Hallelujah, Swinney has done the right thing and appointed Kate Forbes as Deputy First Minister - so maybe now there will be some unity

I was a bit sceptical about whether John Swinney would actually go as far as appointing Kate Forbes as Deputy First Minister, because it marks her out so obviously as the most likely successor.  The reports about a succession plan being in place to stop her made me wonder if she'd be sold short with an offer of a lesser Cabinet position.  However, I suppose the likelihood is that the deputy role was part of the price of her support, and having entered into the deal he decided to act in good faith.  

I think that does now leave the SNP in a significantly better position than they were under Yousaf.  There's more to party unity than just reintegrating the Forbes supporters, but nevertheless that's a key part of it, and seems to have been achieved.  And as long as Swinney is sensible enough to allow her to do it, Forbes' charisma can be utilised on TV to try to get the SNP back into a winning position in time for the general election.  That would offer the best of both worlds - Swinney as the reassuring bank manager figure in ultimate charge, and Forbes as the public-facing inspirational communicator.

So I'm slightly more optimistic than I was before, but much now depends on what the next few opinion polls show.  Is there going to be a 'Truss effect'? By that I mean Yousaf may have done so much damage that it's impossible for the leadership team that replaces him to rectify the situation.  But if the polls show the SNP at least holding steady, they may just have something to work with.

When everything realistic has been tried and didn't work, you just have to shrug and say it wasn't meant to be - but at least there's now a quick turning of the page

Without wanting to be overly critical, I think it's probably reasonable to say that Graeme McCormick has behaved slightly oddly, and not entirely fairly to the SNP members who went to considerable lengths to back him.  There's a place for abortive leadership bids that end with a "long and fruitful" chat with the chap who wants a coronation, but that place had already been filled by Kate Forbes.  Realistically the only reason members were nominating a little-known candidate was because they had made up their minds they definitely wanted an election rather than yet more tales of a behind-closed-doors fireside chat, and they must be bemused to have ended up with the latter instead.  However, if it's any consolation to the people who nominated him, if I was in your shoes I'd be saying to myself that at least all the stops were pulled out to prevent a stitch-up. Strenuous efforts were made to persuade Kate Forbes to run, and when she didn't, an unlikely Plan B was found and only failed to work because of one person's rather peculiar decision.  If you genuinely try everything and it still doesn't work out, all you can really do is shrug and say it wasn't meant to be on this occasion.

The silver lining now is at least we (and by 'we' I mean Scotland and the independence movement) can turn the page on the mistake of Yousaf's leadership immediately, rather than waiting a few more weeks.  John Swinney is not the right person to be leader, but he's less wrong than Yousaf.  If anything, judging from the dismal mood music from him on the Sunday politics shows, he's even less likely to do anything about independence than Yousaf was, but the first priority is to get the SNP and the independence cause out of jail at the general election, because unless that happens everything else is moot.  We'll have to see what Swinney can do about that, hopefully as part of a broad and collegiate leadership team that prominently features Kate Forbes and Stephen Flynn.  The first test will be whether the promised 'key role' for Ms Forbes is actually delivered - if she's shafted with a lesser offer than she was led to expect, Swinney's leadership will be poisoned by bitterness from the word go.  Hopefully he's sensible enough not to do that.

On a personal level, at least, I can congratulate him.  He's been SNP leader before, but only in opposition, and when that stint ended in failure it must have seemed that what he could achieve in the remainder of his career was going to have a ceiling on it.  But no, twenty years later he's made it to the very top, or as close to the very top as is possible in a devolved system, and that's a remarkable story.

Sensational Norstat poll shows support for independence has INCREASED to 48% in spite of the crisis within the SNP

This is a curate's egg poll, so let's start with the good part.  Support for independence has remained impressively untouched by the crisis within the SNP, and indeed has increased slightly since the last Norstat poll, although that may just be margin-of-error noise.

Should Scotland be an independent country? (Norstat / Sunday Times, 30th April - 3rd May 2024)

Yes 48% (+1)

No 52% (-1)

However, as you've probably heard by now, the poll is a lot less good for the SNP themselves. This is one of the rare occasions when the exact dates a poll was conducted are by far the most important part of the equation.  The fieldwork started on 30th April, which was the day after Yousaf announced his resignation, and finished on 3rd May, which was the day after John Swinney emerged as the heir presumptive. 

Interviews for online polls are not evenly spread out through the fieldwork dates - usually they're heavily concentrated in the first 24 hours.  If that's what happened here, it's safe to conclude that the SNP did not benefit from a wave of relief when Yousaf departed the stage, but it remains an entirely open question whether there's been a rebound as a result of the crisis receding due to a new leader having more or less emerged.  In any case, given the choreographed crowing about the poll on Twitter among the usual Labour suspects, I was bracing myself for a Truss-like meltdown that would look unrecoverable regardless of any honeymoon effect for the new leader.  That isn't the case at all - the boost for Labour is relatively modest and still leaves them behind the SNP on the Holyrood constituency vote.  And while a five-point Labour lead for Westminster is bad news, at least it's not twenty or thirty points, and it's thus still just about possible that the new leadership may be able to turn things around in time for the general election.

Scottish voting intentions for next UK general election:

Labour 34% (+2)

SNP 29% (-3)

Conservatives 16% (-)

Liberal Democrats 8% (-1)

Seats projection (with changes from 2019 election): Labour 28 (+27), SNP 15 (-33), Conservatives 9 (+3), Liberal Democrats 5 (+1)

It shouldn't go without note here that one of the main effects of the Labour lead is that the Tories are projected to entirely needlessly gain several seats from the SNP despite their vote share having collapsed since 2019.  Whatever John Swinney's shortcomings, I think it's probably fair to say he won't be a turn-off for rural voters in quite the way that Yousaf was, so he may be better placed to reverse the problem in SNP-Tory battleground seats.

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot:

SNP 34% (-1)

Labour 33% (+3)

Conservatives 14% (-3)

Liberal Democrats 9% (-1)

Greens 5% (+2)

Scottish Parliament regional list ballot:

Labour 28% (+3)

SNP 27% (-1)

Conservatives 17% (-2)

Greens 9% (-)

Liberal Democrats 8% (-2)

Reform UK 6% (+2)

Alba 4% (+1)

Seats projection (with changes from 2021 election): Labour 40 (+18), SNP 38 (-26), Conservatives 24 (-7), Greens 10 (+2), Liberal Democrats 9 (+5), Reform UK 8 (+8)

My fellow Alba members would be unwise to get too excited about the party's boost on the list, for a couple of reasons.  Firstly, the fieldwork took place before the strategically dangerous decision to vote to bring down the SNP government, so it's anyone's guess whether that will have alienated independence supporters and led to a decrease in the Alba vote.  And secondly, as far as I know Norstat have continued to use the same methodology as Panelbase, who were by some distance the most favourable pollster for Alba, often showing them at 5% or 6% in the run-up to the 2021 election even though they ended up with only 2% on polling day.  That overestimation is unlikely to have been corrected for, because Panelbase never introduced weighting by recalled Holyrood vote.

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It's getting close to the last-chance saloon, but there's still time to help Scot Goes Pop continue through this general election year.  Donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE, although if you have a Paypal account, a better way to donate is by direct Paypal payment, because the funds are usually transferred instantly and fees can be eliminated altogether depending on the option you select from the menu.  My Paypal email address is:  jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Are you an SNP member and do you want a contested leadership election? If so, here's how you get one.

I'm purely offering this as information for any Scot Goes Pop readers who happen to be SNP members - and I'm getting it all second hand so apologies if anything turns out to be wrong.  An SNP member called Graeme McCormick is trying to stand for the leadership in order to force a contest.  He needs 100 nominations from members, and those members need to be spread across at least 20 branches.  Nominations will be collected in person today, between 1pm and 3pm, at the Pensioners 4 Indy stall in Glasgow Green as part of the AUOB rally.  You'll need to have your membership number handy.  Alternatively, if you can't make it to Glasgow Green, contact details for Graeme can be found HERE.

