SCOT goes POP!: 2025

Thursday, November 13, 2025

Let's build a wall, and put Nigel Farage on the other side of it

You've got to admit, I'm on a roll with these.

Why independence would save money for HARD-WORKING SCOTTISH TAXPAYERS

I hope you appreciate these, because it took about fifteen attempts before Grok gave me versions with only minimal spelling mistakes. And yes, I know they're too wordy, but regard them as a work in progress. I do think we missed a trick in 2014 by not turning the tables on the No campaign about the jaw-dropping wastefulness of British vanity projects that clearly an independent Scotland wouldn't bother to waste even a penny on.

Wednesday, November 12, 2025

Another week, another majestic SNP lead in YouGov's Scottish subsample

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With less than two months of the year left to go, the 2025 Scot Goes Pop fundraiser is still short of its target figure. If you'd like to help keep the lights on during the several months it will take me to find out whether an alternative funding model is viable (realistically it could be a wait of around four months or more), card donations are welcome HERE. Or, if you prefer, direct donations can be made via PayPal. My PayPal email address is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Many thanks to everyone who has donated so far.

Monday, November 10, 2025

The Alba Party angrily denies allegations it has illegally nominated by-election candidates - but does the denial raise more questions than answers?

As you may have seen on The National's website, the Alba Party is belatedly now a McEleny-free zone. A whole six months after his expulsion from the party, Chris McEleny has been forcibly removed as Alba's Nominating Officer, and the Electoral Commission website confirms he has been replaced by his former deputy as General Secretary, Corri Wilson. It's something of a surprise that the Electoral Commission have agreed to remove him against his will, because a literal reading of their rules suggested that it was near-impossible for that to happen unless he died, was incapacitated, or kidnapped by a lost Amazonian tribe - but perhaps they decided a man remaining an officer of a party he had been long since expelled from pushed the boundaries of absurdity a touch too far.

(Incidentally, a few days before McEleny was ousted as GenSec at the start of the year, Wilson posted a video of herself on Facebook gloating in coded language about what was about to happen, so it's reasonable to see her as the Macro to McEleny's Sejanus. The ominous news for Wilson and the wider Corri Nostra is that, as fans of I, Claudius know, Macro eventually met exactly the same grisly fate as the man he toppled.)

In the National piece, McEleny repeats the allegation that was made to me in an anonymous email on Friday - ie. he says that Alba's local by-election candidates this year were illegitimately nominated, because none of them had his authorisation as Nominating Officer. An Alba spokesperson is quoted hotly denying that any illegality has occurred -

"There is no truth in the suggestion that the Alba Party has acted improperly or illegally when nominating candidates for local by-elections. In every case, the electoral requirements have been valid and in order as evidenced by the acceptance of multiple returning officers."

An anonymous commenter on this blog has made the following observation about that -

"The Alba statement might get them in hot bother as it shows they’re incompetent or lying. Returning officers accept forms at face value. If the form has been signed saying authority has been granted the RO doesn’t take any other action. The breaking of the law will be that surely McEleny didn’t sign the forms or grant authority to do so, so either Corri Nostra is in trouble for pretending to candidates they had authority or the candidates themselves will be thrown under the bus."

I wouldn't be totally surprised if that comment was left by the same person who anonymously contacted me by email on Friday, and I also wouldn't be totally surprised if that person is...well, I'm sure you can join the dots for yourselves. Just to reiterate my disclaimer from Friday, I have no legal expertise, so I have no idea whose interpretation of the law is correct. I'm just providing you with the quotes for information.

(UPDATE, 1.15am: I've been emailed again by the anonymous source, who says that the public statements from Alba do not match what is being told in private to senior members of the party.)

Meanwhile, the bigger picture is that Alba, which has already been reduced to fringe party status without parliamentary representation, is heading for an unmitigated catastrophe in next year's Holyrood election. The most recent poll (from YouGov) has them on just 1% of the list vote - even less than they received in 2021.

