A wake-up call: with a referendum or plebiscite election just around the corner, we URGENTLY need to rebuild a vibrant pro-independence New Media

It suddenly occurred to me the other day that it was almost exactly ten years ago - I say "almost" because it was November - that I was in Edinburgh doing an unusually glamorous day of work (I'll save that story for my memoirs) and I received an email out of the blue from Stuart Campbell.  He was messaging various bloggers asking if we would be interested in participating in a collaborative pro-independence website with which we could take on the overwhelmingly unionist mainstream media at the independence referendum, which by then was less than two years away.  I agreed in principle to take part, but not long afterwards Stuart decided on a completely different path - he continued solo, and crowdfunded so he could effectively 'hire himself' as a full-time journalist working on his own website.  Several of us later followed his example by individually crowdfunding to blog more or less full-time in the run-up to referendum day.  From my own point of view that was a much better outcome, because I strongly value my own editorial freedom - and I think it was also a good model for the Yes movement, because the readership numbers for Scot Goes Pop were astronomical in 2014, and I presume that was being replicated across many of the leading blogs.

As we bloggers are supposed to be egotists, I should really make more of the fact that I was probably the most-read pro-indy blogger during the 2014 indyref campaign.  That happened pretty much by accident. I had been a columnist on the International Business Times for two or three years by then, and I suddenly found that around 30% of my columns were being syndicated on Yahoo, where they were reaching enormous audiences - presumably even bigger than Wings Over Scotland.  To their tremendous credit, the editorial team at the International Business Times were keen to be part of the antidote to media bias during the campaign, rather than part of the problem, and it really did make a difference in balancing up the content featured on the Yahoo homepage.

Can we be confident that the pro-indy New Media is in a position to make as helpful a contribution in a campaign now?  That question really matters, because unless Nicola Sturgeon totally backtracks on what she's promised (and admittedly she did exactly that in 2017), we are now either only fifteen months away from a second independence referendum, or only around two years away from a general election which will be used as a de facto referendum.  And I was a bit shocked - although I shouldn't have been - by how overwhelmingly hostile the mainstream media was in the immediate aftermath of Ms Sturgeon's announcement.

Balance in places like the Yahoo homepage and Google News is of course outwith our control - we'll be relying on individual initiatives from enlightened editors, and on the prominence given to articles from our only pro-independence newspaper.  (I think I have seen articles from The National featured on Yahoo, but not for a few months.)  But the genuinely independent pro-indy New Media is something we do have to claim responsibility for, and that's where I have major concerns about whether enough is being done.  The obvious difference from 2014 is that we now have a big black hole where Wings' positive contribution used to be.  It may be that if the Supreme Court surprise us all by giving its blessing to a referendum, Stuart will return to full-time blogging of the type he produced eight years ago.  But in the more likely scenario that we move on to a plebiscite election, I have grave fears that Stuart will misuse his influence by concentrating on trying to unseat individual SNP MPs who disagree with him on the trans issue.  I was absolutely astonished that having got exactly what he wanted last year with the creation of the Alba party, he then spent the entire Holyrood election campaign blogging about the trans debate, rather than trying to create a buzz about independence and urging people to grab hold of the opportunity Alba were offering.  Even on polling day itself, his post was devoted to effectively telling his readers to vote for unionist parties in a large number of constituencies where he disapproved of the SNP candidate.  That was in direct contravention of the Alba strategy, which was to advocate an SNP constituency vote everywhere in Scotland.  If Stuart does the same thing at a plebiscite election, Wings will have to all intents and purposes morphed into a unionist website.

So I'd suggest we urgently need some blue-sky thinking about what can fill the gap left by Wings - and we should probably think even bigger than last time, because after all we didn't actually win the 2014 referendum.  My own feeling is that crowdfunded TV or radio channels are a dead end, because they suck up vast resources but end up attracting tiny audiences, if they even get off the ground at all.  It's similarly hard to gain much traction with start-up print publications.  So it's mostly websites we need to be thinking about, and as good as something like CommonSpace was under Ben Wray's editorship, that had too narrow an appeal.  What would be ideal would be a glossy, professional-looking website, with no paywall, packed with new content on a daily basis, and that is capable of bringing in a mass audience, including women, young people and the working-class.  I'd suggest to do that at least 50% of the content would have to be about entertainment, sport, lifestyle, etc, etc, acting as a gateway drug for the remaining content about politics and independence, which of course would be strategically placed to catch people's eye.  