Of course a contested election won't change the outcome, but what it would do is keep John Swinney honest by forcing him to set out a platform which he can be scrutinised and challenged on before he becomes leader, not after.  And it would also send a clear message to the SNP's equivalent of the "deep state" that they might sometimes be able to stitch up the outcome, but they can't entirely stitch up the process.  That's important given the reports today that the usual suspects are already plotting to pre-arrange the outcome of the next leadership election.

A serious suggestion for John Swinney: get the more charismatic Kate Forbes and Stephen Flynn to deputise for you in the TV election debates, and reap the benefits yourself

Stewart McDonald made a ridiculous comment about John Swinney's speech yesterday along the lines that it had "made his heart sing", while Robin McAlpine said that he was even more despairing than last year and that Swinney's leadership was a sign that the SNP is a "failed project".  I'm somewhere in between those two extremes.  Although I'm sceptical that this new arrangement will work out, I'm hoping it will and I'm trying to think of ways in which it might.  So in that spirit, let me make a serious suggestion.

The polls suggest that John Swinney does have a significant advantage over his immediate predecessor in that he's regarded as a competent, credible head of government.  But we all know that's balanced out by a major disadvantage, which might bluntly be described as a charisma bypass, and that's going to be an obvious and major handicap in campaigning for a closely-fought election.  How do you square that circle and get the best of both worlds?  I would suggest you do it by getting the public used to the idea of an SNP leadership team consisting of three people, namely Swinney himself, Stephen Flynn and Kate Forbes.  People would know Swinney is the elder statesman, Leader-in-Chief in ultimate control of the government, which they might well be happy enough about, but that doesn't stop the SNP in its presentational interactions with the media and the public putting forward a team of three on a more or less equal basis, thus getting the proper benefit of the far greater charisma and superior communication skills of Forbes and Flynn.

And I would suggest that's particularly important in any TV election debates the SNP are invited to, regardless of whether they're UK-wide debates or second-string Scottish debates.  There are clear precedents for putting forward deputies or alternative leaders for those debates - Alex Salmond put Angus Robertson forward for one debate in 2010, and Nicola Sturgeon did the same in 2017.  If you have that option, and if you can be almost certain it would work to your advantage, it would be silly not to use it.  In particular, it's not hard to imagine Kate Forbes emerging as the clear winner of any debate she takes part in - indeed she could be a real phenomenon just as Nicola Sturgeon was in 2015.  That could make all the difference to the SNP's electoral chances.

The SNP again shy away from the transformational change that is required - but perhaps they've taken half a step forward

Kate Forbes has clearly decided not to run, which is hopefully a decision made from a position of strength due to a deal with John Swinney.  The SNP have missed a golden opportunity to get back on track, but I'm not as despondent as I was a year ago when Humza Yousaf narrowly won.  That outcome was an unmitigated disaster because it lumbered the independence movement with three problems simultaneously - a) it put independence on the backburner for the foreseeable future, b) it installed an unsuitable leader who the public actively disliked and thought wasn't up to the job, and c) it led to outright factional rule, when the public are known to reward united parties and punish divided parties.

Those three problems have now been reduced to one-and-a-half.  Independence is unlikely to be seriously pursued under Swinney's watch, but he's 60, and whatever he said today, it may well be that he'll see the SNP through the general election, after which the party can properly decide its future with a full-blown leadership election.  And although he's not a suitable leader in the sense that he's not going to inspire anyone, the polls are clear that he is better regarded than Yousaf and is certainly regarded as far more competent.  I suspect Redfield & Wilton's monthly polls will show a healthy lead for Swinney on the head-to-heads with Anas Sarwar for "who would make the best First Minister" - and if Swinney does hang around until 2026, that may well be enough to keep the SNP as the largest single party at Holyrood, and possibly enough to keep them in government, although whether it would rescue the outright pro-indy majority is much more doubtful.

And most importantly, it sounds like factional rule will be ending and that there'll be a unity cabinet.  The Greens will not be bringing down the government but neither will they be in the government, which is arguably the best of both worlds.  So the SNP can probably look to the general election with slightly more optimism than seemed likely before Yousaf helpfully imploded.  But I repeat, this is a waste of a golden opportunity, and if the SNP do lose the general election, this will be one of the key moments they'll trace the defeat back to.

Thoughts on John Swinney's declaration, and Alba's controversial vote yesterday

John Swinney has finally declared, and as I said yesterday, he was always going to have to address the suspicion that he'd be an interim leader.  He's now said that he would lead the SNP through both the general election and Holyrood election, although that still leaves open the question of how far beyond the Holyrood election he would go.

We now wait to see if Kate Forbes will take him on or has done a deal with him.  I hope she takes him on, but if she's done a deal I hope she's settled for nothing less than a dual role as Deputy First Minister and a senior Cabinet brief, most likely Finance Secretary again.  If she ends up in a middle-ranking position, she'll have sold herself way short.

Meanwhile, I'll address my own party Alba's controversial decision to vote to bring down the SNP government yesterday.  It was obvious from Chris McEleny's explanation that he knew this was dangerous territory, because he was at pains to play down the importance of the vote, dismissing it as "performative" and "irrelevant".  In which case, my question is: why get sucked in at all?  Why not abstain?  In that way you avoid a backlash while still demonstrating to the SNP that they won't get support in return for nothing.

I wonder if the Alba leadership overestimate the extent to which independence-supporting voters have kept up to speed with the evolution of the party's culture.  It might be assumed that it's obvious to everyone that Alba is a militantly anti-SNP party and voting down the SNP government will thus be seen as just the sort of thing Alba does.  I'm not sure that's the case at all.   I think this will be a defining moment for many people in their perceptions of what sort of party Alba is, and they might be confused and dismayed by what they've just seen.  They might remember the calls for people to vote Alba in 2021 to build a 'pro-independence supermajority', and if so they may wonder how voting with unionist parties to try to topple a pro-independence government is consistent with that prospectus.

I know there's a feeling within Alba that many people are dissatisfied with the SNP while remaining strongly in favour of independence, and that if you could just convince them that there's a credible pro-independence option that is as critical of the SNP as they are, their votes might just go to Alba rather than Labour.  But realistically Alba's best chance of winning seats in 2026 is to persuade SNP constituency voters to back Alba on the list, and that'll be a lot harder if SNP supporters feel that Alba just want to frustrate or topple an SNP government, rather than work with it to deliver independence.  That doesn't mean they want Alba to be an SNP fan club, but it does mean they'd expect constructive opposition on specific policies rather than outright hostility to the very existence of an SNP government.

So, with the best will in the world, I do think a tactical mis-step was made yesterday.  But it's done now, and we'll just have to see how it plays out.

It looks increasingly like the Swinney plan hasn't been thought through

We still don't know whether there will be a contested SNP leadership election between John Swinney and Kate Forbes.  If there is, I agree with the conventional wisdom that Swinney would start as favourite (he's literally the only potential candidate who would start as favourite against Forbes), but I disagree with those assuming the outcome would be a foregone conclusion.  Those people are laying a lot of emphasis on the sentimental attachment that the SNP rank-and-file have for Swinney, and I don't think there's much doubt that if SNP conference delegates or attendees of branch meetings were deciding the outcome, Swinney would win.  But the SNP's membership is a lot broader than the active core, and I'm not sure we have clear evidence that the sentimentality runs as deep with the more passive members - or, if it does, that it outweighs a similar warmth towards Forbes after her successful stint as Finance Secretary and her near-miss in the leadership vote last year.

The other point people are overlooking is that Forbes may have a killer argument to deploy against Swinney during the hustings, namely that she would be fully committed to the job, whereas he might only want it for a year or two, thus guaranteeing that the party will be plunged back into uncertainty in the very near future.  The mood music seems to be that Swinney would just be seeing the SNP through until the 2026 Holyrood election, but if you think about that, what does it actually mean?  You can't lead a party during an election campaign while planning to step down immediately afterwards, because opposition parties would say voters are being asked to buy a pig in a poke.  Realistically Swinney would have two choices - either commit to the role until at least 2028 (which he probably doesn't want to do), or say he will stand down by the autumn of next year to allow a new leader enough time to prepare for the Holyrood election.  The latter would mean he'd be in harness for a maximum of just eighteen months - not much longer than Yousaf managed.