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Many thanks to everyone who has donated so far.

Why the Believe in Scotland plan to win independence could be a GAME-CHANGER

When I first heard in vague terms what was in the new Believe in Scotland plan to win independence, I was sceptical, and I expected to be even more sceptical once I had read it in full - but I was wrong. I now think it's an important document that could make a vital contribution towards Scotland becoming independent in the relatively near future. Find out why in the video below.

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Many thanks to everyone who has donated so far.

Sunday, November 9, 2025

Are Labour quite sure there are no downsides to going all in on being the party of radiation?

Saturday, November 8, 2025

A response to Alba man Jim Cassidy's rather cowardly personal attack

This is a blogpost I've been meaning to write for a little while, and as my previous post contained yet more allegations about sleaze in the Alba Party, this may be as good a moment as any to do it. Incidentally, a couple of people have asked me whether the anonymous source who made the allegations about Corri Wilson might possibly be Chris McEleny himself. I certainly can't rule that possibility out, although it's only one possibility out of several. All I know is that the same source has contacted me in the past with information that proved beyond doubt that they have inside knowledge about what goes on in Alba leadership circles.

It's ironic that the Wee Alba Book co-author Stuart "Stew" Campbell is so obsessed with Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, because the little "shrine" he's set up to me on his blog is in many ways his own equivalent to the Two Minutes Hate (albeit it goes on for far longer than two minutes). There are dozens of comments from Wings readers in the BTL section of the shrine, most of them berating me, and yet it's blindingly obvious that 90% of the commenters either don't have a sodding clue who I am or have only the dimmest idea of who I am. They've just instantly decided to hate a bloke they know nothing about because the Pied Piper of Bath has instructed them to, which ironically lends considerable support to one of the key points I've made about the cult-like nature of Wings as it's moved towards a pro-Farage and de facto anti-independence stance. However, there is one comment right at the bottom of the shrine which is different from the others, because it criticises me for having done "absolutely bugger all in his own area to build up the [Alba] party at local level" before I fell victim to the McEleny Purges and was ejected from the party on trumped-up charges.

That's a weirdly specific criticism that wouldn't make much sense unless that person had some kind of knowledge of me at local level. There was something about his turn of phrase that seemed familiar, so I did a Google search for his moniker, and sure enough it was exactly who I suspected: Jim Cassidy, who if memory serves me right was the Convener of Alba's North Lanarkshire branch in the early days of the party, and who later on was the branch Secretary. (Strictly speaking the terminology should be "LACU" rather than "branch", but let's move on from incomprehensible Alba-speak.)

I have to say I regard Jim Cassidy's personal attack as rather cowardly for two reasons. Firstly, he obviously hoped to keep the attack just about generalised enough that I and others wouldn't twig who it was coming from, ie. he very noticeably didn't say "I was a party officer in North Lanarkshire for X number of years and I watched James Kelly do bugger all", etc, etc. And secondly, if Jim had any concerns about me, he had umpteen opportunities prior to my expulsion to raise those concerns with me directly, but he did not do so. I was at several branch meetings with him, and not even once did he give any indication that he had any problem with me. What he did often do, however, was moan generically about "people". He would frequently criticise people for standing for the Alba NEC but not for branch office positions, ie. according to him they wanted "the national glory" but didn't want to do the bread-and-butter work at branch level.

That is basically the criticism he is now directing at me specifically, but there's just one little snag here, Jim - I did put myself forward repeatedly for local positions in the North Lanarkshire branch, and you ought to know that because you were in the room at the time. Indeed, at the time of my expulsion I was technically the Organiser of the North Lanarkshire branch, although I was prevented from carrying out any of the actual functions of that role by the branch Convener Josh Robertson, who was also the leadership-appointed Convener of Alba's Disciplinary Committee, and who I strongly suspect had already been tipped the wink that action against me was in the pipeline and that he would be instructed to expel me from the party before the year was out. Come to think of it, Jim, within minutes of my election as Organiser, I distinctly remember watching you in conversation with Josh, as thick as thieves, deciding that Josh was going to use party software to do something or other that should really have been part of the role of the Organiser, but Josh was going to do it himself, just because, and only afterwards would he give me access to the software, which of course he never did and presumably never had any intention of doing.

