Saturday, November 9, 2024

Alba's internal democracy suffers another severe blow

Just over a year ago, I was one of four candidates who took part in the internal election for the Alba Party's Membership Support Convener. The other three were the incumbent Jacqueline Bijster, the former senior civil servant Daniel Jack, and the young activist Scott Fallon.  As with all of the other office bearer elections, it eventually descended into total chaos when the leadership suddenly decided to nullify the results just minutes before they were due to be announced.  But even before that, there had been an incident of controversy.

Prior to the vote opening, Jacqueline Bijster sent out an email to members in her capacity as incumbent which made reference to the election.  The party leadership reacted with absolute fury, arguing that this was a clear attempt on her part to abuse the advantages of office to skew the outcome.  They then took an extraordinary level of 'remedial action' - Chris McEleny sent an email to all party members listing the names of the other three candidates (ie. myself, Mr Jack and Mr Fallon), but omitting Ms Bijster's name. The three of us were also invited to write a short pitch in support of our candidacies, which was sent to all party members in a separate email, again without any pitch from Ms Bijster.

My initial reaction to all of this was one of bemusement. In fact I directly told Alex Salmond (on what I think was the last occasion I spoke to him before he died) that I had no great problem with what Ms Bijster did.  I agreed that her email gave her an advantage in the election, and I even agreed that may have been her motivation for sending it, but I pointed out that the incumbent was bound to have an in-built advantage due to their right to send out official emails under their name during their whole year in office.  One more email seemed to me to be neither here nor there, and the whole thing seemed like a total over-reaction.

As always in these situations, things were not quite as they seemed.  I discovered months later that the reason for the leadership's reaction was not a zealous commitment to free and fair elections, but instead that they had turned against Ms Bijster (for reasons that were not entirely clear), and wanted to use the election to get her replaced by Daniel Jack.  There were one or two steps taken to boost Mr Jack's profile at the right moment, and I gather Ms Bijster clocked what was going on and was savvy enough to realise that it wasn't just the leadership who had the in-built ability to push one particular candidate forward - she could do the same thing for herself. Essentially what the leadership objected to was that she had been streetwise enough to fight back against their own tactics extremely effectively.

But on the face of it, the leadership were saying that internal elections have to be scrupulously fair and that all candidates must have an absolutely equal opportunity to put their case.  Contrast that with the extraordinary email that was sent to Alba members yesterday.  For a second year in a row, the internal elections have been cancelled, but this time they've been replaced by a straight Yes/No plebiscite on allowing all current executive members to extend their term of office for around six months.  The email went on to expand at length on how uniquely suitable the current executive is and to exhort members to vote Yes for an extension.

So where is the scrupulous fairness in this plebiscite?  Where is the balancing email from those who don't support an extension and giving them an equal opportunity to set out the reasons why?  I've pointed out a number of times over the last year that the Alba leadership has become increasingly authoritarian, and I'm afraid this is another example of that.  The replacement of fully-fledged elections with plebiscites is, let's be honest, a classic tactic of authoritarian regimes down the ages (General Pinochet, for example) as they seek to give themselves a veneer of legitimacy.  I'd say a good rule of thumb is that if the purpose of a vote is not to give members a genuine choice, but instead an exercise in theatrics to give the appearance of legitimacy to a decision that has already been taken, then you have crossed a Rubicon and moved away from democracy.  It's quite clear that members are 'required' to vote Yes in this plebiscite, not least because there doesn't seem to be any meaningful alternative proposition - no explanation is given in the email of what would actually happen if there is a No vote.  The unspoken challenge to members is "you're not going to vote for a void, are you?"