If Forbes hammers home the point that members have a choice between a leader who wants to see it through until independence is achieved, and a caretaker leader who would just prolong the agonies of the current leadership crisis, she might just put enough doubts in the minds of members to help them set aside any sentimental feelings for Swinney.

Yes, the parliamentary arithmetic would work for Kate Forbes, whether Kenny Farquharson likes it or not

Kenny "Devo or Death" Farquharson, aka "Jurassic Farq", has a really nasty piece in The Times which is ultimately a bigoted rant about why a committed member of a particular religious denomination he personally dislikes should never be allowed to hold high office, but which tarts itself up in progressive-sounding language about how our leaders must reflect the diversity of modern Scotland.  On that note, incidentally, wouldn't it be rather a good idea to at last have a First Minister who is a fluent Gaelic speaker?  Given the dire predictions that Gaelic could cease to be a fully-functioning community language within as little as a decade, isn't this the perfect moment to have in Kate Forbes a national leader who is authentically committed to taking the necessary steps to protect the language, because she embodies what stands to be lost if that doesn't happen?

Farquharson switches from bigotry to innumeracy with this section - 

"There is good reason for the “anyone but Kate” campaign gaining strength within the SNP this week. I am sure any parliamentary vote to install Forbes as first minister would lead to a number of abstentions from the SNP benches. For Forbes to win the prize she would need the Tories to abstain en masse.

SNP folk should ask themselves if this is how they really want to see their new leader take power."

He might as well just have "I don't understand the rules" tattooed on his forehead.  One of the oddities of the Scotland Act is that the votes of a majority of MSPs are not required to be elected First Minister.  A candidate simply needs to have more votes in the final ballot than the other remaining candidate.  That's why Alex Salmond was able to become First Minister in 2007 with the votes of just 49 of the 129 MSPs.  

In Kate Forbes' case, her opponent in the final ballot (if it even got that far) would be Douglas Ross, so there would be no question of Labour and the Greens playing silly buggers by actively voting against her at that stage.  In all probability, she would win by 63 votes to 31.  SNP MSPs would not abstain for exactly the same reason that Forbes and her backers did not abstain on Yousaf becoming FM.  Refusing to vote to sustain an SNP government is inconsistent with membership of the SNP parliamentary party, and anyone who went down that road would inevitably lose the whip.

But even assuming Farquharson is right that there are SNP MSPs ready and willing to throw their careers away to stop Forbes, her 32-vote cushion over Ross means there would need to be at least 32 SNP abstentions to stop her - more than half the entire parliamentary party.  Who precisely are these thirty-two martyrs, Kenny?

Once Forbes is actually in office, the first thing she would probably try to do is mend relations with the Greens, and she might have a chance of succeeding on a sort of "Nixon in China" basis - ie. any agreements with her would be so toughly-negotiated and businesslike that the Greens would trust her to stick to her word.  But even if the Greens continue to dislike her so much that they try to bring down the government she leads, they quite simply wouldn't have the numbers to do that.  Kate Forbes and Ash Regan are old friends, and it thus seems inconceivable that Alba would ever help bring down a Forbes-led government.  At worst, then, a confidence vote would result in a 64-64 tie, with the Presiding Officer voting to save the government with her casting vote in line with convention.

Again, SNP MSPs cannot abstain or vote against the government on a confidence vote without effectively excluding themselves from the party.  So what it really boils down to is whether you think SNP MSPs will defect outright to the Greens.  And while that's not totally impossible, defections among MSPs are rare enough that I'd want specifics about who these people actually are before taking the idea remotely seriously.

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It's getting close to the last-chance saloon, but there's still time to help Scot Goes Pop continue through this general election year.  Donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE, although if you have a Paypal account, a better way to donate is by direct Paypal payment, because the funds are usually transferred instantly and fees can be eliminated altogether depending on the option you select from the menu.  My Paypal email address is:  jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

The Scottish public want Kate Forbes to be the next First Minister, reveals new Ipsos poll

Ipsos are out of the blocks at lightning speed with a poll conducted yesterday and today on the SNP leadership race.  As expected, Kate Forbes is once again the voters' clear choice as First Minister.

Which SNP politician would make the best First Minister? (Ipsos, 29th-30th April 2024)

Kate Forbes 26%

John Swinney 20%

Stephen Flynn 7%

Angus Robertson 4%

Shona Robison 2%

Mairi McAllan 2%

Humza Yousaf 2%

Jenny Gilruth 1%

Swinney does have the consolation of leading among SNP voters, but remember once you start digging into subsamples like that, the chances of inaccuracy become greater because the margin of error is bigger.  However, it does appear that Forbes remains best-placed to broaden the coalition of support for independence by appealing to non-SNP voters.

It's safe to say from the above numbers that a re-run of Yousaf v Forbes would be likely to produce a very different result from last year!

One consolation for the SNP: YouGov poll says their vote share has increased in spite of the crisis

Amidst all of yesterday's mayhem, it shouldn't be overlooked that YouGov published a full-scale Scottish poll, which was conducted before Yousaf resigned but only just before, so it takes into account the impact of the pre-resignation crisis but not the impact of the resignation itself.  Amazingly, it shows the SNP slightly on the up.  That's probably just a reversion to the mean after a poor previous poll, but nevertheless even just holding steady should be regarded as a major relief.

Scottish voting intentions for the next UK general election:

Labour 34% (+1)

SNP 33% (+2)

Conservatives 14% (-)

Liberal Democrats 8% (+1)

Reform UK 5% (-2)

Greens 4% (-1)

Scottish Parliament constituency vote:

SNP 36% (+2)

Labour 32% (-)

Conservatives 16% (+1)

Liberal Democrats 9% (-)

Greens 3% (-1)

Scottish Parliament regional list vote:

SNP 31% (+2)

Labour 28% (-1)

Conservatives 17% (+1)

Greens 8% (-1)

Liberal Democrats 8% (-)

Alba 3% (-)

Reform UK 3% (-2)

Before anyone makes a smart-alec comment about how the SNP should have stuck with Yousaf because clearly it was all going swimmingly, the fact that Yousaf's approval rating has gone through the floor leaves no room for doubt that the SNP vote has held up in spite of him and not because of him.  Actually, Alba-bashers had better thank their lucky stars that Yousaf is departing, because if he'd stayed it would have deprived them of one of their most cherished attack lines.  His rating is now very similar to that recorded by Alex Salmond over the last four years or so.

Net approval ratings of leading politicians:

Stephen Flynn (SNP): -9

Anas Sarwar (Labour): -9

John Swinney (SNP): -15

Alex Cole-Hamilton (Liberal Democrats): -16

Nicola Sturgeon (SNP): -18

Ash Regan (Alba): -25

Patrick Harvie (Greens): -27

Lorna Slater (Greens): -32

Douglas Ross (Conservatives): -34

Humza Yousaf (SNP): -35

Net approval ratings for how party leaders are doing their jobs:

Anas Sarwar (Labour): +4

Douglas Ross (Conservatives): -27

Patrick Harvie / Lorna Slater (Greens): -29

Humza Yousaf (SNP): -47

Slightly annoying that YouGov asked about John Swinney but not about Kate Forbes, although in fairness they wouldn't have had a crystal ball handy.  On past form I suspect Forbes would have been top of the pile.

I doubt if Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater will be too worried about their own poor personal ratings, because they're only trying to appeal to a specific section of the electorate, rather than to "Middle Scotland".  But what will disappoint them is that there's no sign of a wave of sympathy for the Greens in the headline voting intention numbers.

The public as a whole think by a margin of 37% to 27% that the SNP were right to end the coalition with the Greens, but the SNP's own supporters take the opposite view by 32% to 25%.  You can kind of sense the confusion of SNP voters on that question - they used to be massively in favour of the coalition, probably because the SNP leadership kept telling them how wonderful it was, but now the SNP leadership has done a sudden U-turn, they don't know what to think anymore.

Installing the ill-suited John Swinney as leader would amount to "faction before country, faction before party"

Professor John Curtice has summed it up - 

"Swinney’s expertise, I think, is being able to say nothing for three minutes. Definitely who you want as your deputy but it’s not the person to front an election campaign."