That was my second attempt to get involved locally. The first attempt was a year or two earlier at what might laughably be called the branch's AGM, and which if memory serves me right was only attended by four people, one of whom was Corri Wilson, who of course isn't from North Lanarkshire but had been sent by HQ to try to revive the branch. I was the only person that night to put themselves forward as Convener. Josh Robertson declined because of work/academic commitments (he must have had a change of heart later on, perhaps because of his parliamentary ambitions). I'm not 100% sure whether Jim Cassidy was one of the four people who turned up, but I think he was, actually, and I think he declined because of work commitments too. So for a few minutes a strange consensus emerged between myself, Josh Robertson and Corri Wilson that I would be allowed to become Convener (this was long before I clashed with Wilson's daughter Shannon Donoghue so she had no particular grudge against me at the time). But then they had a change of heart when I pointed out that I was still taking precautions because of Covid, and that if people wanted in-person branch meetings, there would either have to be a hybrid element or I would have to delegate the chairing of the meetings. Corri Wilson was a bit of a zealot for in-person-only meetings, so the narrative instantly changed from "if James is the only person who can be bothered to put himself forward, nobody can argue with that, he must be allowed to become Convener" to "you know what, maybe we should organise another meeting and see if we can get more candidates to put themselves forward".

I am quite content, Jim, that I did all I reasonably could to get involved locally and that I was prevented from doing so, even if you seem to have had a convenient memory lapse about it. I'd also just note that if you think that I somehow had the power to "build up Alba locally" despite never actually being put in charge of anything, and that I failed to use that power, then I don't know what that must say about your own failings, because you actually *were* branch Convener for a period of time and later branch Secretary, and yet by your own admission Alba essentially doesn't really exist at a local level in North Lanarkshire. Where did *you* go so badly wrong, Jim?

I can certainly identify one issue for you. At one of the early meetings I attended when you were still the Convener, you informed us that "everyone should be out knocking on doors regularly for us as long as they are able-bodied". If I was someone who had never previously been a member of a political party, I would have found that attitude extremely off-putting and I might well have never gone back again. People do not join political parties to be subjected to military-style discipline. They might well be happy to help out once they feel at home, but that requires encouragement and friendliness. In the first instance, it requires a focus on the rights that people have as members and not on their supposed "duties".

When I was one of the four people elected in January 2024 to review the Alba constitution (a fateful turn of events that had a lot to do with my eventual expulsion), one particular focus for me was precisely on the local rights of party members, including those who may not attend branch meetings because of work or family commitments, but who I suggested could still be engaged and allowed their democratic rights to (for example) choose the branch's two National Council representatives via an online vote. That provoked blind fury from the likes of Daniel Jack (who thought online voting would be "far too expensive") and Chris Cullen and Shannon Donoghue, who essentially regarded local branches as the fiefdoms of the elite, and who felt that people who didn't turn up to branch meetings certainly hadn't "earned" a right to any say. I suspect Jim Cassidy's attitude would have been much the same. Has it ever occurred to you, Jim, that you might actually be part of the problem here?

My view was that Alba as a new party had a golden chance to start with a clean slate and use modern technology to build something better and more participative and more engaging - thus ultimately leading to a more active membership. Instead, they somehow ended up with a more backwards, more authoritarian and more elitist set-up than the older parties - and yes, if you pointed that out or (heaven forbid) actually tried to do something to change it, Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh and the Corri Nostra ensured you were expelled. It really was that simple.

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Many thanks to everyone who has donated so far.