I have no doubt whatsoever that the leadership will get their desired North Korean style 95%+ Yes vote.  However, if I had a vote myself (and I don't because I've been arbitrarily suspended from the party at Chris McEleny's personal whim for the last month and a half), I would vote No. I would do that as a matter of principle to object to yet another departure from democratic norms, but I would also do it because I frankly don't think the current executive have a collective record that warrants the confidence of members for a six-month extension.  The last year has seen numerous abuses of the party's disciplinary machinery to crack down on freedom of speech, and although that is not directly the fault of executive members, they are the only people with the power to rein in the General Secretary and the Party Chair when they act inappropriately, and they have signally failed to do so.  They have also presided over numerous blatant breaches of the party constitution - not just my own unconstitutional removal from a directly elected position on a committee, but also the appointments of Suzanne Blackley and Ash Regan to replace office bearers when under the terms of the constitution those positions should have automatically gone to the runners-up in the relevant elections (Abdul Majid and Heather McLean respectively). To be clear, I'm making these criticisms of the executive on a collective basis, because a collective extension is being sought.  It may well be that individual executive members have tried to do the right thing but were voted down.

I know some will argue that these are special circumstances and that the plebiscite is a one-off.  But it's only a year since there were other special circumstances that supposedly justified the one-off nullification of election results.  This is becoming a bit of a habit.  What will be the special circumstances next year?  What will be the deviation from democratic norms next year?  My own view is that Alex Salmond's tragic death does justify the postponement of the internal elections, but that postponement should have been no more than a few weeks and there should have been no question of a dodgy 'managed plebiscite' to justify anything longer than that.

Friday, November 8, 2024

A belated update on the recent Norstat poll: it showed the pro-independence vote slightly above 50%

First of all, I have an article at The National about the 'Super Thursday' local by-election results in Scotland, and in particular about Reform UK's good showing in them.  You can read the piece HERE.

On another subject, I realised earlier this afternoon that I had somehow overlooked the fact that the recent Norstat poll contained independence numbers, and I know KC would never forgive me if I didn't give them a mention.  They are pretty remarkable.  

Should Scotland be an independent country? (Norstat, 30th October - 1st November 2024)

Yes 50% (+2)
No 50% (-2)

Better still, if rounded to one decimal place, the results are Yes 50.3%, No 49.7%, which means that on one measure, both of the two most recent polls on independence (from Find Out Now and Norstat respectively) have shown a Yes majority.

There are also Westminster voting intention numbers, which show Labour haven't been spared the same slump that they suffered on the Holyrood figures...

Scottish voting intentions for the next UK general election:

SNP 30% (+1)
Labour 23% (-9)
Conservatives 15% (+3)
Reform UK 14% (+2)
Liberal Democrats 10% (+2)
Greens 6% (+1)
Alba 2% (-)

*  *  *

There was a flurry of comments a couple of threads back claiming that Alba's 9% vote share in the Inverclyde West by-election cost the SNP victory.  That's not the case, and I think people were forgetting that the election wasn't conducted under first-past-the-post.  Alba voters had the opportunity, if they wished, to have their votes transferred to the SNP after the Alba candidate was eliminated, and 43% of them took that opportunity, which in fact was more than enough to push the SNP into the lead at Stage 3, although Labour then jumped back into first place after the Tory votes were redistributed and broke overwhelmingly in the predictable direction.

Labour get almighty fright as SNP come within a whisker of shock victory in Inverclyde West by-election

America, eat your heart out, because it was Super Thursday in Scotland yesterday - well over 1% of the country's local government wards were going to the polls to elect a councillor in by-elections. First up we have Gourock, officially known as Inverclyde West...

Inverclyde West by-election result on first preference votes (7th November 2024):

Labour 34.0% (+7.9)
SNP 33.7% (+7.1)
Conservatives 15.2% (+5.7)
Alba 8.7% (+6.1)
Reform UK 8.4% (n/a)

The SNP have not won this election, but I don't think it can be overstated what a good result this is for them.  It's not so much the increase in their vote share, because that can be explained by the absence of the independent candidates from 2022.  It's more the lack of any swing of note from the SNP to Labour, even though the baseline is an election in which the SNP were 12.3 points ahead of Labour nationally.  This result, for what it's worth, is consistent with the SNP being around 11.5 points ahead across Scotland, putting them in landslide territory, at least in Westminster terms.