The obvious barrier to achieving this would be a) money, and b) finding writers and other creatives willing and able to produce large amounts of quality non-political content.  But that's the sort of thing we need to start thinking about pretty soon.  And if anyone has some alternative ideas, feel free to leave a comment below.

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We've already seen since Nicola Sturgeon's announcement that the overwhelmingly unionist mainstream media are attempting a 'shock and awe' campaign to try to kill off independence - and the misuse of polling is playing a key part in that.  If you'd like to balance things out with polling commissioned by a pro-independence outlet and which asks the questions we want to see asked, one way of doing that would be to help Scot Goes Pop's fundraising drive - see details below.

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

Scot Goes Pop General Fundraiser 

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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.

The SNP leadership need to understand that independence may not be achievable without so-called "gesture politics"

As plenty of people have already pointed out, the stand taken by Alba MPs at Prime Minister's Questions this week has provoked a knee-jerk reaction from certain leading SNP figures that is hypocritical to the point of being almost comical.  What happened on Wednesday was, in fact, strikingly similar to the incident four years ago when Ian Blackford led the SNP group in a staged walkout from the Commons.  Not identical, admittedly, but both were premeditated disruption tactics, and they both produced similar reactions from the Speaker of the day - John Bercow reacted to Blackford's stunt with a dismissive "oh fine, away you go" gesture, although the impish smile on his face suggested he was keeping a slightly better sense of perspective than Lindsay "Mr Angry" Hoyle will ever be capable of.  

But it seems the key difference is that Nicola Sturgeon sanctioned the Blackford walkout.  If the First Minister does not sanction a stunt, it's infantile gesture politics, but if she does sanction it, it instantly becomes a mature and principled stand.  The "Nicola-washing" effect is truly miraculous.  (See also Pete Wishart and Mhairi Hunter repeatedly insisting a plebiscite election would be an act of reckless and irresponsible folly until Nicola Sturgeon announced she supported a plebiscite election, at which point they suddenly decided it was a strategic masterstroke.)

Leaving aside the blatant hypocrisy, though, what concerns me is that the SNP may be boxing themselves into a corner where they insist that "gesture politics" is something that Alba do and that the SNP don't do.  The reality is that if the plebiscite election tactic is going to work, it'll probably have to be backed up with something which could characterised as gesture politics.  Suppose the SNP and other Yes parties win more than 50% of the vote at a plebiscite election, but the UK government refuse to acknowledge or accept the mandate for Scotland to become an independent country.  They refuse even to negotiate on a possible compromise (most obviously a referendum to confirm or overturn the mandate).  What do the SNP do then? As far as participation at Westminster is concerned, there are three basic options -

1) The SNP could take a leaf out of Sinn Féin's book by withdrawing from the House of Commons and following an abstentionist policy until such time as the UK Government agree to negotiate.  Although the unionist media would undoubtedly try to dismiss this as a petulant act of irresponsibility, the chances are that it would actually be highly effective, because it would create an unprecedented crisis of legitimacy for London rule in Scotland.  The UK is not yet the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, and it would be seen as a major problem if Scotland was essentially going unrepresented in the UK Parliament for a prolonged period.  Now, let's be under no illusions - London might well try to find a 'unionist solution' to such a crisis, perhaps by contriving a way of legally unseating the SNP's MPs, but the point is that it would have to be resolved somehow.  The situation wouldn't be regarded as sustainable in the long term.

2) The SNP could take their cue from Alba by staying at Westminster but engaging in a campaign of sustained parliamentary disruption until the UK Government agree to negotiate.  There's quite a lot of havoc that a party with 50 or so MPs would be capable of wreaking.  One obvious vulnerability of the Westminster system is the antiquated voting procedure, which takes up so much time that it effectively relies upon the goodwill of MPs in allowing non-contentious matters through on the nod.  The SNP could clog up the schedule by forcing even the most trivial issues to a formal vote.  Or SNP MPs could cause endless delays by raising repeated points of order.  Again, this situation would not be regarded as sustainable - either there would have to be rule changes to thwart the SNP's tactics (and this would probably be resisted by Tory MPs who regard themselves as custodians of parliament's ancient rights and privileges), or there would have to be a negotiated settlement with the SNP to end the disruption.

3) The SNP could carry on with business as usual in the Commons, in which case they would be tacitly accepting that their mandate for independence is worthless and something that will become nothing more than a historical curiosity, very much like the 1979 mandate for devolution which was completely ignored and disregarded for the next two decades.