The problem being that the SNP face one of the most important election campaigns in their history within a few months at most, and the continuity faction are hellbent on installing the ill-suited Swinney to front it.  For the second time in just over a year, we're watching them make a destructive mistake in real time.  On some sort of level, they probably even know themselves that they're doing the wrong thing, but they don't care, because their priority is different from ours.  Faction before country.  Faction before party.

There's an extremely silly reason suggested for why Kate Forbes shouldn't want the job right now, and yet it's bandied around dozens of times a day - that she'd be better off waiting until someone else takes the blame for the SNP losing dozens of seats at the general election.  I don't know about anyone else, but I don't want Forbes to become leader simply because I think it would be a nice birthday present for her - I want her as leader because my judgement is that she's the person best placed to stop the SNP losing dozens of seats at the general election and thus rescue the independence cause.  Installing her five minutes after the avoidable disaster occurs would completely defeat the purpose.

However, the "let her profit from calamity" brigade should realise that even on their own logic, it now makes sense for Forbes to stand, because if she does, Swinney will still be favourite to win and she'll be able to reap the "I told you so" benefits when Swinney falls flat on his face at the general election.  She won't be able to do that if she doesn't stand, and especially not if she backs Swinney, because she'd be effectively buying shares in the coming disaster.  

To be ideally placed to take over after the general election, she needs people to look back at that point and say "actually, Kate Forbes had the right prescription for avoiding this defeat".  But they'll only say that if she stands up to be counted right now.

John Swinney as leader? "We tried that, it didn't work."

The title of this post contains the exact words John Swinney himself used a few years ago when someone suggested he might be a future leader.  Because he was of course leader between 2000 and 2004, and it really didn't work.  The SNP had convinced themselves that the public would warm to Swinney as an 'elder brother' figure who was much less divisive and Marmite than his predecessor Alex Salmond, but the public had other ideas. 

I can remember multiple appearances by John Curtice on Newsnight Scotland in which he urged the SNP to face up to the fact that they had a major leadership problem.  The polls consistently showed Swinney was the least popular of the four main party leaders - which not only meant he was less popular than Henry McLeish and Jack McConnell, but also less popular than the Tory leader David McLetchie and the Lib Dem leader Jim Wallace.  That predictably was reflected in election results, with the SNP losing ground in terms of both votes and seats at the 2001 general election, before a major setback at the 2003 Holyrood election when they slipped from 35 seats to 27, followed by the ultimate humilation when they dropped below 20% of the vote at the 2004 European elections.  At that point the game was up, Swinney was replaced by his predecessor Salmond, and the general consensus was that his whole four-year leadership was a failed experiment.

Why, in an emergency situation, would you return to a failed experiment?  Unless of course your only priority is to muddle through and maintain the control of the ruling faction any way you can, rather than to work out what is in the best interests of the SNP and the wider independence movement?

Even now, even after the catastrophe of the last year, they still just don't 'get it'.

Yousaf's departure is necessary, but is only one-half of what is needed - if a low-grade continuity leader is selected to replace him, the independence movement will be in an even deeper hole

It's no secret that I've wanted Humza Yousaf to resign from literally the day he was elected.  I was constantly told that there was no chance of that happening before the general election, and my reply was always that it quite simply needed to happen before the general election, otherwise the SNP were going to get hammered.  So in a sense his departure today might look like a dream outcome, but it's only half of the necessary equation - if the SNP replace him with someone even worse, such as Jenny Gilruth or Neil Gray, today will be a further setback not a step forward.  And that's particularly the case given what might be called the "Truss effect", ie. it's possible that a leader can be so disastrous that they have a severely negative impact on the fortunes of their successor, so whoever takes over may need to be an exceptional leader, not a workmanlike stopgap.

This depends of course not only on whether the SNP are willing to choose the right sort of person, and not only on whether the continuity faction will once again throw procedural dirty tricks in the way of the right sort of person, but also on whether the right sort of person is actually willing to put themselves forward.  We all understand that Kate Forbes is a young mother and thus has personal as well as political considerations to take account of, but if she wavers at all about running, I hope people close to her will tap her on the shoulder and say "your country needs you".  We're in an emergency situation, and if Forbes doesn't stand, the consequences could be incalculable because we're likely to end up with a low-grade leader from the continuity faction.

One thing I'm fairly sure of is that there won't be an early Holyrood election now.  Stuart Campbell is trying to make the logic of the situation fit his desired outcome and thus is insisting that if Yousaf resigns, the Greens and Alba are both likely to still vote in favour of Sarwar's motion of no confidence in the whole government.  I very much doubt that - I think the Greens will abstain and allow the leadership election to run its course.

And naturally there are commentators who are suggesting that if Yousaf prefers resignation to a deal with Alba, that must mean Alba are toxic in the extreme.  More realistically, it actually means Yousaf or someone advising him can count, and has worked out that a deal with Alba would only get him to a 64-64 split in the chamber - which would be enough to save his bacon this week, but wouldn't be enough to pass legislation or Budgets.

Ultimately we're in this mess because the

ruling faction wouldn't allow the leadership election last year to take place on a level playing field, and insisted on a loading the dice in favour of a wholly unsuitable candidate with abysmal public approval ratings.  The independence cause has been paying the penalty ever since.  I beg of our friends in the SNP to use this golden opportunity to repair the damage, rather than digging the hole even deeper.

Has The Times misrepresented what Alex Salmond said about his price for backing Yousaf?

The Times website has an "exclusive" claiming that Alba are making a 'Scotland United' electoral pact the price of any support for Humza Yousaf in the no confidence vote.  Some people are interpreting that as a demand that is intentionally so unpalatable for the SNP that it's actually meant to be rejected, in other words that Alba have already made up their minds to vote against Yousaf and are just working their way through the pre-vote choreography.  But this may be one of those occasions where it's worth looking beyond the headline and reading the details of the article, because what Alex Salmond said was more conversational and open-ended than you might realise, and at least for now I think it remains an open question whether he has been interpreted correctly.

Mr Salmond even goes out of his way to suggest that an electoral pact for the general election may not actually be possible at this stage because candidates have already been selected.  He goes on to say he might want to have a discussion about a pact for Holyrood 2026, but the wording is vague enough that I'm not convinced he's deliberately making impossible demands.  And although the electoral pact issue is described as "top line", elsewhere in the interview he describes independence itself as the "number one priority".

My question would be this: if Yousaf concedes the referendum legislation that Ash Regan has argued for, and makes some sort of concession on the rights of women and girls, but refuses an electoral pact, would - or should - Alba say that's not enough?  I doubt it.  The referendum in particular would be a monumental win for Alba and it would be crazy to spurn it. But that may be an academic point, given how the usual suspects are lining up to demand that Yousaf treat Alba as complete untouchables.

I'll actually be happy enough if Alba end up voting to remove Yousaf in the coming days, but only as long as it's done surgically and doesn't topple the government or trigger an early election.  As Tyrannical Theresa might put it, now is not the time for that.  Although, as we now know beyond all doubt, no time was ever the right time for Humza Yousaf to be First Minister of Scotland and leader of the independence movement.

Exactly half of MSPs (64 out of 128) want Yousaf to go - and that's as close to checkmate as may make no difference

The impression I formed from listening to interviews with Green MSPs yesterday is that they don't necessarily want to topple the SNP government or to bring about an early election, but they are determined to remove Humza Yousaf as First Minister, if they can.  And whatever you think of the Greens, that's actually an understandable position because he's been thoroughly duplicitous in his dealings with them, pledging an undying commitment to them one day and then unceremoniously dumping them the next day.  They're perfectly entitled to say that if they're going to work with an SNP minority government over the next two years, they need to be able to trust that any ad hoc deals that are formed on policy are worth the paper they're written on, and the trust simply won't be there until a First Minister who has proved himself to be untrustworthy is replaced.

(There is an obvious irony here, though, in that some would argue that the Greens overstepped the mark last year by interfering in the SNP's leadership election to try to get Humza Yousaf installed, and could barely contain their jubilation when they got their way.  That hubris is perhaps the one sense in which they were authors of their own downfall.)

The SNP might be tempted to respond by saying that it is up to themselves to decide who their own leader is.  But if they are, they'd be wise to learn a lesson from relatively recent history, because what the current situation reminds me of most of all is the crisis in the Welsh Assembly in early 2000.