It's also fair to say the SNP would probably have topped the first preference vote in the ward if it hadn't been for Alba's intervention, although they perhaps still wouldn't have won after transfers.

From memory, I think Alba's 9% of the vote may be their best ever showing in a local government ward - my recollection is that the previous record was 8% for Kamran Butt in the Southside Central ward in 2022.  (Butt famously defected to the SNP only a few days later.)  In recent weeks, they seem to have finally got the hang of local by-elections and have had a string of relatively decent results, particularly where they were able to run a former councillor from the area, as they were in this case.  But there's a double-edged sword here, because the leadership will hype up this result to boost morale among members and to convince them that the party is marching towards list seats, which national polls suggest is simply not the case.  Alba is actually flatlining on the sort of vote share that left them well short of list seats in 2021, and that problem can't be overcome with the type of bubble campaigning that is proving effective in local by-elections.  The party needs to make some fundamental changes to broaden its national support base, and a false belief among members that all in the garden is rosy could prevent that process from even starting.

Fraserburgh & District by-election result on first preferences votes (7th November 2024):

Conservatives 36.3% (+3.9)
SNP 28.4% (+8.4)
Reform UK 25.9% (n/a)
Liberal Democrats 7% (+2.2)
Scottish Family Party 2.3% (+1.3)

The SNP's 8.3% increase isn't as good as it looks, because a substantial chunk of the vote went to independent candidates last time around, which explains why all parties have had a boost.  But nevertheless, the SNP are the second biggest beneficiary out of five, so that's a pretty solid outcome, and they didn't fall all that far short of overhauling the Tories for what would have been a shock victory.

We've recently got used to strong Reform UK showings in by-elections, but 26% is extraordinarily high, and if this is a sign of what is happening in traditional Tory areas, there could be carnage at the Holyrood election.

More results to follow...

Thursday, November 7, 2024

I have now been arbitrarily suspended from the Alba Party for *44 days* purely at the whim of Chris McEleny - and with no end to this Kafkaesque process in sight

Today is a big day for the Alba Party's General Secretary, Chris McEleny, because he's standing as his party's candidate in the Gourock by-election.  So this may be as good a day as any to post an update on my own personal situation, which was set in train at Mr McEleny's whim rather a long time ago now.  By my calculation, it is now 44 days since he unilaterally suspended my party membership, a decision which he justified with extremely vague objections about the contents of posts on this blog and also unspecified posts on social media (presumably Twitter, because that's the only social media presence I have at the moment).  

The suspension is supposedly "pending a disciplinary hearing", but that has still not taken place.  It was originally set for 17th October, but it was indefinitely postponed after Alex Salmond's sudden death, and I have heard nothing since.  Now, I have no problem with the fact that a postponement was inevitable - everybody needed space to grieve.  But what I absolutely *do* have a problem with is the fact that my arbitrary suspension remains in force at Mr McEleny's whim during this increasingly lengthy delay, even though I am still being charged on a monthly basis for a party membership I do not actually have (I'm blocked from even viewing the contents of the party website).  I'm not the first Alba member that Mr McEleny has casually left in purgatory in this way, and on those previous occasions there was no satisfactory explanation.

I would also note that the need for time and space to grieve has not precluded Mr McEleny and his supporters from running a full-throated by-election campaign in Gourock.  I would suggest that if it's got to the point where a by-election campaign is perfectly feasible, a disciplinary hearing should also be perfectly feasible.

Mr McEleny has totally ignored almost every email I've sent him during this Kafkaesque process.  However, I know he monitors this blog, so let me say this to him directly.  The situation you have created is totally unacceptable.  It was unacceptable right from the start, but it's even more so after *44 days*.  Please resolve it in one of the two following ways.  Either - 

a) Lift my arbitrary suspension

or

b) Immediately set a new date in the near future for the disciplinary hearing

And if you refuse to do either of those things, at the very least stop charging me for my "membership" and refund me for the last two months.  Many thanks.

