A pro-independence blog by James Kelly - voted one of Scotland's top 10 political websites.
Friday, April 26, 2024
Are we moving into the final days of Yousaf's leadership?
Thursday, April 25, 2024
Even on a non-binding vote, Yousaf's job would be on the line
OK, this is my fourth post of the day, but I'm having to do this just to keep up with the pace of events. Two things have changed since my last post - to my surprise, it turns out the Greens will vote in favour of the motion of no confidence, leaving Alba and Ash Regan holding the balance, and the vote will be a non-binding vote of no-confidence in Yousaf as First Minister rather than a binding vote of no-confidence in the government. Some people are interpreting the latter point as meaning that the whole process is a sham, and an indication that the Tories don't really want to bring the SNP government down, because an early election would cost the Tories themselves a lot of seats.
I don't think it's as simple as that. A non-binding motion is easier to vote for (which may be why the Greens signed up so quickly) but it's still very hard for Yousaf to ignore if it goes against him. In that event, there would be three possible outcomes -
1) Yousaf respects the vote and resigns as First Minister, but does not resign as SNP leader. This would almost certainly result in an early election, because the SNP would presumably not be willing to nominate an alternative First Minister, and no unionist government would be arithmetically viable.
2) Yousaf respects the vote and resigns as both First Minister and SNP leader. This would be a highly desirable outcome from the point of view of the independence movement, because it would allow a more popular and credible SNP leader to become First Minister without an early election being held. If we could be sure this is what would happen, it would make sense for Ash Regan to vote for the motion of no confidence.
3) Yousaf refuses to respect the vote and tries to stay in office. The opposition parties wouldn't be able to leave it at that, because he would be defying the will of parliament. A binding vote of no-confidence in the government would surely follow swiftly - even if the Tories ran away from it for self-preservation reasons, Labour and the Lib Dems would step into the breach and the Tories would look ridiculous if they abstained. The Greens might turn the screw by saying they'll have no choice but to vote for the motion unless Yousaf stands aside to allow fresh leadership to take over - at which point he probably would.
So whichever way you look at it, the outcome of the vote next week (assuming it's held) does matter enormously.
Now that Alba have gained the balance of power, they'd probably be unwise to throw that enviable position away the very next week by forcing an immediate election
Humza Yousaf has just handed Ash Regan the balance of power in the Scottish Parliament - at least some of the time
The Bute House Agreement was not signed until August 2021, which meant that for three months after the May 2021 election, the SNP continued with what was billed as a "minority government". That was technically inaccurate language, because excluding the non-voting Presiding Officer, there were 64 SNP MSPs and 64 MSPs from all other parties combined. It was therefore impossible to bring down the government as long as all of the SNP MSPs turned up. A tied vote on a motion of no-confidence would simply have led to the Presiding Officer using her casting vote to defeat the motion, in line with convention.
However by breaking off the Bute House Agreement today, Yousaf is not reverting to that status quo ante, and the reason is Ash Regan's defection last autumn from the SNP to Alba. There are now five opposition parties in the Scottish Parliament, and they outnumber the SNP by 65 seats to 63. So in theory the government can be brought down, but in practice I struggle to imagine the Greens risking the wrath of the independence movement by "doing a 1979" by bringing about an election at such an unfavourable moment.
However, the Greens now seem to hate Yousaf's guts far more than Alba do, which would have seemed an impossible state of affairs only yesterday. It seems almost inevitable, then, that they will find specific issues on which to vote with the unionist parties on, and the only way in which Yousaf will avoid defeat is with Ash Regan's vote. (Remember the convention on how the Presiding Officer breaks a tie will not always work in the government's favour - it's about backing whatever is the status quo, not about automatically backing the government line.)
This is, then, kind of the arithmetical scenario Alba were looking for when they stood on the list in 2021, and it should give them some limited leverage with the government, albeit any informal deals will have to be done on the quiet given the antipathy between the SNP and Alba. And if by any chance the Greens are crazy enough and angry enough to try to force an early election, it will be entirely up to Ash Regan and Alba to decide whether that happens. Right now might not be the ideal moment for the early plebiscite election we all want, but that doesn't necessarily mean the ideal moment won't arrive before 2026.
Current state of the parties:
Why has the coalition been ditched, and what now?