If you recall, Tony Blair was an extremely reluctant devolutionist, and wanted to ensure that he effectively retained the power he was nominally ceding.  He wanted to hand-pick the leaders of Scotland and Wales, and just to drive home the message that London rule was being repackaged rather than ended, he rather absurdly wanted those devolved leaders to simultaneously serve, at least to begin with, as Secretary of State for Scotland and Wales respectively in his own UK Cabinet.

Initially he didn't run into any major difficulties with his picks, because Donald Dewar and Ron Davies were immensely popular and were probably the leaders Scottish Labour and Welsh Labour would have chosen anyway if they had been left to their own devices - although to his great credit Dewar threw a small spanner in the works by refusing to serve as both Scottish Secretary and First Minister at the same time, which he felt would have been incompatible with the principles of devolution.  But then Ron Davies had his "moment of madness" on Clapham Common, and suddenly Blair found himself imposing a new leader on Welsh Labour that they did not want. Two-thirds of Welsh Labour members voted for the charismatic maverick Rhodri Morgan, but due to a blatantly rigged election process that gave a third of votes to MPs and a third to trade unions who didn't have to ballot their members, the Blairite machine politician Alun Michael was very narrowly declared the 'winner'.

The Welsh public were no happier than Welsh Labour members about having Michael imposed on them, and punished Blair by giving Labour an astoundingly poor result in the inaugural Assembly election in 1999.  Having fully expected to win a working majority, Labour ended up forming a minority government with just 28 seats out of 60.  The three opposition parties recognised that Michael was the Achilles heel, and after biding their time for the best part of a year, they followed the tactic Douglas Ross is currently attempting by tabling a motion of no confidence in Michael personally.

On the day the vote was scheduled to be held, Michael made a speech brimming with entitlement in which he declared that he was passing the decision on who leads Welsh Labour back from the Assembly to Welsh Labour itself.  He theatrically handed a resignation letter to the Presiding Officer, expecting that to mean the vote would be cancelled at the last gasp.  But the Presiding Officer was the former Plaid Cymru leader Dafydd Elis-Thomas, who took the view that he couldn't be expected to read letters while in the middle of chairing a session.  So he allowed the vote to go ahead, Michael lost, and then an hour later Michael's resignation was accepted anyway. In the blink of an eye, Rhodri Morgan was unveiled as the new leader. That might be a warning from history to Yousaf not to attempt any procedural tricks, especially with a Presiding Officer in the chair who was elected as a Green MSP.

It's true that it's for the SNP alone to decide their own leader, but it doesn't follow that if there is to be an SNP minority government, the parliament is then obliged to accept that leader as First Minister.  Unless something changes, exactly half of MSPs (64 out of 128, excluding the non-voting Presiding Officer) want Yousaf gone, so even if he survives the vote of no confidence on the Presiding Officer's casting vote, that position doesn't look sustainable for much longer.  The SNP have three basic options: a) change their leader so they can install the new leader as First Minister with the proper confidence of parliament, b) keep Yousaf as their leader but put forward someone else as First Minister (an unorthodox arrangement in a UK context but not uncommon abroad), or c) say that only Yousaf will do, and if he doesn't have the confidence of parliament, there'll have to be an early election to resolve the matter. 

What isn't a credible option is trying to carry on as if the will of parliament doesn't matter - and Alun Michael can tell you how that worked out for him.

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It's getting close to the last-chance saloon, but there's still time to help Scot Goes Pop continue through this general election year.  Donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE, although if you have a Paypal account, a better way to donate is by direct Paypal payment, because the funds are usually transferred instantly and fees can be eliminated altogether depending on the option you select from the menu.  My Paypal email address is:  jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Are we moving into the final days of Yousaf's leadership?

It was just over a year ago that I was struggling to work out how seriously to take the pronouncements of "Smitty", a commenter on Wings who seemed to be leaking inside information about the SNP leadership election, because there was no way of verifying what he was saying and there was always a chance it was an elaborate hoax.  In the end, that's what it seemed to be, because the basic thrust of his claims was that Humza Yousaf had lost.

So once again I'm not sure how seriously to take the claims by Wings himself today which are based on information from "trusted sources".  It's true that possibly the same sources turned out to be right yesterday about the scheduling of an emergency Cabinet meeting, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they'll be right about everything.  But just as a hypothetical, let's work through the potential implications of what they're saying.

Firstly, that Humza Yousaf will resign before the no confidence vote is held.  That's possible because arithmetically he seems to be in a right old pickle.  Due to the surprisingly strong stance of the Greens, 64 votes to remove him are assured as long as everyone turns up, which would mean to survive he'd need Ash Regan to actively vote for him and then the Presiding Officer to bail him out with her casting vote in line with convention.  I don't take remotely seriously the idea, being punted by Wings himself only yesterday, that Yousaf could lose the vote and carry on anyway.  So everything hinges on what Ms Regan does, and as we now know, it's a vote of no confidence in Yousaf personally rather than a collective vote of no-confidence in the government, which makes it much less unthinkable that she could vote him down if he doesn't yield to enough of her shopping list of demands.  Or she could abstain, which would probably have the same effect.

It's therefore at least semi-plausible that he could resign to avoid the humiliation of either being defeated or being seen to capitulate to Alba.  The continuity faction may have calculated that it's better to replace him with someone the Greens don't hate with a passion, and that way the government may be able to muddle through the next two years by means of ad hoc deals with the Greens rather than ad hoc deals with Alba.

The next part of the claim is that Neil Gray is the person that the continuity faction want to replace him with.  Again, that's perfectly plausible, Gray is massively overrated but he's been punted for years.  He would make the situation even worse because he appears to be even less serious about independence than Yousaf is, and has less charisma.

Where I become much more sceptical about the claim is the idea that the Forbes wing of the party will for some unspecified reason roll over and allow Gray to have an unopposed coronation.  Now, it's true that Kate Forbes has a strong mind of her own and it doesn't always tally with what people sympathetic to her think is sensible, so I can't rule out the possibility that she'll sit this one out, either for personal reasons or for what would probably be misconceived political reasons.  I hope to goodness she doesn't.  But even if she does, it doesn't follow that Gray will be unchallenged, because from what I recall of the SNP leadership rules, the threshold to stand as a candidate is not all that high.  Just a year after we saw an epochal battle between evenly matched continuity and change camps, it seems totally inconceivable that at least one person from the change camp will not put themselves forward - unless of course there's a unity candidate who everyone thinks is fab, but that candidate would not be Gray.  So I'm confident there would be a contested election if Yousaf stands down, although admittedly Gray would have a much better chance of winning it if Forbes is not his main opponent.  (Bear in mind, though, that even if the Wings source is correct about Forbes' intentions, there'll be massive pressure on her to change her mind.)

You'd think, incidentally, that journalists from The National would have SNP sources that are at least as reliable as any that Wings has, and it's interesting that Hamish Morrison is punting John Swinney rather than Gray.  But this paragraph made me laugh - 

"Kate Forbes has been touted by some, but given her views on LGBT issues and abortion proved so divisive in the SNP leadership contest, she may be a long shot."

Come on, Hamish, propaganda is one thing but you've got to at least make it sound plausible.  It remains to be seen if Kate Forbes would stand, but if she does, she will not be a "long shot", she will self-evidently be the strong favourite, having come within a whisker of winning last year in spite of the outgoing leadership chucking the kitchen sink at her, including just about every procedural dirty trick in the book.

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It's getting close to the last-chance saloon, but there's still time to help Scot Goes Pop continue through this general election year.  Donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE, although if you have a Paypal account, a better way to donate is by direct Paypal payment, because the funds are usually transferred instantly and fees can be eliminated altogether depending on the option you select from the menu.  My Paypal email address is:  jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

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.