Wednesday, November 6, 2024

The Reverend is in want of a wife...sorry, CLOCK

So make that 27,544.  Yes, thrillingly, the "Reverend" nipped away from his MAGA celebration party for a few seconds today to post a response on Twitter to my blogpost of last night.

"I wondered how he'd handle Trump's win, and I wasn't disappointed. I'd quite like to see the half-hour head-shaking, though."

Campbell seems as pleased as punch with that riposte, so it's almost a shame to have to spoil it by pointing out the obvious logical problem, but I fear I must.  You see, if he had bothered checking the time-stamp on my blogpost, he'd know that I published it at 11.14pm last night, meaning I wrote it before any exit poll had been released or any results at all had come in.  In other words, nobody had a clue at that point who was going to be elected President (apart from Rory Stewart who knew it was going to be Kamala Harris), and my blogpost therefore had nothing whatever to do with how I "handled Trump's win", which didn't happen until several hours later.

It's fascinating, though, that Campbell so clearly imagines himself to be "gloating" about Trump's victory, because that removes any remaining sliver of doubt about one of the points I made last night.  Yes, Campbell would have voted for Trump if he was an American citizen, and yes, he was sitting there last night willing Trump to win, which is certainly not something the vast majority of the people of Scotland were doing.  What's more, his excuse for supporting Trump is something to do with "women's rights", which is curious, given that Trump's hand-picked vice-president believes that the sole function of women is to have children, and that their lives are worthless if they do not.

Give Campbell his due, though, he's on a bit of a roll in 2024.  He wanted pro-independence parties in Scotland to lose at the general election, and he got what he wanted, albeit narrowly.  (And that includes the Alba Party, of course - he told his readers to reject Alba and to vote for unionist parties instead.)  He wanted Trump to have another four years as US President, and now he's got that too.  I'm quite open that I see very little comfort in the results of either the general election or the US presidential election, but there is one small entertaining aspect to it - and that will be watching Campbell over the coming years having to own the consequences of getting the election results he wanted on both sides of the Atlantic.

Adjusting to the Trump restoration

For the reasons I set out in my blogpost last night before the results came in, it's no exaggeration to say that Donald Trump's return to the White House is a setback for humanity.  However, in these situations you have to cling to the positives, and this is what I've come up with - 

* American moral leadership of the 'free world' will at the very least be on pause for the next four years, meaning it will no longer be so easy for European governments to reflexively support whatever nasty stuff the US wants.  Think about the repugnant coordinated withdrawal of funds from UNRWA a few months ago to distract from the ICJ's ruling against Israel.  If the UK were to participate in a stunt like that again, Starmer would pay a heavy political price for doing Trump's bidding.

* The Democrats are not going to be rewarded for facilitating genocide.  OK, there's going to be a pro-genocide president anyway, so in a sense it makes no difference, but there would have been something almost despair-inducing about progressives having been successfully browbeaten into producing an election-winning majority on the basis of "shut up and understand why the mass killing of Palestinians is necessary", as per Bill Clinton's disgraceful speech.

* Although one of my biggest concerns is about the American nuclear arsenal being under the control of an unstable narcissist, there is a counter-argument, which is that Trump's win will probably bring the Ukraine war to an end as a stalemate, and confrontation with Russia will actually become less likely as a result.

* For us non-fans of NATO, it's hard to see how this is anything other than a setback for that alliance.  NATO will probably not break up but it could well go into a sort of deep freeze.

* The left in other countries will not be able to use Kamala Harris as a template, which would have been a thoroughly dismal prospect.

* Rory Stewart is the shame of "the Middleland" this morning.

Tuesday, November 5, 2024

A brief reply to Stuart Campbell's latest bizarre attack on me *for voting against Donald Trump*

While we wait for the early exit polls, I just thought I'd briefly address the 27,543rd unprovoked attack on me from my crazed Somerset-based stalker, because this time he's angry with me for voting against Donald Trump.  Seriously.