Tuesday, April 23, 2024
No, Sarwar does not lead Yousaf on "best First Minister" polling - that was last month
Sunday, April 21, 2024
The case against a small political party treating its own members as the enemy
Saturday, April 20, 2024
On the whole, it would be a relief if the Greens withdraw from the coalition
Friday, April 19, 2024
The Murrell development is no cause for celebration - but there may be a silver lining
Scotland's "pro-independence" politics blogs the day after the former CEO of the SNP is charged with robbing the party of a £600,000 indyref campaign fund:
— Wings Over Scotland (@WingsScotland) April 19, 2024
1x "Westminster bad!"
2x "Please give us money!"
1x "Bradford gangs and Thames Water!" 😳🤷♂️ pic.twitter.com/LnS92YM8IV
I know from long experience that his fan club will defend Mr Campbell almost regardless of circumstance, but I trust they won't on this occasion, because leaving aside the unprovoked nature of the attack, it's also mind-bogglingly hypocritical, nonsensical and illogical. Let's start with the hypocritical: "please give us money!" Seriously, Stu? Would this be the same man who has solicited many hundreds of thousands of pounds from his readers, possibly even more than a million pounds over a ten year period, and including a five-figure sum only a few weeks ago? I certainly don't criticise him for that, because I know as well anyone that regular, lengthy writing requires funding to be sustainable, but would it be too much to request a touch of consistency from him here? Or is it fine when he does it, and somehow reprehensible when it's anybody else? (And would it be unkind of me to point out that a large proportion of what he's raised disappeared into the bottomless pit of his counterproductive vanity legal action against Kezia Dugdale? He also threatened legal action against me a few years ago - if he had proceeded with that stunt, would crowdfunded money have paid for it?)
Also hypocritical: the inverted commas around the words "pro-independence" when referring to Bella Caledonia, Wee Ginger Dug and Scot Goes Pop. I've had my disputes with Mike Small and Paul Kavanagh, but I don't think I would ever doubt their belief in independence, especially not Paul's. Whereas Mr Campbell has openly declared that he will vote Tory at the general election and would abstain in any independence referendum held in the foreseeable future. I know which blog warrants the inverted commas.
The nonsensical part is criticising me for a blogpost I wrote and published several hours before the news about Peter Murrell broke. Was I supposed to have premonitory knowledge of what was about to happen?
And the illogical part is lumping me in with Bella, John Robertson and WGD as if I'm some sort of SNP leadership loyalist blogger who is trying to hush up the news. As previously stated, when I heard about Murrell, I was at the AGM of the Alba North Lanarkshire LACU, where I was elected the LACU's Organiser. Is Mr Campbell similarly active in a non-SNP, pro-indy party? No I don't suppose he is.
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Thursday, April 18, 2024
Scot Goes Pop 2024 Fundraiser update: it's getting close to the last chance saloon, but there's still time to help keep the site going through general election year
Wednesday, April 17, 2024
Keir Starmer reels in HORROR as Labour loses its outright lead in Scotland, according to shock new Norstat poll
Apologies to anyone who thought from the title of this post that it's a completely new poll - it was in fact published on Monday, so you may have already seen it. I was up to my neck that day due to an Alba committee meeting and a few other things, but I thought I'd better bring the numbers to you belatedly.
Tuesday, April 16, 2024
More on Craig Murray and dual party loyalties
Monday, April 15, 2024
A prescription for the Alba Party
I'm sure you'll all understand why I have to be cagey about my exact reasons for feeling moved to write this short blogpost, but I am becoming increasingly concerned - bordering on distressed - about the direction of travel of the Alba Party. Being "no worse than the SNP" just isn't going to cut it. In fact it would render the party pointless, because people don't defect from a large party to a small one unless they can be assured of a marked improvement. Alba does have very different policies from the SNP, but the SNP's woke, indy-lite authoritarianism is not necessarily any worse than a more radical indy authoritarianism.
This would be my prescription -
* Alba must be, as promised at its outset, member-led. The reality should match the words.
* Alba must be, as promised at its outset, the "best of Yes". It should not be a curated niche fraction of Yes.
* Alba should be a party in which members are free to speak their minds on social media.
* Alba should be a party in which members are free to blog, to write articles, and to speak to the media.
* Alba should not be a secret society in which the only freedom of speech permitted is behind closed doors.