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It's getting close to the last-chance saloon, but there's still time to help Scot Goes Pop continue through this general election year.  Donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE, although if you have a Paypal account, a better way to donate is by direct Paypal payment, because the funds are usually transferred instantly and fees can be eliminated altogether depending on the option you select from the menu.  My Paypal email address is:  jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

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

Since writing my previous post about Alba's enviable new position as holding the balance of power at Holyrood, I see that Stuart Campbell is trying to coax the party into voting against the SNP government when the vote of no confidence is held next week, even though "an extremely well-placed source" (very possibly meaning Alex Salmond himself) has told him that won't happen.  Mr Campbell is assuming that if he gets his way, the government will fall and an early election will be held.  I think that's a false premise - my guess is that the Greens will express their anger by abstaining on the vote, thus allowing the government to survive whatever Alba do.

But I can't be sure of that, so this is an important question, and it's taken me a little while to work out what I think about it.  I didn't even think an early election was a possibility until a few hours ago, so all of this is a completely new consideration.

I have argued repeatedly in favour of using an early election as a de facto independence referendum.  So really the question is whether forcing an early election in June (probably) would achieve that goal.  The answer is probably not.  It would depend on the SNP's own attitude, and with their famed over-caution, they would probably say "not this time, but maybe in 2026".  (Remember under the Scotland Act, an election will still take place in 2026 even if there is an early election this year.)  And they might even have a point just for once, because they would be starting so much on the back foot in a forced election right now that it wouldn't be the most promising circumstances to win independence.  A plebiscite election campaign needs at least a little bit of planning and preparation if it's going to succeed.

So if an early election in June isn't going to achieve independence, might it be a stepping stone to it by producing a breakthrough for Alba?  It's possible, but I suspect the odds are against it.  One of my internal battles within Alba, especially during my time on the NEC in 2021-22, has been to try to inject a degree of realism about where the party stands with the public, because I cannot see much evidence at all from opinion polls, or from the 2022 local elections, or from local council by-elections since 2022, that Alba have gained significant support since they fell well short of winning list seats in 2021.

Mr Campbell acknowledges that an early election might backfire for Alba by losing them their only seat, but he still argues that they have much less to lose than the SNP in 1979, who were defending 11 seats (they ended up losing 9).  But that misses the point about 1979 - the problem wasn't just the seats the SNP lost, it was also the fact that they set themselves up to take the blame for Mrs Thatcher coming to power.  If Alba are seen to be the decisive factor in forcing an election, and if an election produces a unionist majority (which on polling evidence is the most likely outcome), independence supporters might never forgive Alba for that, and the SNP won't be slow to issue constant reminders.

I suspect Alex Salmond's strategic mind will be telling him that if you gain the balance of power unexpectedly, you don't throw it away the very next week.  You keep what you've got and milk it for all it's worth for a while.  There may be a correct tactical moment to force an election before May 2026, but I doubt if it's right now.

Just one caveat, though: if an early election was bad for the SNP, it might be the only way of ejecting Humza Yousaf before the Westminster election, and a new leader might just save the independence movement's bacon at that Westminster election.  But sacrificing the movement at one election for an unproven chance of salvaging the movement's hopes at another election would be an incredibly risky game to play.

*  *  *

The most dangerous narrative for Humza Yousaf that is taking root today is that he "cannot be trusted".  If he needs a coalition partner after the next election, whenever it is held, the Greens are likely to laugh in his face, because they'd know that their position in government would never be secure.  Even if Yousaf says on a Wednesday that a coalition deal will be honoured, it could be scrapped without warning on the Thursday morning.  What's more, his SNP colleagues will know that the necessary trust can only be re-established with a new leader, so he's just made his own early departure even more likely.  For the life of me, I don't understand why he's made the decision unilaterally like this and taken all the blame - he could have been cannier by nudging the Greens towards voluntarily leaving government, perhaps by means of certain unpalatable ministerial appointments.  

*  *  *

There is one thing in the SNP's favour.  Unionist parties are forever telling us that a referendum would be too expensive, and is unwanted and unnecessary because "we've only just had one" (ie. a decade ago).  Well, an early election would cost money, wouldn't it?  It's unnecessary, isn't it, because we had one as recently as three years ago and there's going to be one in another two years anyway?  What's the difference, chaps?

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It's getting close to the last-chance saloon, but there's still time to help Scot Goes Pop continue through this general election year.  Donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE, although if you have a Paypal account, a better way to donate is by direct Paypal payment, because the funds are usually transferred instantly and fees can be eliminated altogether depending on the option you select from the menu.  My Paypal email address is:  jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

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:

SNP 63

Conservatives 31

Labour 22

Greens 7

Liberal Democrats 4

Alba 1

Presiding Officer 1

GOVERNMENT: 63

OPPOSITION: 65

Why has the coalition been ditched, and what now?

It's difficult to blog about something I don't fully understand.  One of the things that had defined Humza Yousaf's leadership was his cast-iron commitment to coalition with the Greens, and while there was certainly internal pressure within the SNP to ditch the coalition, that came mainly from quarters that Yousaf has always cheerfully ignored until now.  It seems unlikely that the Green leadership played any role in pulling the plug, because they had been engaged in brinkmanship to try to stop their membership from voting to walk away.  Yousaf may have calculated that Green members were highly likely to do just that and thus saw an opportunity to look decisive by getting in first, but if so, there must be a risk that such a sudden and unexpected dumping will poison relations between the SNP and the Greens for years to come, which could have ramifications for the independence cause and also make it harder to avert a Labour-Green (or Labour-Lib Dem-Green) coalition in future.  So answers on a postcard, really.

We'll now see whether the theory that the Greens were a major drag on SNP support had any validity.  I suspect it was wildly exaggerated but there may have been a small grain of truth in it, and even clawing back 1% of support could make a difference in a tight election.  In other circumstances I might be worried about the Greens taking revenge by putting up lots of candidates against the SNP and splitting the Yes vote, but weirdly they had seemed hellbent on doing that anyway.

One benefit we may see is within the 'pro-indy establishment', which extends to small bits of the media and to non-party organisations.  A majority pro-independence government including the Greens but excluding other small pro-indy parties provided cover for the Greens to be given a special status by the pro-indy establishment.  But now that the Greens are an opposition pro-indy party, just like Alba, there may be a balancing-up effect.

No, Sarwar does not lead Yousaf on "best First Minister" polling - that was last month

This is a rare example of me rushing to defend Humza Yousaf, but an element of 'professional pride' kicks in whenever I see Wings deceive his readers about opinion polls - 

"Anas Sarwar is preferred by voters as the next FM (the stat that really tells you who’s going to win elections), but only by a solitary point over the hapless and beleaguered Yousaf – who’s barely enjoyed a single good day in his year-and-a-bit in charge."

That's not true.  Mr Campbell is referring to the March edition of the monthly Redfield & Wilton poll, which showed Sarwar move ahead of Yousaf on the head-to-head "best First Minister" question for the first time, but that result is now out of date.  The April poll showed Yousaf resume his lead.

At this moment, which of the following individuals do you think would be the better First Minister of Scotland? (Redfield & Wilton, 6th-7th April 2024)

Humza Yousaf 35% (+4)

Anas Sarwar 30% (-2)

Nevertheless, Yousaf's leadership is on the ropes due to the fact he represents the Continuity Sturgeon faction, which is an increasingly tarnished brand for extremely obvious reasons. Out of curiosity, I asked my Twitter followers yesterday who they want to be the next SNP leader, and the results were startling - 

Stephen Flynn 62.2%

Kate Forbes 29.4%

Angus Robertson 4.3%

Mairi McAllan 4.1%

I have to say I disagree with that.  We were all impressed by Stephen Flynn when he took on the Speaker, but I still think Kate Forbes is the most voter-friendly option the SNP have, and there's polling evidence to demonstrate that.  The idea floated in the press at the weekend of a joint ticket with Forbes as leader and Flynn as deputy might well be the way to go.  

As for the other idea floated in the press, that the continuity faction will play a slightly longer game in the hope of installing either Mairi McAllan or Jenny Gilruth, words fail me.  McAllan is not ready for the top job yet, and I'm not sure on what planet Gilruth will ever be ready for it.

The case against a small political party treating its own members as the enemy

As regular readers will remember, I was elected at the start of the year to a working group which is reviewing the Alba Party's constitution.  For confidentiality reasons I can't give a running commentary on the progress of that, but obviously having been involved in the process for a few weeks, I've become much more exposed to the main arguments against having a fully-fledged internal party democracy.  In view of that, I think it might be helpful to post an updated version of my own arguments in favour of democratisation, because ultimately it's rank-and-file members who will decide what happens.