Friday, November 7, 2025

Alba Sleaze Update: Party insider makes explosive allegation that every single Alba local by-election candidate since McEleny's downfall has been nominated illegitimately

In my earlier post about the Buckhaven, Methil and Wemyss Villages by-election, I suggested that the fact that Alba were even able to put forward a candidate at all must mean that Chris McEleny hasn't yet rescinded Corri Wilson's authorisation to nominate Alba candidates. When I first heard from a well-informed source a few months ago that McEleny was refusing to resign as Alba's officially registered Nominating Officer, in spite of his expulsion from the party, it was explained to me that the only reason why Alba had been able to carry on putting forward candidates in local by-elections was that McEleny had sent the Electoral Commission some sort of letter or form of authorisation before his expulsion allowing Corri Wilson (and perhaps others) to nominate Alba candidates on his behalf. However, as sole Nominating Officer he had the power to rescind that authorisation at any time he chose - hence the massive problem for Alba.

A couple of hours ago I received an email from another source. It alleges that Corri Wilson has in fact not had authorisation to nominate candidates, and therefore that all Alba local by-election candidates since McEleny's downfall, including the one yesterday, have been nominated illegitimately. This is the text of the email -

"Corri was not authorised to be deputy nomination officer. Corri was advising candidates to sign the nomination forms themselves telling them they had authority to do so.

Therefore every by election Alba have stood in this year has been by committing the criminal offence of fraudulently submitting nomination papers claiming to have authority they did not have. Whether each candidate would be liable for the criminal offence or Corri would be for lying to them (just like she wrongly told or lied to the NEC that there wasn’t going to be an employment tribunal as it was time barred) by telling them they had authority would be another matter."

I know for sure the email was sent by a genuine insider, because it was the same person who sent me the first hard screenshot evidence that Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh had instructed McEleny to target me for "the treatment", triggering my horrendous months-long experience last year. However, I obviously cannot vouch for whether the source is interpreting Corri Wilson's actions correctly, or indeed is interpreting the law correctly.

All I'll say is that absolutely nothing would surprise me about Alba or about Corri Wilson at this stage.

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Many thanks to everyone who has donated so far.

SNP stroll to big landslide win in Fife by-election

It's the middle of the night as I post this, but I'll just briefly give you the by-election result, because it's a second impressive win for the SNP in as many weeks. I'll also try to make a video about the result at some point, but that might have to wait 24 hours or so.

Buckhaven, Methil and Wemyss Villages by-election result (6th November 2025):

SNP 42.6% (-4.9)
Reform UK 28.9% (n/a)
Labour 20.8% (-19.5)
Liberal Democrats 2.6% (+0.4)
Alba 2.2% (+0.9)
Conservatives 1.7% (-4.8)
Sovereignty 1.2% (n/a)

What leaps out at first glance is the following -

* On a uniform swing, the result is consistent with the SNP having a mammoth nationwide lead over Labour of around 26 percentage points - although of course Labour would no longer be in second place anyway due to the surge for Reform, who appear to have scored their best ever result in Scotland.

* Alba are on their customary 2% of the vote and are clearly going nowhere. We've seen this type of result enough times by now to know what the propaganda line from Alba HQ will be, ie. "we've increased our vote, we've beaten the Tories", but it doesn't really matter a damn if you occasionally get the better of a larger party on a localised basis - all that matters is whether you are polling strongly enough to win at least one list seat somewhere, and Alba clearly aren't and never have been.

* However, the fact that Alba were able to run a candidate at all in this by-election is of some significance, because it means Chris McEleny has not yet rescinded the letter of authorisation (or email of authorisation, or whatever it was) that he sent to the Electoral Commission at some point before he was expelled from the party in order to allow Corri Wilson to deputise for him as the party's Nominating Officer. The million dollar question is whether he has insisted on remaining as Nominating Officer since his expulsion (and remember the Alba leadership have no power to sack him) because he intends to withdraw Wilson's authorisation between now and the Holyrood election, thus blocking Alba from running any list candidates, or whether he's just sort of trolling his former party by making them sweat and leaving them to guess what his big plan is.

