Latest TELEPHONE poll for #Referendum2023 says 50% of the public will vote for independence - and that's BEFORE the campaign for next year's guaranteed referendum even gets underway

Full-scale telephone polls in Scotland are relatively rare these days, but we do get one from Ipsos-Mori every few months - and it's always fascinating, because it tends to show better results for Yes than most online polls.  That raises the tantalising possibility that support for independence has for years been running at a considerably higher level than we generally assume.

Should Scotland be an independent country?  (Ipsos-Mori / STV)

Yes 50% (-4)

No 50% (+4)

So the short-term direction of travel is mildly disappointing, although actually this 50-50 split is identical to the result of an Ipsos-Mori poll around a year ago, so there's not necessarily any evidence of a longer-term decline for Yes.  And it would be hard to argue that this is anything other than an excellent platform from which to kick off our guaranteed 2023 independence referendum, especially when you bear in mind that there were Ipsos-Mori polls in the run-up to the first indyref showing a 2-1 majority for No.

Judging from the summary of the poll on the Ipsos-Mori website, it looks like there was either no Holyrood question in the poll, or the Holyrood numbers are being held back for another day.  But what we do have are Westminster voting intentions (although how relevant those are is open to question, given the majority SNP-Green government's guarantee that an independence referendum will have been held well before the next Westminster general election takes place in May 2024).

Scottish voting intentions for the next Westminster general election:

SNP 44%

Labour 23%

Conservatives 19%

Liberal Democrats 10%

Greens 3%

There are no percentage changes listed because I can't find any sign of Ipsos-Mori having previously asked the Westminster question in recent years.  There may be a slight cause for concern that the SNP are a touch below the 45% they achieved in the 2019 election, and also that there's been a clear swing from SNP to Labour, who now seem to have clearly re-established themselves as the second party of Scottish politics.  However, the gap between SNP and Labour remains twice as big as it was in Labour's mini-comeback year of 2017 under Jeremy Corbyn - and remember even that election produced only seven seats for Scottish Labour.  Also of note is the relatively strong showing for the Liberal Democrats, which supports the impression from the local elections that they may be recovering somewhat.

Last but not least, the poll confirms that the majority of the population want an independence referendum to be held at some point - with precisely 50% wanting it either by the end of 2023 or by 2026.  Just 31% of voters think a second indyref should never be held.

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Over the years, Scot Goes Pop has provided extensive Scottish polling analysis and political commentary, as well as commissioning no fewer than six full-scale opinion polls, and producing numerous podcasts and videos.  If you'd like to help me continue this work, donations are welcome via any of the following methods...

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Yessers feel that old familiar tingle down the back of the neck as we move within just SEVEN MONTHS of referendum year - let's celebrate with an update of the #Referendum2023 Countdown Clock

Democracy costs money - but not very much.  If you were as fatuous a person as Blair McDougall is, you could very easily say "we're in a cost of living crisis, every single penny needs to go towards alleviating it, so let's make vital savings by cutting out needless luxuries like elections".  But as soon as you think about that for half a second, you realise that the - in relative terms - pocket money required to administer an election is exceptionally good value in avoiding dictatorship and/or fascism.  

Exactly the same principle applies to a referendum on independence.  If the UK isn't Scotland's prison (and unfortunately that's very much a point of contention), then there has to be a democratic mechanism by which independence can be chosen or declined. If the voters decide to trigger that mechanism, the relatively small amount of necessary funding has to be spent.  The time for arguing against a referendum was the 2021 Holyrood election - a free and fair election in which Blair McDougall's side of the argument was decisively defeated.

So it's entirely appropriate that the Scottish Government have announced that £20 million has been set aside for delivering the guarantee of an independence referendum in 2023.  And let's have no time for the cynics who say that this announcement is just part of an elaborate 'sound and light show' and that the money will never actually have to be spent because the referendum will never take place.  It is utterly inconceivable that the SNP leadership would play games like that, because when they commit to a date for a referendum, by God they stick to it.  Well, OK, they didn't stick to it in 2017, 2018 or 2019, but this time is obviously different.  Just like Rita Ora, the majority SNP-Green government will never let you down as far as the #2023ReferendumGuarantee is concerned.  Let's celebrate with an update of the Scot Goes Pop #Referendum2023 Countdown Clock...

There are just 218 days until the earliest possible date for #Referendum2023 (5th January)

There are just 568 days until the last possible date for #Referendum2023 (21st December)

(Note: the Countdown Clock calculations assume that tradition will be maintained by holding #Referendum2023 on a Thursday, and that it will be before Christmas.)

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I saw on Twitter yesterday that one of the identity politics zealots (I'm not sure which one) disgraced themselves by making anti-English comments about the gender critical witnesses who appeared before the Scottish Parliament committee discussing GRA reform.  So I had a look at the video of the session, and to my surprise I actually found myself getting quite annoyed by the opening statement and some of the answers from the representative of 'Keep Prisons Single Sex'.  It was nothing to do with her English accent or her gender critical views - it was simply the fact that what she seemed to care about, mainly, was the impact in England of any change of the law in Scotland.  She kept telling the committee that they would have to consider the effect on English prisons of awarding Gender Recognition Certificates to a wider range of people in Scotland.  Current Ministry of Justice policy on the importance of GRCs would effectively create a two-tier system, she complained, with Scottish prisoners in England being treated differently from English prisoners in England.