First of all, a party which regards its own members with extreme suspicion and constantly tries to work out how to 'protect itself' from them is not in a good place.  What actually is a political party if not its members?  I suppose the alternative conception of a party is as a vehicle for a self-selecting leadership elite who may take members along for the ride but will never cede any real control to them.  That would be analagous to the way in which the powers of the House of Lords were previously used to protect the aristocracy from the voting masses.  It might be fine if the project a party represents is inspiring enough that people are willing to join simply to be part of a passive fan club, but my guess is that if Alba is to thrive, both existing members and potential new members will be looking for a lot more than that.  The problem is that Alba is mainly seeking converts from the SNP, and the obvious question is why would anyone leave a large party of power, one that denies its members much of a say, to join a much smaller party that also denies its members much of a say?  Where is the incentive?  Wouldn't you just think you might as well stick with the larger party which is actually in government?

There's also a really striking paradox in simultaneously saying that the leader should be trusted but the members should not be (because they might be a bunch of filthy infilitrators or whatever).  If you to try to protect the party from its own members (which again I think is a contradiction in terms) by substituting internal democracy with a system of patronage and leadership control, you're then putting all your eggs in one basket, because you're forgetting that the party leader himself is directly elected by precisely those awful members who you regard with such suspicion.  If the members are potential infiltrators who can't be trusted to elect the NEC or other committees, there clearly must be a fair chance that they will install an interloper as leader - and then having spurned the opportunity to introduce a democratic system of checks and balances, you'll be powerless to resist the absolute control of that one person.  That's exactly how the Sturgeon leadership of the SNP, once it had its feet under the table, was able to essentially ditch independence and replace it with an identity politics agenda.

It also does matter whether all party members are allowed to take decisions or only a tiny minority of members.  Alba's Conference Committee is an extremely powerful committee acting as a veto on issues reaching the floor of conference, which is supposed to be the body through which members exercise supreme control over the party.  In other words, members can only exercise control over the party via conference if they first have control over the Conference Committee - and they don't. The idea that party members are somehow in control of the Conference Committee because everyone on the Conference Committee is a party member is a bit like saying the system of rotten boroughs empowered the populace because the tiny number of people who could vote in them were all citizens.

Given its massive gatekeeping power, the case for the Conference Committee being directly elected by all party members is overwhelming. And any political party which uses its disciplinary machinery to suppress dissent among members must give members direct control over the composition of the committees which make the decisions on disciplinary matters.  That seems to me to be an indispensable safeguard, and without it individual members are helpless to protect themselves from arbitrary ill-treatment at the hands of an over-powerful leadership.

Last but not least, I never cease to be astounded that in the 21st Century people are still making the argument that the franchise for internal party elections should be restricted to a tiny minority of knowledgeable or experienced members, on the grounds that the wrong people will be elected otherwise.  That's essentially identical to arguing that the vast bulk of the public are too stupid or uneducated to be allowed to vote in general elections.  Nobody would ever dream of making that argument about elections to public office, so why it suddenly becomes OK in the context of the internal structures of a political party is beyond me.

On the whole, it would be a relief if the Greens withdraw from the coalition

As long-term readers may recall, I initially supported the idea of an SNP-Green coalition after the 2021 election.  The unionist establishment and media were rather implausibly arguing at the time that the SNP falling one seat short of an overall majority somehow tarnished the mandate for an independence referendum, and it seemed to me that putting together a government with a clear parliamentary majority comprised of two parties that both had commitments to independence and to a referendum in their manifestos was a powerful way of making the point that the mandate was in fact watertight.  There was also quite a bit of harmony between the SNP and Greens on non-independence matters, and although I passionately disagreed with both parties on some of those points of harmony, it seemed to me there was no harm in the independence movement benefiting from a strong basis for cooperation.

However, that logic only held true if the Scottish Government was actually going to do something about independence during this five-year parliamentary term.  Clearly they intend to instead let yet another mandate expire, in which case the underscoring of how clear the mandate is no longer has any great relevance, and all we're really left with are the downsides of the Bute House Agreement.  Fergus Ewing is probably overstating the case when he says the public will heavily punish the SNP for association with the "extremist" Greens, but it's undoubtedly the case that the agreement has left the SNP with far less flexibility than they otherwise would have had in reacting to disquiet on a whole range of policies the public have found objectionable or irritating.

It therefore ought to be something of a relief for SNP members if the Greens do the hard part for them by breaking off the agreement.  That's probably the only way it would ever happen, although it's unlikely to happen even that way given that Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater sound extremely keen to be allowed to remain in ministerial office.

The one caveat I'd add is that there is - amazingly - one key policy on which I think the Greens are completely right, and both the SNP and my own party Alba are completely wrong.  That's the Green opposition to the heavily ideological (some would say "woowoo-based") Nordic Model on prostitution law.  Although that subject is excluded from the Bute House Agreement, it's probably fair to say that Green involvement in government has helpfully put the brakes on any move towards introducing the Nordic Model in Scotland.  But that benefit perhaps isn't enough to outweigh the bigger picture.

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It's getting close to the last-chance saloon, but there's still time to help Scot Goes Pop continue through this general election year.  Donations can be made via the fundraiser page HERE, although if you have a Paypal account, a better way to donate is by direct Paypal payment, because the funds are usually transferred instantly and fees can be eliminated altogether depending on the option you select from the menu.  My Paypal email address is:  jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

The Murrell development is no cause for celebration - but there may be a silver lining

Of all places, I was at the AGM of Alba North Lanarkshire when the news broke about Peter Murrell last night.  Understandably, a touch of schadenfreude rippled through the group, but personally I didn't feel any cause for rejoicing. As an independence movement, we need the SNP to get out of jail at the general election, and the prosecution of Murrell (especially the timing of it) makes that harder.

On the plus side, a recovery for the SNP is likely to depend on the toppling of the continuity Sturgeon faction, and that also now becomes much more likely - but the problem is that there just doesn't yet seem to be any interest in striking against Humza Yousaf before the general election, so the reckoning may come too late to avoid the worst of the damage.

There's an interesting 'levelling of the score' here, though.  Immediately after Alex Salmond stepped down as SNP leader, the perception was that he remained extremely influential as his successor's mentor.  It would have seemed unthinkable that under that successor's watch, he would come to be regarded with hostility by many SNP members.  That ultimately happened because of his prosecution, even though he was acquitted.  Logically, now that there's been a prosecution within the heart of the former Sturgeon leadership, the SNP membership will start to distance themselves psychologically and emotionally from Sturgeon, just as they did with Salmond before her, even though she had remained popular and influential immediately after her resignation.  There may then be an opportunity for the SNP to finally escape from the baggage of the Salmond-Sturgeon war, and emerge with a fresh leadership that has no special loyalty to either clan.

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Ah, my devoted stalker from Somerset, launching his 928,745th unprovoked attack on me on Twitter.  Bless him.

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:

1x "Westminster bad!"
2x "Please give us money!"
1x "Bradford gangs and Thames Water!" 😳🤷‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/LnS92YM8IV

— Wings Over Scotland (@WingsScotland) April 19, 2024

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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If you'd like to help Scot Goes Pop continue through this general election year, donations are welcome HERE.

Alternatively, direct donations can be made via Paypal.  My Paypal email address is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

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

In many ways, Scot Goes Pop has been going from strength to strength in recent months.  The number of page views in March was higher than in any month since the Holyrood election month of May 2021.  OK, page view stats can be confounded by bots and so on, but it's a rough guide, and of course the number of comments on many recent posts has been staggeringly high, sometimes exceeding 300.

However, the general fundraiser for 2024 has so far fallen well short of its target.  You might remember that I said at some point last year that if the fundraising fell short, I would just carry on with the blog for as long as I possibly could and then stop.  I'm getting very close to reaching that point now.  Our political opponents may sneer about "grifting" but the reality is that I've been living on a shoestring for the last three years and lurching from mini-crisis to mini-crisis.  It's about just barely staying afloat, not about buying luxury yachts.