* In a sense this by-election was also a rare test for the Barcelona-headquartered Liberate Scotland alliance, aka "Greater Prism". Although there was no candidate running on the Liberate Scotland label, the far-right component of the alliance (Sovereignty) stood under their own name. However they performed even more poorly than Alba and took just 1% of the vote.

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Many thanks to everyone who has donated so far.

Thursday, November 6, 2025

Stuart Campbell, the restraining order, and the "visibly distressed horse": here are the facts as we know them so far

Below you'll find today's *three* tweets about me (heaven only knows how many it is this week so far) from the man who famously "doesn't stalk me" and "barely even mentions me". Yup, you've guessed it, it's the controversial far-right blogger known as "Stew". You can probably hazard an educated guess as to what lies behind the adult content filter on the first tweet - it mixes his two favourite pastimes of a) attempting to mock my physical appearance, and b) bullying people with gender dysphoria round the clock.

Still, at least he's tidied the house up a bit.
— Wings Over Scotland (@WingsScotland) November 6, 2025

Any idea what his cringy "Stu, make mine a double" shtick at the end of each video is about?
— Aru_Tokoro_Ni (@AruTokoroNi2001) November 6, 2025

I imagine it's a reference to "both votes SNP".
— Wings Over Scotland (@WingsScotland) November 6, 2025

Oh well worked out, Stew. They don't call you an "investigative journalist" for nothing. Actually, on second thoughts...

Now, I do feel it's incumbent on me at this point to furnish you with a little reminder of what Stew himself looks like, just to give us a sort of baseline reading with which we can judge the immense blessings of nature which have clearly emboldened him to spend so much of his life mocking the physical appearance of others...

Ooooooh-kaaaaaaaay. Crikey.

Actually, when it became clear a few weeks ago that his stalking was morphing more and more into outright insults about what I look like, I did take the precaution of asking Grok to provide me with a little essay assessing Stew's own attractiveness, with predictably hilarious results. I wasn't planning to publish it, I was just going to keep it in reserve as a sort of "nuclear deterrent". But this just goes to show the basic problem with all "deterrents", and it's something that David Lammy should take heed of - they don't actually deter anyone, you kind of always end up using them, and just look at the carnage that ensues.

Grok, does Stuart Campbell of Wings Over Scotland conform to standard norms of male hyper-attractiveness?

Answer: No, Stuart Campbell, the Scottish blogger and former video game journalist behind Wings Over Scotland, does not conform to standard norms of male hyper-attractiveness.

Understanding "Male Hyper-Attractiveness"

Standard norms of male hyper-attractiveness (often rated 8–10/10 on common attractiveness scales) are defined by a combination of cultural, evolutionary, and societal factors, drawing from psychological research and beauty ideals. Key traits include:

Facial features: High symmetry, strong jawline, high cheekbones, clear skin, and balanced proportions (e.g., golden ratio approximations in face structure).

Body composition: V-shaped torso (broad shoulders, narrow waist with a waist-to-shoulder ratio around 0.6–0.7), muscular build (low body fat ~10–15%, visible definition without excess bulk), and average-to-tall height (ideally 6'0"–6'3" or 183–190 cm).

Other factors: Youthful vitality (typically apparent age under 40), groomed appearance, and an aura of confidence or status. These ideals are heteronormative and Western-influenced but appear cross-culturally in studies (e.g., preferences for symmetry and fitness signaling health/fertility).

These traits are rare—fewer than 2.5% of men meet the "optimum" for even individual features like shoulder-to-waist ratio, per evolutionary psychology research. Examples include celebrities like Chris Hemsworth or Henry Cavill, who embody near-perfect harmony.

Assessment of Stuart Campbell

Based on publicly available photos (e.g., his X profile avatar and historical images from his Amiga Power era), Campbell, now 58, does not align with these norms:

Facial features: Angular but asymmetrical structure, with prominent brows and a receding hairline; lacks the chiselled symmetry or high cheekbones of hyper-attractive ideals.