Now, I am categorically NOT raising this point to give people an excuse to say "a plebiscite election is a waste of time, it's just another way of kicking the can down the road".  A plebiscite election is, in fact, our best opportunity of winning independence (assuming the Supreme Court strikes down a referendum), and it's absolutely vital that we pull out all the stops to secure a clear mandate.  But we do also need to think about what would happen afterwards.  Rank-and-file SNP members need to think about how they would pressure their parliamentarians to back up any mandate with credible action.  We in Alba need to think about how we would apply external pressure with the same aim in mind.  And individual SNP parliamentarians need to think about what they could do to press home the mandate in parliament if the party fails to act collectively.

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We've already seen since Nicola Sturgeon's announcement that the overwhelmingly unionist mainstream media are attempting a 'shock and awe' campaign to try to kill off independence - and the misuse of polling is playing a key part in that.  If you'd like to balance things out with polling commissioned by a pro-independence outlet and which asks the questions we want to see asked, one way of doing that would be to help Scot Goes Pop's fundraising drive - see details below.

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.

Lindsay Hoyle's Angry Man Syndrome reveals a broken UK "democracy" that simply cannot bear to have a mirror held up to it

Today's incident in the House of Commons, which saw a ranting, purple-faced Lindsay Hoyle demean his high office by screaming for the Alba Party's two MPs to be physically ejected from the chamber, has a number of past precedents.  What it reminds me of most is an episode just after the 1992 general election, in which 74% of the Scottish population voted for parties promising to establish a Scottish Parliament, but were then told they couldn't have the self-government they had voted for, because English voters had decided otherwise by electing a majority Tory government opposed to devolution.  The Scottish Labour leadership naturally just accepted this outrageous situation and told us we would have to knuckle down and wait for (at least) another five long years.  But a couple of Labour MPs, namely John McAllion and George Galloway, broke ranks and decided to engage in parliamentary disruption tactics to try to bring matters to a head a lot sooner than 1997.  The newly elected Speaker of the House of Commons, Betty Boothroyd, handled the situation deftly when Mr McAllion made his first intervention - in a highly sympathetic tone of voice, she stressed that the matter he was raising was extremely important and urged him to pursue it by other means.

Now, that's the reaction of a confident democrat who is comfortable in her own skin.  Someone who has faith that the system she was elected to represent is capable - just about - of accommodating legitimate dissent and finding civilised resolutions that can command popular acceptance.  Lindsay Hoyle, by contrast, clearly has no such faith or confidence.  His anger is the same anger that tried to shut down the just cause of the suffragettes or of the Northern Ireland civil rights movement, who had turned to civil disobedience when all other democratic avenues had been exhausted.  Because, after all, when Scottish MPs try to advance their nation's cause by means of parliamentary disruption, there is literally nothing Hoyle can suggest they do instead.  He can't tell them to argue their case in a referendum, because he represents a system that has forbidden referendums.  He can't tell them to argue their case in an election, because he represents a system that has decreed any majority vote for independence in an election will simply be disregarded ("elections are not for that", we are told).  Scottish self-government is against the rules, and voting for Scottish self-government is against the rules.  All that is left for Hoyle is to be the enthusiastic enforcer as the increasingly despotic system he represents tries to stamp the democratic voice of Scotland out of existence completely.  We have to be silenced to prevent Westminster being constantly reminded of what it's become - that's the root of Hoyle's anger.  His message to our country's elected representatives is simple and it is stark: "Either shut up or GET OUT of this chamber - if necessary, by force".  

The 1992 comparison is interesting for another reason too.  The two Alba MPs are the modern equivalent of John McAllion - dissenters who actually want to take some action, rather than legitimise the Westminster veto of Scottish democracy by carrying on with business as usual.  Which of course leaves the SNP as the modern equivalent of the do nothing Scottish Labour mainstream back in 1992.  That probably explains why there's been a flood of new members joining Alba since Hoyle's meltdown this afternoon.  If you'd like to see Alba continue to hold up a mirror to the British political establishment, if only to make Hoyle aware of just how purple his face is getting, here's the link to join the party.

Quite honestly, I can no longer see any real argument against the most committed independence supporters joining Alba.  Until a couple of weeks ago, there was maybe a case to be made for staying in the SNP just in case there was a leadership election in which someone like Joanna Cherry needed votes. But now that we seem to be heading for either a referendum or plebiscite election with Nicola Sturgeon still as SNP leader, the important thing is to keep the SNP leadership honest and to keep harrying and shaming Westminster wherever possible.  As we've seen today, the best way of doing that is as part of Alba.

