Scottish Sovereignty Research Group conference in Dunfermline, 29th-31st July

So first of all, an apology to the Scottish Sovereignty Research Group - we had discussed the possibility of me running a guest post about their forthcoming conference in Dunfermline, but when they sent me their proposed post, it went to my spam folder and I was totally oblivious to it until last night.  The post I was sent has since appeared on Iain Lawson's blog, so you can read it HERE.

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This is an absolute disaster. Just goes to show you can never be too paranoid about the 'Team GB' obsession chipping away at existing Scottish representation in non-Olympic events. They really are out to get us.https://t.co/SJDI2L1AJl

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) July 20, 2022

The decision to more or less abolish the Scotland rugby sevens team and instead only allow Scottish players to compete for Great Britain at the World Sevens Series is a real moment of truth for sport in this country.  It gives the lie to the notion that Scottish and British representation in sport can happily co-exist, and that one will never encroach upon the other.  The reality is that independence is needed not just to gain representation for Scotland in events like the Olympics for the first time, but also to safeguard existing Scottish representation in other events.  It's certainly the only way we'll get our rugby sevens team back now.  It's a rather bitter irony that rugby sevens is a sport (or 'sub-sport') that was actually invented in Scotland, and Scotland's two back-to-back victories at the London Sevens event a few years ago were among this country's finest achievements in team sports events.  We'll no longer even have a chance to replicate those triumphs - until we secure our place as an independent country.  

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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

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We stand on the brink of a glorious new Elizabethan age as Scots come together in unison to say...IN LIZ WE TRUSS

Liz Truss is now clear favourite on the betting exchanges to be the next Prime Minister. This is dreamland stuff - we couldn't have asked for better.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) July 19, 2022

Result of today's ballot:

Rishi Sunak 118

Penny Mordaunt 92

Liz Truss 86

Kemi Badenoch 59

There have been a number of unexpected twists in this race - including today, with it being very hard to understand how the redispersal of Tom Tugendhat's votes led to the gap between Penny Mordaunt and Liz Truss somehow narrowing further.  So perhaps I shouldn't say anything with too much certainty, but it's now very hard to see how Mordaunt isn't going to be overtaken by Truss tomorrow, thus eliminating her from the contest.  It's probably true that Badenoch's support was a more complex coalition than it's generally been portrayed as, so her votes won't go uniformly to Truss, but they don't have to - Truss just needs the lion's share, and she'll probably get that. 

In theory, Sunak could save Mordaunt's bacon by 'lending' her some votes if he calculates that she's now a more beatable candidate in the run-off than Truss.  We've seen shenanigans of that sort in past Tory leadership contests (most notably in 2001 to squeeze out Michael Portillo), but it's a dangerous game to play.

If, as is now generally expected, the run-off is Sunak v Truss, the polling currently suggests Truss will win with a bit to spare.  It's tempting to assume Tory members would come to their senses over the course of the campaign and realise that Sunak is the more voter-friendly candidate, but they didn't come to their senses about Iain Duncan Smith in similar circumstances two decades ago.  A Truss premiership would be the ideal outcome for the Scottish independence movement - I don't think we could ever have dreamed that the Tories would follow up Boris Johnson with someone equally as perfect.

*  *  *

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.

Tory right-wingers have reached their decision day

We're not going to find out the identity of the next Prime Minister today, but we have finally reached a genuine crunch-point in the race, because the Tory right will have to decide once and for all who their standard bearer is going into tomorrow's final ballot of MPs.  There's no realistic way that both Kemi Badenoch and Liz Truss can make it through - it has to be one or the other, and judging from yesterday's result, right-wing MPs just can't make up their minds.

Result of yesterday's ballot:

Rishi Sunak 115

Penny Mordaunt 82

Liz Truss 71

Kemi Badenoch 58

Tom Tugendhat 31

Given that Badenoch is not that far behind Truss and is clearly the more telegenic of the two, you'd think this might be the moment at which MPs take a step back and and realise they still have a golden opportunity to switch to a better path.  But Badenoch has two problems.  The candidate who has just been eliminated is Tom Tugendhat, and it's assumed that almost all his votes will go to either Penny Mordaunt or Rishi Sunak.  So Badenoch will almost certainly need a good number of direct switchers from Truss to overtake her rival - but Truss herself has some momentum behind her from yesterday, which will make it psychologically harder for her supporters to desert her.  