Body composition: Appears average build (not muscular or V-shaped), around 5'10"–6'0" (estimated from photos), with no evident low-body-fat definition.

Overall: His look is unremarkable and aged—more akin to a standard 3–4/10 on attractiveness scales. Early 1990s photos show a youthful, edgy style (e.g., mohawk hairstyle), but even then, it veered punk/nerdy rather than classically handsome.

Attractiveness is subjective and influenced by personality (Campbell's cockiness might boost appeal for some), but against objective hyper-attractive benchmarks, he falls short. If you're referencing a specific photo or context, more details could refine this.

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About the title of this blogpost: as you may be aware, a few months ago Stew set up a little shrine to me in the sidebar of his blog, and it's been there ever since. If you click on it, you'll find what purports to be an exhaustive and constantly updated list of the titles of all the blogposts I have ever written in which he is mentioned at some point.

There is now, let's face of it, hours of fun to be had probing how far the titles can go before he mysteriously 'forgets' to include one, or feels obliged to add an unintentionally amusing 'explanatory note'. Let's see how he gets on with this one.

Wednesday, November 5, 2025

YouGov latest: another swing to Yes on the independence question, and the SNP on course to win big

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Many thanks to everyone who has donated so far.

Tuesday, November 4, 2025

BOMBSHELL Scottish poll rocks Westminster: firmly No-friendly pollster YouGov shows the No lead has been reduced to a barely-there three points, while the SNP and Greens are on course for a PRO-INDEPENDENCE MAJORITY at next year's Holyrood election

It's 2.20am as I sit down to write this, so probably not the ideal time to embark on making a video (you wouldn't believe how long even the shortest of videos take to make, once you take into account the preparation, the editing and the processing), but I must nevertheless bring to your attention the information that Calum Findlay revealed in the comments section of the previous post. The Scottish Election Study has published its latest Scottish Opinion Monitor (SCOOP) poll. These polls are basically just regular YouGov polls but with two thrilling twists - the media don't seem to report them very much, and the data tables don't bother to mention what the results are with undecided voters excluded.

The most significant results are on the independence question. YouGov has in recent years reverted to its former status as a very firmly No-friendly pollster, and that remains the case in this poll because there is a No lead at a time when other polling firms are showing substantial Yes majorities. However in a sense it corroborates the trend shown by those other firms because it shows a third successive reduction in the No lead (as far as YouGov polls are concerned, I mean) and leaves No with a mere three-point advantage, which is much lower than YouGov typically show. As Calum points out, the fact that No even remain in the lead at all should be interpreted with caution because it's been partly caused by YouGov's reweighting of their raw data based on how people say they voted in the 2014 independence referendum - a practice that the UK's gold standard pollster Ipsos states is unwise because of the high risk of distortions caused by false recall.

Should Scotland be an independent country? (YouGov, 10th-20th October 2025)

Yes 40% (-)

No 43% (-1)

If Don't Knows were stripped out, that would probably work out as Yes 48%, No 52%, which would be unchanged on the last YouGov poll due to rounding effects.

I've taken Calum's estimates of the Holyrood voting intention numbers with Don't Knows excluded and pumped them into a seats predictor, and they come out as: SNP 59, Reform UK 22, Labour 16, Greens 12, Liberal Democrats 10, Conservatives 10. That's a very comfortable majority for pro-independence parties once the SNP and Greens are combined, but the SNP on their own are six seats short of a majority. The lack of a single-party majority wouldn't be any sort of problem if the normal rules of democratic self-determination applied, but unfortunately the SNP have just self-imposed a new version of the 40% rule - a decision that we may all have cause to regret in six months' time. But of course, as with every poll, this is just a snapshot and not a prediction of the final result.