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The odd thing about the Tory leadership contest is that it seemed complicated and impenetrable a few days ago, but now all of a sudden it seems extremely simple.  I think Penny Mordaunt is the next Prime Minister.  There is convincing polling evidence (including a new and properly-conducted poll of Tory members from YouGov) that she is likely to beat Rishi Sunak in a run-off - and judging from today's first ballot of MPs, that is where we seem to be heading.  The only way in which Mordaunt might still be stopped is with some very sophisticated tactical voting from Sunak-supporting MPs to try to stop her reaching the final two.

*  *  *

We've already seen since Nicola Sturgeon's announcement that the overwhelmingly unionist mainstream media are attempting a 'shock and awe' campaign to try to kill off independence - and the misuse of polling is playing a key part in that.  If you'd like to balance things out with polling commissioned by a pro-independence outlet and which asks the questions we want to see asked, one way of doing that would be to help Scot Goes Pop's fundraising drive - see details below.

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.

Suddenly it looks much less likely that Rishi Sunak is the next Prime Minister

I'm completely stunned by the outcome of the latest ConHome survey on Tory members' leadership preferences - which has to be taken seriously, because Tory members will ultimately select the new leader from a shortlist of two handed to them by MPs.  It doesn't matter how decisively Rishi Sunak tops the MPs' ballots - if the second placed candidate is more popular with the members, Sunak will quite simply not become Prime Minister, and it now looks like that scenario may very well play out.

From the start I've been baffled by Penny Mordaunt's status as either favourite or one of the favourites, but the survey suggests her chances have not been remotely over-hyped.  Even more remarkably, in a close second place is the obscure Kemi Badenoch, while Sunak trails in a fairly distant third.

ConservativeHome leadership survey of Conservative members:

Penny Mordaunt 20%

Kemi Badenoch 19%

Rishi Sunak 12%

Suella Braverman 11%

Liz Truss 11%

Tom Tugendhat 7%

Jeremy Hunt 4%

Nadhim Sahawi 4%

Sajid Javid 3%

Grant Shapps 2%

Priti Patel 2%

I'm half-tempted to blame myself for being surprised, because I haven't exactly been keeping a close eye on the ongoing Tory beauty contest in recent years.  As I said on Twitter the other day, I even had to look up Mordaunt on YouTube to remind myself of what her voice sounds like.  But the reality is that none of this makes much sense, no matter how closely you've been paying attention.  Neither Mordaunt not Badenoch are Cabinet ministers - Mordaunt is a Minister of State, which is the rung below Cabinet level, and Badenoch has just become a former Minister of State.  It's unprecedented in modern times for anyone to jump straight from being a Minister of State to being Prime Minister - although that may be slightly misleading in the case of Mordaunt, who was a Cabinet member in the past.  (Boris Johnson technically went straight from the backbenches to Number 10, because he had resigned as Foreign Secretary a year earlier, so that's perhaps comparable to Mordaunt's situation.)

ConHome's write-up implies that Sunak can now expect to lose if he faces Mordaunt or Badenoch in the run-off.  I think that's right if it's Mordaunt, because there's nothing that can be expected to shift members' views radically, but if it's Badenoch, I can't help wondering if the members will get cold feet about electing someone who is far less experienced than Sunak (even though she's the same age as him).

The survey is also useful for separating out the credible candidates from the also-rans.  It looks as if Hunt, Javid, Shapps, Patel and Sahawi might as well forget the whole thing, while incredibly the awful Truss and Braverman both have a realistic chance.  Tugendhat is, at best, on the fringes of contention.

*  *  *

We've already seen since Nicola Sturgeon's announcement that the overwhelmingly unionist mainstream media are attempting a 'shock and awe' campaign to try to kill off independence - and the misuse of polling is playing a key part in that.  If you'd like to balance things out with polling commissioned by a pro-independence outlet and which asks the questions we want to see asked, one way of doing that would be to help Scot Goes Pop's fundraising drive - see details below.

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.