* Alba should be a party in which members are free to criticise the leadership or even poke gentle fun at it.
And there endeth the lesson.
Sunday, April 14, 2024
Poll of Polls: Support for independence stands at 49.6% so far this year
Friday, April 12, 2024
A red letter day as Neil MacKay may not be completely wrong about absolutely everything
Wednesday, April 10, 2024
Bombshell Redfield & Wilton poll shows a clear majority for independence, but the SNP slip to second place in YouGov poll, posing the question for SNP members: is factional Humza rule REALLY worth losing the general election for?
Friday, April 5, 2024
Two queries
Someone claimed on the previous thread that there was a new poll out today showing the SNP on 49 seats. That seemed highly unlikely, and having checked I couldn't see anything. I then made five or six attempts to respond to the comment by asking if people were just inventing numbers at this point in the hope that no-one would bother checking. But I couldn't get my comment published. I don't know if the bug is at my end or if it's affecting everyone. I was going to ask people to let me know if they were having the same problem, but of course if they are, it would be difficult to tell me! You could always email me. And if anyone has seen this mysterious poll, please let me know about that too.
Wednesday, April 3, 2024
YouGov MRP poll shows SNP on course to lose almost thirty seats, piling pressure on Yousaf to go, or to end factional rule, or to change strategy on independence
Tuesday, April 2, 2024
Fresh despair for Labour as Anas Sarwar finishes third behind Humza Yousaf *and Douglas Ross* in a "who would be the best First Minister" poll
It's more than a touch ironic that the closest thing Humza Yousaf has had to a good personal showing in an opinion poll has just arrived courtesy of a poll commissioned by the Alba Party. The reason that Alba have decided to release the numbers is presumably that they're also reasonably good for Alex Salmond.
Monday, April 1, 2024
Let's get the awkwardness out of the way - I have a new title
Not everything in life makes sense, and one example is that Scottish political bloggers seem to be judged by their clerical titles, or lack thereof. Stuart Campbell has styled himself a "Reverend" since entering the fray a decade ago, and although he's always insisted that's a genuine title, he's nevertheless been coy about how he acquired it. A Google search suggests the answer may be the "Universal Life Church", which bills itself as "the world's leading online church" (whatever that means), and which allows anyone to be ordained as a priest within minutes simply by filling in a form. No fee is even required.
The suggestion that Campbell's title comes from this rather dubious source was made several years ago by a well-known Brit Nat troublemaker. But I can't find anything that contradicts it, and it has the ring of truth to it, because it's hard to think of any other religious denomination that wouldn't have cast Campbell out of the priesthood long before now due to his repeated foul-mouthed tirades. The Universal Life Church has no standing whatever in the UK, but it does have limited recognition in the US, and there are a few US states that for some reason even recognise marriages conducted by its "Reverends". So if you want to live in wedded bliss but only in Texas or South Carolina, Stu is your man.
Naturally I couldn't allow myself to be outdone by this, so I had a look to see if the Universal Life Church also offer titles that outrank a Reverend, such as Bishop, Cardinal or Pope. I couldn't see any sign that they do, so I looked elsewhere. There actually are plenty of "online churches" out there that offer an array of ranks, but most of them have no legal standing anywhere in the world. What I was looking for was a church that allows its clergy to officiate at legally recognised weddings, even if only within a very limited jurisdiction.
As is often the case in situations like this, the answer was to be found in the South Pacific. There is a small church, consisting of little more than a webpage, called the Pirate Mercator Communion. It nominally worships the sea, and it seems to have a cosy financial arrangement with the government of the Cook Islands. Anyone it ordains can indeed conduct weddings, but only in the Cook Islands. Crucially it also allows anyone to become a Bishop for a nominal fee of 17 New Zealand dollars.
Reader, the deed is already done. On Wednesday, I was ordained as a priest (by email) and on Thursday I was consecrated as a Bishop (by Zoom call, but it only took three minutes). The fantastic thing is that I was able to select my own Bishopric, and although most of Scotland had already been nabbed, I was able to put together a distinctly squiggly looking and non-contiguous Bishopric consisting of Speyside, Tranent, Yetts o' Muckhart, Milngavie and approximately five-eighths of Benbecula.