"You know what's so wretched about this? There's *not one word* about what Harris would do to the rights of women, LGB people and vulnerable children. Women simply *never even figured in his thought process for a moment*."

So Campbell told people to vote unionist at the general election, he openly admits he would abstain in any new independence referendum, and now it turns out he would have voted for Donald Trump if he was American. Did anyone ever doubt it?

If I was even going to try to form a serious response to Campbell's rant, I would start by shaking my head in total disbelief for at least half an hour.  What do you even say to the guy?  There is an apocalypse going on in Gaza and it is only happening because of US government support.  I have been racked with guilt for the last three weeks because I have cast a vote for a vice-president who is literally facilitating genocide in real time.  But I did it because I was trying to be responsible due to the future of the world being at stake on two counts: a) a Trump win would put the world's second-largest nuclear arsenal in the hands of an unstable narcissist, which could in the worst case scenario lead to the sudden end of human civilisation, and b) a Trump win would stall any action on the climate emergency for four years, which is time we simply don't have.

So, frankly, I make no apology for the fact that the three rather important issues that have been at the forefront of my thoughts as I made my decision were genocide, nuclear annihilation and the climate emergency.  Campbell, of course, believes I should instead have been thinking about the trans issue, because that's the only issue in the entire f****** universe he actually cares about.  (Not "women", incidentally, who he doesn't give a toss about - if he did he'd realise that most people who care about women's rights voted for Harris due to the overturning of Roe v Wade.)

Stuart, sod off, you small-minded, obsessed little man.  My gender critical views are on the record and well-known, but if you think that's going to lead me to flirt with soft fascism, you can just take a hike.

Who will win today's US presidential election?

The answer is, of course, that I don't have a scooby. If the statistical experts who devote their lives to studying this question say the race is as hard to read as a coin toss (and they do), nobody else has got much of a prayer. And I say that with all due respect to the blessed Rory Stewart, who is claiming certain knowledge that Kamala Harris will win by miles, probably because he thinks it will help his punditry career if he's guessed correctly, and that everyone will swiftly forget he ever made a prediction otherwise.  We won't, Rory.  The people of "the Middleland" never forget.

I do have a few observations, though.  The betting exchanges currently say Donald Trump has a 62% chance of winning the election, but that Kamala Harris has a 76% chance of winning the national popular vote.  They also say there is a 60% chance that whoever wins the popular vote will carry the electoral college.  That sounds like a contradiction, but isn't - the 24% chance that Trump will win the popular vote is an important component of his percentage chance of winning overall.

The national polls in this campaign have been strikingly similar to 2016 in the sense that Donald Trump has been a bit behind in most of them.  And yet in 2016 that translated into Hillary Clinton being the strong favourite on the betting exchanges, whereas this time punters are assuming that a small Harris lead in the popular vote will translate into a Trump win in the electoral college.  Could that be a case of learning the wrong lesson from history? Having been burnt before by the incorrect assumption that a Democrat popular vote win would translate into overall victory, they're assuming the same thing is bound to happen again, whereas in fact the relationship between the popular vote and electoral college numbers is much more unpredictable than that?

Well, maybe, although there has been a key change in US politics in recent years, which is that Florida has transitioned from being a toss-up state to being an almost solid Republican state.  That means more than 5% of electoral college votes, which were firmly in play for the Democrats in previous tight elections, have now been practically taken out of the game completely.  So it might not be unreasonable to assume at this stage that the electoral college is genuinely and reliably skewed in Trump's favour.  I had guessed the change in Florida was probably due to anti-communist or anti-Maduro immigrants from Cuba and Venezuela, but apparently it's more to do with anti-lockdown Republicans moving to Florida over the course of the pandemic.

