"Mr Harvie rejected outright the suggestion that a pro-independence majority vote in the election should be read as a mandate to hold a legal independence referendum.
He said it would be a mandate for independence itself, not another vote.
He told the paper: 'If we are left with a de-facto referendum as the only option, that is in place of the referendum that we ought to have, that we deserve to have, that we have a right to have, it’s not about triggering another one, it’s about answering the question.'"
That's extremely heartening to hear from the co-leader of one of the two pro-independence parties that make up the Scottish Government. It should really be a statement of the obvious - an election can only be classed as a de facto independence referendum if an outright mandate for independence is being sought, rather than a mandate to hold a referendum. But nevertheless Angus Robertson, Mhairi Hunter and Toni Giugliano have all publicly taken the opposite view at some point over the last few months - and in Ms Hunter's case that caused particular concern, given that we always tend to assume she's speaking as Nicola Sturgeon's representative on Earth. Hopefully Mr Harvie's intervention may indicate that's not necessarily the case.
* * *
Yesterday, the Alba Party released the result from another of the questions they commissioned as part of the recent multi-client Panelbase poll. I'll be totally honest and say I'm somewhat confused by the wording of the press release they've put out - it's far from clear what the exact nature of the poll question was, and that being the case it's hard to make full sense of the result. However, my best guess is that respondents were asked which party they thought gives the highest priority to independence, and they were only allowed to select one option. Among Yes supporters only, the results were:
SNP 75%
Alba 14%
Greens 3%
That's in line with what you would intuitively expect. Most people know that the Greens are pro-independence, but they also know the Greens give the highest priority to the climate emergency and to cracking down on free speech on the gender identity issue. By contrast, both the SNP and Alba were specifically set up to win independence, so they were bound to come out ahead of the Greens on this particular question.
The title of the press release suggests that Alba are on course to overtake the Liberal Democrats in Holyrood list polling this year. There's nothing in the Panelbase poll that would actually support that claim (or not on the results we've seen so far anyway), although in fairness the press release doesn't directly state that the claim is based on the results of the poll - it's just presented as a belief that Alba themselves hold. To consistently overtake the Lib Dems on the list, they would probably need to get into high single digits, and in my own view that's unlikely to happen until there is a change in the way that Alba's offer is presented to voters. At the moment evidence from both polls and local by-election results strongly suggests that Alba are flatlining at a level of support at which they would be highly unlikely to win list seats. There's still three-and-a-bit years until the 2026 Holyrood election to turn things around, but as regular readers know, I think that would entail Alba adopting a relentlessly positive pitch about greater urgency on independence, distancing themselves from the ethno-nationalists who want to restrict voting rights for English people in Scotland, and also toning down the rage directed against the SNP and Nicola Sturgeon. If anything, based on what I've seen from a number of senior Alba people on social media in recent weeks, the opposite seems to be happening and the public face of Alba just seems to be becoming ever more angry and militant. For example, there was a suggestion on Twitter a couple of weeks ago that continuing to vote for the SNP after the passing of the GRR Bill was somehow the equivalent of voting for Jimmy Savile.
I remain a member of the Alba Party and during this year I'll continue to make the case for a change of direction (and certainly a change of tone) before it's too late. Remember that if Alba lose both their Westminster seats at the general election, they'll have no remaining elected representation at all, and there's a big danger they could start to look like an irrelevance or a failed experiment unless by that stage they can already point to genuine progress in the polls. So time is very much of the essence.
It's a sad state of affairs when the Greens are stronger on Scottish independence than the party (SNP) which was founded to deliver Scottish independence.
ReplyDelete" Ethno - nationalists" - that would be the people promoting a UK GE de facto referendum that excludes EU citiizens that could have lived in Scotland for 30 years or more. That would be the people who want to lose such a de facto referendum.
ReplyDeleteIf the SNP / indy parties get 50%+1, then when the Brits treat the result with contempt, the SNP has to disrupt the functioning of WM, bringing it to a halt. If the SNP doesn't cause hell then they will become a joke.