And although this isn't a video, please feel free to subscribe to my YouTube channel anyway, because I'm trying to get to 1000 subscribers as soon as possible!

Monday, November 3, 2025

Controversial "Stew" blogger spells it out for anyone who mistook his meaning first time around: he thinks it would have been wrong to block the Nazis' rise to power, in spite of the genocide and unprecedented global catastrophe it unleashed

Some of you may be familiar with a controversial and increasingly far-right blogger, based in Somerset, and known almost universally as "Stew". In spite of being such an enormous distance away, he actually supported Scottish independence during the 2014 referendum, but has since had a change of heart as his views have drifted back to the right, and at both of the last two major national elections in 2021 and 2024 he instructed his readers to vote against independence. More recently, he has become particularly drawn to Nigel Farage's party Reform UK - logical enough, given the huge overlap between his own views and those of Reform. But somehow he can't quite bring himself to admit yet that he intends to endorse Reform at next May's Holyrood election. Presumably he feels he still has a lot of work to do to get the choreography just right as he gets ready to 'spontaneously' announce: "you know what, alert readers, I could NEVER have imagined getting to this point, but I don't think we've got much CHOICE but to vote Reform".

In a blogpost on Wednesday, I pointed out that Stew's passion for Farage is the love that dare not speak its name, and that in order to prepare the ground for endorsing Reform while not actually doing so yet, he is tying himself up in knots with absurd arguments such as: "it's important to stop Reform, and to do that other parties must adopt Reform's policy programme in full, because it's excellent, and they must actively celebrate Farage's electoral successes because Reform is a lawful party in a democracy". On the latter point specifically, I noted that the Nazi party was also a lawful party in a democracy at the point at which it took power, and on Stew's logic we would be required to 'celebrate' that.

I'm very honoured that Stew took a brief break from his round-the-clock bullying of people with gender dysphoria to respond to me.

Heck of a debate, that one.

PROPOSITION 1: Political parties should attempt to offer the electorate something worth voting for.

PROPOSITION 2: We should ban political parties that are supported by large sections of the population but we don’t like. [definition of “we” TBA] pic.twitter.com/MAdFoG8MLG
— Wings Over Scotland (@WingsScotland) October 31, 2025

But, y’know, wow. “The Weimar government should have banned parties it didn’t like, in order to prevent the rise of a party that, er, banned parties it didn’t like!”

Become the Nazis to beat the Nazis. Genius.
— Wings Over Scotland (@WingsScotland) October 31, 2025

Well, it's true that one feature of Nazism was the banning of other political parties, but it was scarcely the only feature or even the defining feature. There were also things like the systematic extermination of entire ethnic groups, and the military conquest of almost an entire continent. When people pose the question of whether the Weimar authorities should have banned the Nazis, they specifically do it due to their knowledge that the failure to prevent Hitler seizing power unleashed both genocide and the deadliest global conflict in human history, and that averting those outcomes should have been an absolute imperative.

I've made clear any number of times on this blog that I am not inclined to favour the banning of political parties, and that I regard the tendency of countries like Spain to go down that road as difficult to reconcile with democratic principles. But given the uniquely catastrophic consequences of Nazi rule, and given that Hitler was open about at least some of his intentions when he stood for election, it's pretty extraordinary to see the sheer casualness with which Stew mockingly dismisses anyone who even raises the question of whether the Nazis should have been banned (either on the grounds of racial hatred against many of Germany's own citizens, or because they wanted to dismantle the democratic system they were participating in).