As I always say, writing Scot Goes Pop is not a full-time job and I have other sources of income (although fewer than in pre-pandemic times).  But it is the equivalent of an extremely time-consuming part-time job, and to drop everything when a new poll comes out requires time and flexibility.  I know there are some people who think it should be possible to be a prolific blogger as a sort of hobby or 'personal contribution', but all I would say is try it and see how far you get.  Eventually you'll run out of time or money or both.  I can think of at least two high-profile political bloggers who once made a virtue out of the fact that they would never accept donations but who ended up doing exactly that.  It's not about being hypocritical, it's just about learning from experience.

(Incidentally, I know I didn't drop everything on Monday to blog about the Norstat poll when it came out, but that was partly because there was an extremely lengthy Alba committee meeting that required a lot of preparation.)

I recently had a bracing chat with a family member who basically told me that the game was up.  She said she admired the way I had made Scot Goes Pop work for so many years, but that the political situation had changed through no fault of my own, and I had no choice but to move on and spend my time on other things, because sufficient funding was never going to be forthcoming now.  What she was getting at was the so-called "scunnered middle" problem.  In other words, Scot Goes Pop used to attract funding from across the independence movement, but now I'm caught between two stools.  SNP leadership loyalists are annoyed at me for joining Alba three years ago, but the more radical elements don't necessarily give me any credit for joining Alba, because I don't believe the SNP should be totally destroyed or whatever.  The funding base has therefore narrowed to those in the "scunnered middle", or to those who disagree with me on some points but who value a plurality of views in the pro-indy alternative media.

I want to prove my family member wrong, but it's getting close to the last chance saloon.  The frustration is that if everybody who reads this blog over the next week donated just £2, the problem would be solved instantly, but of course the world doesn't work that way.

If you'd like to see Scot Goes Pop continue during general election year, the fundraiser page can be found HERE. 

However, if you have a Paypal account, a better way to donate is by direct Paypal payment, because the payment usually comes through instantly and fees can be eliminated altogether depending on the option you select from the menu.  My Paypal email address is:  jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

I know a small number of people prefer direct bank transfer, and if you'd like to do that please email me and I'll send you the details.  My contact email address is different from my Paypal address and can be found on my Twitter profile or in the sidebar of this blog (desktop version of the site only).

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.

Scottish voting intentions for the next UK general election:

SNP 32% (-1)

Labour 32% (-4)

Conservatives 16% (-)

Liberal Democrats 9% (+2)

Reform UK 5% (+1)

Greens 4% (n/a)

Alba 2% (n/a)

Labour going from a three point lead to level-pegging may look like possible margin of error noise, but it's worth pointing out that the Greens and Alba were not offered as options for Westminster in the previous Norstat poll (even though Reform UK were), so assuming a lot of the Alba and Green respondents would have plumped for the SNP in the previous poll, the trend may be even better than it looks.

Should Scotland be an independent country?

Yes 47% (-3)

No 53% (+3)

Scottish Parliament constituency vote:

SNP 35% (-1)

Labour 30% (-1) 

Conservatives 17% (+1)

Liberal Democrats 10% (+3)

Greens 5% (-)

Scottish Parliament regional list ballot:

SNP 28% (-2)

Labour 25% (-4)

Conservatives 19% (-)

Liberal Democrats 10% (+3)

Greens 9% (-)

Reform UK 4% (+2)

Alba 3% (-)

More on Craig Murray and dual party loyalties

It's rather timely in view of my previous post that Craig Murray has now written a blogpost setting out more details about his plans to stand for the Workers Party of Britain in Blackburn, even though he is a member of the Alba Party.  Now, as I've done before, I want to make clear that I am not in any way having a go at Craig - I think Alba should absolutely be flexible and tolerant enough to allow one of its members to stand for another party in England.  But I also want to ensure that other Alba members can expect similar levels of flexibility and tolerance in equivalent situations, and that unwritten "special rules" that benefit certain prominent individuals should apply to all, so that they can be of benefit to all.

This is the crucial part of what Craig has said -

"Secondly, I talked it over with Alex Salmond before I accepted to stand in Blackburn. I have not left the Alba Party. Alex and I mutually agreed that at this election it would be better for me not to stand for Alba in Scotland, as that would give the unionist press an opportunity to continue to muck-rake over the lawfare to which we had been subjected.

Thirdly, George Galloway has declared that he no longer will participate in the Independence debate in Scotland.

I have also seen it reported that the Workers’ Party will not stand candidates in Scotland. That will need to be worked through, but at the minimum I expect we can reach an agreement they will not stand anywhere against the Alba Party, which would render my own position impossible. As Alba is only planning to stand in up to 16 constituencies this should not be difficult."

That latter point is not sufficient according to the Alba constitution.  Annex F of the constitution is entitled "Membership Rules" and Section 6 of that annex is entitled "Membership of Other Parties and Organisations".  It reads - 

"6.1 A member who is a member of another party registered as a political party with the Electoral Commission in the Great Britain register and intending to contest elections in Scotland is regarded as being a member of a political party expected to contest elections in opposition to the Party. A member in this situation ceases to be a member."

That leaves no room for doubt - if a party intends to stand anywhere in Scotland, you can't be a member of that party at the same time as being a member of Alba.  It doesn't matter whether Craig cuts a deal with George Galloway so that the Workers Party commits itself to only stand in Scottish seats where there is no Alba candidate - their involvement in those other seats would still render them "a political party expected to contest elections in opposition to the Party" according to the Alba constitution.  It's plain from Craig's words that he does not yet have a high level of confidence that the Workers Party of Britain will defy their own name to in future become an England-and-Wales-only party - he's "seen it reported" that they will not stand candidates in Scotland, but it sounds like he hasn't heard it from the horse's mouth and doesn't fully believe it, which is unsurprising given that the Workers Party's registration on the Electoral Commission website clearly states that it stands candidates in Scotland.

People have argued in BTL comments on this blog that all of this is a moot point because Craig has not technically become a member of the Workers Party of Britain yet, although he'll have to at some point between now and the general election.  However, based on specific examples from past experience, I strongly suspect that if an Alba member (who is not Craig Murray or someone similarly prominent or well-connected) had been selected to stand as a candidate for an anti-independence party which is registered with the Electoral Commission as standing candidates in Scotland, that person would have been immediately interpreted to have "publicly resigned from the Alba Party" and would thus effectively have been banned from the party until and unless the NEC lifted that ban.

Again, to be clear, I am not arguing for that to happen to Craig and I don't think it should.  But I do want to see all Alba members benefit from the same type of tolerance, and if that means a blind eye being turned to bad rules, as is undoubtedly happening in Craig's case, so be it.

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.

Poll of Polls: Support for independence stands at 49.6% so far this year

We're now over one-quarter of our way through general election year (no, I don't buy the notion that Sunak will cling on until January 2025), and the independence movement obviously finds itself in a very challenging situation because the SNP are in real danger of losing the majority they hold among Scottish seats at Westminster.  However, it's worth drawing breath and taking stock of the other side of the coin - ie. just how extraordinarily strongly the support for independence is holding up as the SNP have slipped back.

As far as I can see, there have been nine independence polls so far in 2024, and no fewer than three have shown a Yes majority.  The other six have shown only modest No leads that have never exceeded 53-47.  Crucially, the three Yes majority polls came from three different firms, so no-one can dismiss it as being a house effect from one "dodgy firm".  And, indeed, the only telephone poll of the year so far has shown Yes ahead.

The average of the nine polls works out as - 

With Don't Knows left in:

Yes 45.1%

No 45.8%

With Don't Knows stripped out:

Yes 49.6%

No 50.4%

Wow.  So by any standard we'll have something to work with if we can just somehow get out of jail at the general election.

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If you can, please help Scot Goes Pop continue with a full-fat service throughout this crucial election year.  The 2024 fundraiser has received three very generous donations recently, and a million thanks to everyone who has contributed so far.  But we're still a long way from the target figure.  Donations by card can be made via the fundraiser page HERE, but if you have a Paypal account, the preferable way to donate is by direct Paypal payment, because that way the funds are usually transferred instantly and fees can be eliminated completely depending on which option you select from the menu.  My Paypal email address is:  jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk