredibly important, by the way, because it explains why the real problem may not be Ipsos overestimating the Yes vote - it may be other pollsters overestimating the No vote due to the increasingly dubious practice of relying on respondents to accurately recall and report how they voted more than eight years ago.

*  *  *

If you'd like to help Scot Goes Pop continue, donations are welcome HERE.