ReplyDeleteI voted for Alba in 2021. Salmond's case for a super majority won me over from my usual list vote for the Greens, who had ejected my favourite MSP Andy Wightman for reasons I couldn't understand. Election night had Alba come in far behind the Greens in (my own region) Lothian and nowhere close to a single MSP anywhere. My vote felt like a failed punt, along with a lonely 45 thousand total across all of Scotland.
ReplyDeleteThe council election since then was an abject disaster for Alba. They never stood a candidate in my ward so I couldn't vote for them. Not even Chris McEleny could hold his *multi-member council* seat. From outside Alba and the Twittersphere, that election felt like the death of the party.
I respect the activist base still with Alba. There are good people there, who will be vital in the push for independence we're constantly denied. But the party is as bust a flush as the Scottish Socialists. It's no roadworthy vehicle for independence. Not as far as the Scottish people are concerned.
Point 1. Know your d'hondt: Greens had over 100k wasted votes on the list, while SNP had over a million wasted votes. By wasted I mean votes that contributed to electing zero SNP or green msps.
DeletePoint 2. Greens and nuSNP are weak as dishwater on indy. If you want your vote to contribute to electing someone then choose labour or Tories on the list. They've got the same chance of delivering indy as an unchallenged nuSNP or green.
Point 3. Alba's mere existence is. A threat to nuSNP from the real yes side. Of course Alba needs to win seats but they'll pressure SNP with zero seats more than green 8 seats any day of the week.
Somewhere in all of this tangle sits a hidden problem that holds us back. Under Salmond and Sturgeon the SNP managed to build, then sustain, an electoral majority that, sort of, supports independence - quite an achievement.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, completely missing from this was any, widely held, view of the scale and nature of the task involved in gaining independence. How many pro-independence voters understand that to get to where we want to be we have to politically defeat the British state on this issue ?
Experience is showing that there is no purely parliamentary road to independence. The present methods of trades unionists and environmentalists, at least, are going to have to become the stock in trade of the independence movement and, as yet, no serious attempt has even been made to encourage people to see that voting, on it's own, will never be enough.
"Ethno-nationalists" Does the Claim of Right include students who may be in Scotland for a few years?
ReplyDeleteAn excellent article by the big dug on Scotland's energy. Well as far as it goes. What he can't bring himself to ask is why the SNP have allowed this to happen. Why did John REDACTOR MAN Swinney not dig his heels in during the Smith Commission and insist on the devolution of meaningful powers like energy and broadcasting. Why does Sturgeon still say the BBC is a key and valued institution when everyone knows it is a British state propagander broadcaster. Why did nothing come of the Scottish energy company that Sturgeon promised way back in 2017. Unless he addresses these type of points the big dug will always be a Sturgeon propagandist whose articles will never be complete and will be tainted by bias.
ReplyDeleteI'm not convinced the blue tories will get the drubbing they deserve; middle England is a right-wing cespit and wants an excuse to vote blue tory. While the red tories are not that different from Sunak's lot, they are but tory lite, not the 'real thing'. Starmer's lot hasn't given a motivational reason to actually vote Labour; his lead is not solid and many tory voters will return to blue tory land if Labour doesn't come across as being British nationalist first and foremost. So a small majority win for Labour, or for the tories (if they do very well).
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of which:
Deletehttps://live-nsmg-libraries.pantheonsite.io/newsletters/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/u69Qe-who-s-the-unpopular-one-.png
This kind of leadership polling pointed the right direction in 2015, which traditional polling predicted to be a Labour win. Nope: how about a Tory majority and the whole dead end we’re all on now? All because of a miserably poor choice of leader.
Starmer isn’t setting the heather on fire. Tory England prefers a proper Tory over the Lite equivalent. Doesn’t look like the cataclysmic drubbing we are assured it’s supposed to be.
Alba will lose both seats they stole from the SNP because all polling shows quite clearly that those voters who were robbed of what they voted for are more than willing to give Alba the very wide berth they deserve
ReplyDelete