So I would still expect tomorrow's ballot to be contested between Sunak, Mordaunt and Truss.  The narrowed gap between Mordaunt and Truss could dramatically widen again today due to the redistribution of Tugendhat's votes, although it's hilarious that Boris Johnson has managed to reduce Mordaunt's support by one vote by removing the whip from one of her backers!  Nevertheless, the combined Mordaunt/Tugendhat vote yesterday was smaller (113) than the combined Truss/Badenoch vote (131), so it's still perfectly possible that Mordaunt will be squeezed out tomorrow.

*  *  *

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.

A Supreme Skirmish

I'm slightly concerned to see it being claimed that the Scottish Government have won a "major victory" in their legal tussle with London over an independence referendum.  First of all, it's not a major victory, it's just the outcome of a preliminary skirmish. But more to the point is that legal rulings should never be how we define victory or defeat.  If we celebrate and bestow importance upon the Supreme Court rejecting London's call for the Lord Advocate's referral to not even be considered, we would logically have to bestow even greater importance on London eventually winning the substantive case, which remains likely.  That's not what should matter to us.  We're looking to win a mandate for independence from the Scottish people, not from a handful of conservative judges hundreds of miles away.

That said, the Supreme Court's decision is a relief.  If it had gone the other way, the impression would have been that Nicola Sturgeon's strategy had already failed, because she clearly wanted the theatrics of a televised court defeat to justify moving on to a plebiscite election.  With the Supreme Court refusing to even adjudicate on whether a referendum is legal, she would have been left with an embarrassing choice between just two options - either a) hurriedly replace the Lord Advocate with someone willing to certify the Referendum Bill as legal, or b) declare that the Supreme Court refusing to make a decision is identical to them striking down a referendum, and proceed with a plebiscite election anyway.  I presume she would have plumped for the latter, but her reasoning would have rung a bit hollow.

I'm more than happy to criticise Ms Sturgeon when it's justified, but I do think it's a tad unfair to criticise her for throwing away the chance of a consultative referendum by allowing the Supreme Court to set a precedent by ruling that such a referendum can only be held with Westminster's permission.  The reality is that there's no way of attempting to hold a referendum without risking the Supreme Court striking it down and setting a nasty precedent.  This moment was always going to have to arrive - it couldn't be averted, unless we had jumped straight to a plebiscite election.  Admittedly, it would have been preferable for the Scottish Government to pass referendum legislation and then wait for it be challenged, rather than effectively challenge their own law.  But the outcome would almost certainly have been identical - remember that the Supreme Court had no qualms about striking down legislation that had already been passed unanimously by the Scottish Parliament.

In any case, I'm not sure we should be scared of a legal precedent that essentially renders any future independence referendum impossible, because that would put an end once and for all to "once in a generation".  We would then revert to the pre-1999 position of seeking an outright mandate for independence via a scheduled election - and there's never longer than five years to wait for the next scheduled election.

*  *  *

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.

In Liz we Truss-t: new leadership poll confirms Tory members are from another planet

Penny Mordaunt performed poorly in the Tory leadership debate on Channel Four two nights ago, so it's no surprise to see her support dip in the new ConservativeHome survey.  But what makes no sense whatsoever is that one of the two main beneficiaries of Mordaunt's flop is Liz Truss, who by general consensus performed even worse than Mordaunt in the debate and indeed was probably the most dire of the five candidates.  When the membership of a party are seeing and hearing things so differently from everyone else, it suggests they may not be ideally placed to select a general election winner, and I'm sure most of us will agree that a Truss premiership would be like Christmas for the Scottish independence movement.

In fairness, Truss is not quite the biggest gainer in the survey - Kemi Badenoch has stormed to the top of the rankings.  That's a bit peculiar too, though.  She didn't embarrass herself in the debate, but she didn't come across as someone who was ready to be Prime Minister either.  And her surge may not actually matter all that much, because Tory members will only get a chance to choose her if she's one of the two candidates put forward by MPs, and for that to happen she'd have to overtake both Mordaunt and Truss over the next couple of days.  The big gains for Truss in the survey mean there will be no great incentive for the backers Truss already has to switch to Badenoch.

ConservativeHome leadership survey of Conservative members:

Kemi Badenoch 31% (+12)
Liz Truss 20% (+9)

Penny Mordaunt 18% (-2)

Rishi Sunak 17% (+5)

Tom Tugendhat 10% (+3)

I said the other day "I think Penny Mordaunt is the next Prime Minister".  Obviously I now have to row back from that level of certainty, but nevertheless I think it can be credibly argued that Mordaunt should still be considered just about the favourite, because there's a high probability of a Sunak v Mordaunt run-off, and the members clearly aren't at all keen on Sunak.  But, yes, it has to be said that there's now a non-trivial chance that Liz Truss will be Prime Minister within a few weeks, and that's tremendously exciting for all of us.

*  *  *

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.