"Choose Your Own British Constitution", starring Alister Jack

During the crisis that led to Boris Johnson's resignation, the BBC used startlingly colonial language to note that Alister Jack was the only one of the "territorial" Secretaries of State who hadn't resigned.  It seems that from the point of view of the state broadcaster, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are not nations, but mere "territories" on a par with the Yukon Territory or Nunavut.  It also seems that Alister Jack is so comprehensively Boris Johnson's man in Scotland that nothing could ever have persuaded him to distance himself from his master.  It would therefore be logical to think that Johnson's successor might not want someone so closely associated with a discredited former Prime Minister, and that the "Jack era" (chortle) might be drawing to a close.  Which chillingly means that Andrew Bowie could soon be Secretary of State for Scotland.

If so, one of the last hurrahs for Jack will be perhaps the most mind-bogglingly incoherent and contradictory set of ramblings on constitutional matters that it has ever been our misfortune to hear.  According to the Evening Standard, Jack said a few days ago that UK general elections are "not for the purpose" of determining whether Scotland should become an independent country or have a referendum on independence.  Why not?  Because the constitution is a reserved matter.

Er, Alister, I don't know how to break the news to you, mate, but "reserved matter" means a power that is not devolved and is instead retained by Westminster - in other words the parliament that is elected by UK general elections.  If Westminster elections are "not for the purpose" of determining Westminster matters....well, I'm not quite sure I have the vocabulary to finish this sentence, other than to say that Jack has plainly gone crackers.  And in case you think he mis-spoke, he actually developed the point at quite some length, proclaiming that the SNP are not allowed to put policy on Westminster matters in their Westminster manifesto.  This is the exact quote: 

"Nicola Sturgeon can no more put in her manifesto that she’s going to remove Trident from the Clyde which is entirely reserved – which she’s done in the past but she’s never removed Trident from the Clyde – than she can put in her manifesto she’s going to break up the United Kingdom. That isn’t how general elections work."

I'm trying to work out how on earth Jack would explain or rationalise that statement in the unlikely event that a semi-competent journalist ever challenged him on it.  The implication seems to be that Westminster elections are not the correct democratic arena to pursue reserved Westminster matters, which begs the obvious question: what would be the correct democratic arena?  If the SNP aren't allowed to put policy on reserved matters in their manifesto for elections to the House of Commons, should they instead be putting it in their manifesto for Scottish Parliament elections? Or in their manifesto for local council elections?  Or in their manifesto for elections to the House of Lords?  Or in their manifesto for elections to the Supreme Court? Or perhaps the UK isn't a democracy and nobody - especially not a Jock voter - is allowed to vote on reserved matters in any election ever?

Logically, it's got to be one of the above, surely?

By the way, if you expect to find consistency in the constitutional pronouncements of Secretaries of State for Scotland down the ages, you'll search in vain.  Two decades ago, the first post-devolution Secretary of State Dr John Reid said the polar opposite of what Jack has just said.  Reid declared that the SNP couldn't use Scottish Parliament elections to pursue independence or an indyref, because "if you understand the constitution" (those are the words he used), you would know that the way to achieve independence is to put it in your Westminster manifesto and achieve a majority in Scotland at a Westminster general election.  Why?  Because the constitution is a reserved matter.  (Ahem.)

Not only does Reid's version of the constitution contradict Jack's, it also contradicts the current stance of his own Labour party, so if anyone has an extensive video collection of political interviews from the early days of devolution, that might be a rather useful clip to dig out.

When I was at primary school, there were some books lying around from the American "Choose Your Own Adventure" series in which the reader is the protagonist and shapes the story by making active decisions at the end of each entry.  ("If you want to enter the sinister-looking cave, go to page 43.  If you would rather have schnapps, go to page 238.")   The unwritten British constitution seems to provide similar exciting opportunities for Scottish Secretaries.  Reid, of course, held his position in an era when it was unthinkable that the SNP would ever take a majority of Scottish seats in a Westminster election, but when it was thought just about plausible they could win a Scottish Parliament election.  So he thought it was a spiffing wheeze to decide that "the constitution says" that the SNP need to win a Westminster election before Scotland can become independent.  But now that there is plainly no type of election that the SNP are incapable of winning, Reid's successor has been forced to magically conclude that "the constitution says" there is no democratic route to independence at all.

I must say that the malleability, adaptability and flexibility of the British constitution is truly inspiring to behold.  

*  *  *

We've already seen since Nicola Sturgeon's announcement that the overwhelmingly unionist mainstream media are attempting a 'shock and awe' campaign to try to kill off independence - and the misuse of polling is playing a key part in that.  If you'd like to balance things out with polling commissioned by a pro-independence outlet and which asks the questions we want to see asked, one way of doing that would be to help Scot Goes Pop's fundraising drive - see details below.

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.