Punters also have state polls with which to judge the interplay between the national popular vote and electoral college outcome, although that brings us to the issue of poll 'herding', ie. poll companies deliberately tweaking their methodology to ensure their results are similar to their competitors, to reduce risk and ensure they all stand or fall together.  That leaves open the possibility that if the polls are wrong, they could all be wrong by quite some distance.  One theory is that the overturning of Roe v Wade is motivating liberal women to vote in record numbers, and that the polls aren't picking that up.  But so far that's no more than an untested theory.

During election night in 2016 (and something very similar happened in our own EU referendum six months earlier) there was an extraordinary window of opportunity of an hour or two to make a killing on the betting exchanges, because it was obvious from the actual results that Trump was the likely winner, but there was a lag on the exchanges with Clinton remaining favourite, probably due to an ingrained belief that a Trump win was unthinkable.  Could the same thing happen tonight if Harris wins?  I doubt it, actually.  Harris may be the underdog, but nobody thinks a win for her is unthinkable, so if the early results for her are favourable, I would expect the markets to adjust very quickly.  But you never know - it's always worth just checking.

Monday, November 4, 2024

Why I voted for Kamala Harris - and why that decision makes me feel dirty

A few weeks ago, I asked Scot Goes Pop readers for advice about my dilemma over whether to vote for Kamala Harris or Jill Stein.  I think you could see from the reactions that the 'right' and 'wrong' answers in this case are very much in the eye of the beholder, because some people thought it was incomprehensible that I could even consider voting for Harris while she is in the middle of facilitating a genocide, but there were other people who found it equally incomprehensible that I could even consider not voting for Harris given that she is the only person who can stop Donald Trump.

In the end I voted for Harris, and I did the deed weeks ago, so I've had plenty of time to mull it over, and it does make me feel dirty.  I'm pretty sure the me of fifteen years ago would have taken the opposite decision, and the me of fifteen years ago might well have been right.  If I'd heard Bill Clinton's astounding pro-genocide speech before rather than after I voted, that might possibly have changed my decision, I don't know.  But for what it's worth, my reasoning was as follows -

* I just couldn't see what a vote for Stein was actually going to achieve.  If she had a realistic chance of getting to 5% of the vote, that would have swayed me, because it would have unlocked federal funding for the Greens.  Even a realistic chance of getting to 3% would have interested me, because that might have started a serious conversation among Democrats about the policy changes required to win that substantial bloc of votes back.  But at 1% or less of the vote for Stein, even if that's enough to swing the election in Trump's favour, the Democrats will stay in their comfort zone and the only lesson they'll learn is that they need to lecture voters even more about not wasting their votes.

* It's quite true that the first-past-the-post voting system forces you to choose at times between a glorified abstention and casting what is effectively a fifth-preference vote to prevent your sixth preference from winning. In a sensible America with a preferential voting system, I wouldn't have felt remotely conflicted about giving Harris a fifth preference vote to make sure I ranked her above Trump, and arguably the principle of voting for her tactically under FPTP is much the same.

* Harris is only one of two people on the Democratic ticket, and I gather Tim Walz is regarded as having had a left-ish record as governor of Minnesota (although he's no better than Harris on the genocide issue).  So that at least sprinkles a little glitter on the Democratic option.

The bottom line is that I always knew I would regret my decision regardless of which way I jumped, because there was no good option available.  I'm certainly not going to be willing Harris to win tomorrow night, but at least it won't be on my conscience if she doesn't.

If it wasn't for the fact that Trump is certain to be irresponsible on climate change, and is not the sort of person you'd ever want to put in total control of the world's second-largest nuclear arsenal, there would be an argument that a Trump win might even be the least worst option, because it would undermine American leadership of the 'international community', which has been so utterly toxic for decades.  For example, why else are some European countries so slavishly loyal to the Netanyahu regime, no matter how many atrocities it commits?  It's because US politicians are bought and paid for by the Israel lobby, and many European governments think, say and do whatever the Americans tell them to think, say and do.  A Trump win could indirectly stop that destructive cycle, because European voters will no longer recognise the US government as representing moral leadership.