But here's the thing - none of that is the province of the Scottish Parliament.  If a change in Scots Law has the side-effect of creating practical problems in England, it's up to the English authorities to decide how to resolve that - they could, for example, decide not to recognise certain GRCs granted in Scotland, at least in the context of prisons.  Legislators in Scotland shouldn't even be taking those problems into account - they're there to decide what's best for Scotland, not to work out what will be least troublesome for England (centre of the universe though it may be).  What would have been much more appropriate from the witness would have been to make the case for keeping Scottish prisons single sex.

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Scot Goes Pop Fundraising

Over the years, Scot Goes Pop has provided extensive Scottish polling analysis and political commentary, as well as commissioning no fewer than six full-scale opinion polls, and producing numerous podcasts and videos.  If you'd like to help me continue this work, donations are welcome via any of the following methods...

Direct payments via Paypal - my Paypal email address is:   jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Scot Goes Pop General Fundraiser 

Scot Goes Pop Polling Fundraiser 

If you prefer a bank transfer, please message me for details using the contact email address which can be found in the sidebar of the blog (desktop version only), or on my Twitter profile.  

Scottish Labour have just helpfully destroyed one of their own favourite myths - thanks, Anas

You may recall that in the run-up to the 2015 Westminster general election, when there was opinion poll evidence of a swing from Labour to SNP of biblical proportions but nobody quite believed it would be fully replicated on polling day, one of the tactics Labour used to try to bring voters "back home" was to lie through their teeth and claim that it was a "fact" that in a hung parliament the largest single party gets to form a government.  When it was pointed out to them that there was no rule or constitutional convention that supported their claim, and indeed that the 1923 election led to the Labour party forming a government in spite of the Tories being the largest party in the House of Commons, they simply modified their line to "for the last 90 years, the largest party has formed the government", as if that was a distinction without a difference, as if something that hadn't happened for 90 years couldn't possibly happen ever again.  The point of the fib, of course, was to hoodwink people into thinking a vote for the SNP wasn't 'really' an anti-Tory vote - that if you were serious about dislodging a Tory government you had no choice but to vote Labour.

Voters weren't impressed, but that wasn't necessarily because they didn't believe Labour's claim - it was probably more because Yes voters were still caught up in an indyref mindset and weren't as preoccupied as usual with getting rid of the Tories.  In other circumstances, the Labour con might well have worked, because it has a 'truthy' feel to it.  Most people aren't going to bother to read up on the niceties of the constitutional convention that requires the monarch to appoint a Prime Minister who commands a majority in the Commons - which pretty much means that if Labour and the SNP have a majority between them, there cannot be a Tory government, regardless of whether or not the Tories are the largest single party.  (Unless of course Labour do a deal with the Tories themselves.)

So could a similar fib work for Labour in a closely-fought 2024 general election?  Of course not.  Thanks to the SNP-Green government's #2023ReferendumGuarantee, an independence referendum is certain to have taken place before the next Westminster election.  It is utterly inconceivable that Nicola Sturgeon will go back on her word, so the 2024 election will be pretty much an irrelevance in Scotland, and we can just totally relax about it.

Just as a bit of fun, though, let's pretend that a 2023 independence referendum isn't the nailed-on certainty that we all know it is.  What if, heaven forbid, the 2024 election turned out to actually be an active contest in Scotland?  Even then, Labour would have a credibility problem with the "largest party forms the government" wheeze that they didn't have back in 2015.  And they would have nobody to blame but themselves, because they've just given voters a high-profile precedent of a party taking power from second place that is much more recent than 1923.  

Here is the state of the parties on Edinburgh City Council after the local elections earlier this month...

SNP 19

Labour 13

Liberal Democrats 12

Greens 10

Conservatives 9

That result has - nominally at least - produced a "minority Labour administration" with Tory and Lib Dem support, in spite of the fact that Labour are in a distant second place and have just 21% of the seats on the council.  As I said on Twitter the other day, this takes the meaning of the word "minority" into a whole new dimension.  What is even more striking is that Labour are inviting us to accept this outcome as if it was totally unremarkable and routine, and are getting their journalist proxies in the mainstream media to credulously parrot the same message.  Nothing to see here, folks.  Happens every day of the week, apparently.  

Well, OK, if you want us to believe that, then fine, but never again insult our intelligence by pretending that it would be in any way difficult for Labour to form a Westminster government from second place if they had a parliamentary majority in combination with the SNP.  In fact, the only conceivable obstacle would be that, as the Edinburgh outcome yet again demonstrates, Labour are considerably keener on doing deals with the Tories to keep the SNP out of power than they are on cooperating with the SNP to keep the Tories out of power.

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Scot Goes Pop Fundraising

Over the years, Scot Goes Pop has provided extensive Scottish polling analysis and political commentary, as well as commissioning no fewer than six full-scale opinion polls, and producing numerous podcasts and videos.  If you'd like to help me continue this work, donations are welcome via any of the following methods...

Direct payments via Paypal - my Paypal email address is:   jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Scot Goes Pop General Fundraiser 

Scot Goes Pop Polling Fundraiser 

If you prefer a bank transfer, please message me for details using the contact email address which can be found in the sidebar of the blog (desktop version only), or on my Twitter profile.