I am advised that the correct form of address for a Bishop is "Your Excellency" or "Your Grace". Suck it up, Stu.
Sunday, March 31, 2024
Astounding Survation mega-poll suggests the SNP will win more than two-thirds of Scottish seats - and retain outright third place in the House of Commons
Happy Hate Crime Eve, everyone. (And it's Easter too, apparently.) I'll just very quickly give you the MRP seats projection from Survation's new mega-poll for the Sunday Times -
Saturday, March 30, 2024
The Hate Crime Act: my verdict
A few people have been asking (perhaps with a touch of mischief in mind) for my views on the Hate Crime Act, which is less than thirty hours from entering into force. Not for the first time, I find myself somewhere in between the two extremes. I certainly rolled my eyes to the heavens when I saw that Stuart Campbell had announced that he's temporarily shutting Wings Over Scotland down while he supposedly seeks urgent legal advice (which he's crowdfunded for, naturally) on whether it's safe to put the site back up. This is a classic exercise in tiresome Campbell theatrics to try to make it look as if SNP-run Scotland has turned into East Germany overnight, and if anyone is gullible enough to think the outcome will be anything other than Wings Over Scotland reappearing next week, possibly as early as Monday lunchtime, then, well, I've got a bridge to sell you. I dare say he will genuinely spend the crowdfunded cash on legal advice, incidentally, but as with his stunt legal action against Kezia Dugdale, there are plenty of other ways in which independence supporters could be getting far better value for money. I confidently predict that the outcome of this legal advice will be exactly what Campbell already knows from common sense, ie. that of course he can continue publishing a political website, but if he wants to be on the safe side he could remove certain controversial posts and stay off certain topics in the future. There you go, I've just saved you £12,000.
On the other extreme, though, there are people talking and writing as if support for the Hate Crime Act is somehow an extension of support for independence, simply because it was passed by the SNP and the Greens. That's a very dangerous road to go down, because anyone passionately opposed to the law may take the cue and decide there's no place for them anymore in the independence movement. As has been pointed out in many quarters, the problem is not that the Act does not have adequate safeguards against unjust convictions, it's that there aren't adequate safeguards against unjust arrests. There's not much comfort in being eventually acquitted if you've already been locked up, had your possessions seized and gone through the unimaginable stress of a prosecution.
I suppose I would sum up my view as this: not only is it wrong in principle to crack down on freedom of speech, it's also incredibly annoying that the SNP government has devoted so much time and energy to a bad law that can only divide the independence movement. If they hadn't done it, we could at last be moving on from the divisions of the trans issue, but there's not much chance of that now.
Moderation problems, and a bit more on Craig Murray
Thursday, March 28, 2024
On Craig Murray and pluralism of party allegiance
Wednesday, March 27, 2024
It's Wednesday, so the Express must be lying about Scottish opinion polling again
A query on the previous thread -
"Rob here, seen on another site best not named, 'New poll suggests the SNP will only win 18 seats and lose 30.'
Actual "new poll"?"
Well, the only mention I could find of it on a news site was at the Express, so that probably answers the question. The Express have such an extreme track record of inaccuracies and distortions in their reporting of Scottish opinion polling that I actually achieved the impossible last year by getting a complaint upheld against them by the sham "press regulator" IPSO. On that occasion, they had been trawling Twitter in the desperate hope of finding anything they could use for an anti-independence article, and it looks like the same thing has happened again this time. When I searched for some of the details of the supposed "poll" on Twitter, I traced it back to a single tweet from some random bloke who had taken the numbers of a GB-wide YouGov poll and on his own initiative punched them into the Electoral Calculus model. In other words, the entire Express article appears to have been based on a small Scottish subsample with an enormous margin of error, not on a full poll. But needless to say that is never really made clear.
That's probably misleading enough to warrant a complaint to IPSO, as is the fact that the subsample is wrongly described by the Express as an "Electoral Calculus poll". Having been royally mucked around by IPSO on multiple occasions, though, I'll need to have a think about whether I can face yet another round. If anyone else fancies taking it on, let me know.
The Express piece is weirdly meandering - for no apparent reason it suddenly jumps halfway through to the subject of a completely unrelated poll from four months ago, and dredges up an ancient quote from Professor Robert Ford about that other poll. I doubt if 99.9% of people who read the piece will have had a scooby what it was all about.