Sunday, November 3, 2024

Budget disaster for Labour in Scotland: bombshell Norstat poll shows SNP surging into big lead

I said on Wednesday that the initial reaction of commentators to a Budget often bears little resemblance to the actual political impact of that Budget after a little time has elapsed.  We may be seeing that phenomenon here, because in the hours after Rachel Reeves' speech, Scottish Labour figures and Labour-supporting journalists in Scotland were pretty bullish in their belief that she had found an alchemy that would set them up for success against the SNP.  And yet the first post-Budget poll in Scotland shows Labour nosediving.  That doesn't appear to be a coincidence, because the supplementary questions of the poll show that, even though many of the individual Budget measures command public support, there are pluralities who feel that the overall package is bad for households and bad for Scotland as a whole.

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot:

SNP 33% (-)
Labour 23% (-7)
Conservatives 15% (+3)
Reform UK 11% (+2)
Liberal Democrats 10% (+2)
Greens 6% (+1)

Scottish Parliament regional list ballot:

SNP 29% (+1)
Labour 22% (-6)
Conservatives 14% (-)
Reform UK 11% (+2)
Greens 9% (+1)
Liberal Democrats 9% (+2)
Alba 3% (-2)

Seats projection: SNP 51, Labour 29, Conservatives 16, Reform UK 12, Liberal Democrats 11, Greens 10

There's an important caveat here: four GB-wide polls have also been conducted since the Budget and three of those have shown Labour holding steady.  So if there is a Budget effect that is causing Labour to plummet in Scotland, it's odd that there isn't an equivalent Britain-wide effect.  Perhaps that's one reason to be sceptical, or at least cautious, about the trend that Norstat are showing.  But at the very least it looks like the Budget hasn't helped Labour's popularity.

In spite of the unexpectedly quick improvement of the SNP's polling position relative to Labour's since the general election, one thing we've had to keep reminding ourselves is that the SNP only looked well-placed to retain power in 2026, rather than to retain the overall pro-independence majority in the Scottish Parliament.  For the first time, this poll offers a scenario in which it starts to look just about plausible that the pro-independence majority could be rescued.  The SNP and Greens in combination are projected to have 61 seats - just 4 short of the 65 required for a majority.

There are different ways in which that shortfall could potentially be bridged, but it looks as if seats for Alba are unlikely to play any part.  As has been well-rehearsed, Norstat and their predecessor firm Panelbase have a history of significantly overstating Alba support, showing the party on 5% or 6% when the real figure was around 2%.  That was why there was a lot of wishful thinking involved when Alba claimed that the last Norstat poll, which showed them on 5%, was an indication that they were on course for list seats.  But now that even Norstat have them on only 3%, it's clear that Alba are not heading for list seats as things stand and that something will have to fundamentally change if a breakthrough is to be made.  I know that some people in Alba believed that the shock of Alex Salmond's death would in itself lead to a boost in support, but that certainly doesn't seem to have happened.

Once again, there's good news for the SNP in the leaders' ratings. Although John Swinney is in negative territory at -11, that still makes him slightly more popular than Anas Sarwar at -17, and far more popular than Keir Starmer at -36.  Russell Findlay has a poor opening score of -28, although admittedly that's a significant improvement on his predecessor Douglas Ross.

Interestingly, of the six individual Budget measures asked about in the poll, the only one respondents oppose (albeit narrowly) is providing £3 billion in funding to Ukraine "for as long as it takes".  That certainly wouldn't have been the case at the start of the war.  Perhaps voters have noticed that a First World War type stalemate has occurred and that resources are disappearing into a sort of 'death factory' rather than anything that will change the trajectory of the conflict. Or perhaps cynicism is creeping in, because it's so clear that the UK government will do whatever it takes to help Ukraine against Russian aggression, but will do absolutely nothing to aid the far more vulnerable population of Gaza against the Israeli-perpetrated genocide.