For what it's worth, I think my own answer to that question would probably be no. I think the Nazis did need to be blocked from seizing control at all costs, but probably the way to do that was by addressing the weaknesses in the Weimar constitution that Hitler exploited, in particular the provisions governing states of emergency. Stew, by contrast, is so untroubled by genocide and global catastrophe that he doesn't seem to think there was any great imperative to stop the Nazi rise to power, and his only answer to victims of the Holocaust and the tens of millions who died in a needless world war seems to be: "sorry, chaps, but it was the Social Democrats' fault, they should have run on a manifesto more attractive to Nazi voters". Well, I'm sure that's an enormous comfort to everyone, Stew, particularly bearing in mind that the only manifesto that would have been attractive to Nazi voters is one that adopted Nazi policies - and be in no doubt that's exactly what Stew is getting at, because it's bang in line with his argument in the present day that mainstream parties should adopt Reform policies in order to 'stop' Reform, thus largely defeating the purpose of the exercise.

Perhaps Stew could clarify precisely which Nazi policies he thinks the democratic German parties should have embraced in order to become more attractive to Nazi voters. And perhaps he could also let us know whether he has sufficient self-awareness to spot the galactic levels of irony in his claim that those who disagree with him want to "become the Nazis to beat the Nazis".

Elsewhere, Stew also responded to the comment I made about his fanboy enthusiasm for Farage's policy on the climate emergency, although if anyone can make head or tail of this one, you're doing better than me -

“But if the world was arranged completely differently to how it actually is, my point wouldn’t be total p***!” pic.twitter.com/lnwdi2VHl4
— Wings Over Scotland (@WingsScotland) October 31, 2025

Eh? I was talking about the world as it's actually arranged - one in which Scotland as a nation of five million people has to take responsibility for the climate emergency in proportion to its population size, and one in which a failure of countries to take responsibility in proportion to their population size will result in a global failure to tackle the climate emergency at all. But I can hardly put it more eloquently than one of the commenters on Stew's own blog -

"'Scotland’s contribution to climate change is so infinitesimally small that nothing we do can possibly make any difference'

How nearly true. Just like the contribution to society made by me paying taxes is so infinitesimally small that it could not possibly make any difference.

And I’ve recently read a novel set in Yorkshire during WW2, in which the main character’s father 'did his bit', as I understand the saying was. His own contribution was so infinitesimally small that it could not possibly have made any difference.

In fact every such contribution makes a very slight difference. The combination of everyone’s contribution makes a noticeable difference."

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Friday, October 31, 2025

SNP storm to spectacular GAIN in Stirling East by-election

I have some audio commentary on YouTube for you about the SNP's impressive win in the Stirling East by-election - plus also I make reference to the bizarre lengths the mainstream media are going to in order to protect the reputation of the late Queen Elizabeth now that the scale of her misjudgement over Andrew is beyond dispute. And I comment on Iain Macwhirter's bizarre tweet implying that only North Korean style isolationism would be enough to qualify Scotland as "independent".

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With barely two months of the year left to go, the 2025 Scot Goes Pop fundraiser is still short of its target figure. If you'd like to help keep the lights on during the several months it will take me to find out whether an alternative funding model is viable (realistically it could be a wait of around four months or more), card donations are welcome HERE. Or, if you prefer, direct donations can be made via PayPal. My PayPal email address is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Many thanks to everyone who has donated so far.

Wednesday, October 29, 2025

Controversial "Stew" blogger inches ever-closer to his inevitable endorsement of a far-right, anti-independence party next year

The title of Stuart "Stew" Campbell's latest blogpost rant is "How to create racists", to which the obvious punchline would appear to be "och, just follow Wings Over Scotland social media accounts". Practically every day he pumps out apologism for Reform UK and other parts of the British far-right, or breathlessly talks up their electoral chances, and yet if you point out that it's blindingly obvious he's preparing the ground for an endorsement of Reform at next year's election, he'll innocently deny having any interest in supporting the party at all. Well, we shall find out soon enough, shan't we. I'm pretty confident that almost everything he says these days is gearing up for a pre-planned 'spontaneous' moment of "sod it, alert readers, you know what, I think we need to vote Reform", which he'll already have pencilled in for some time in March, April or early May. If I'm proved wrong about that, he can always gloat about it when the time comes, but I don't expect to be proved wrong, and anyone who reads his new post will understand why.

He starts by making the jaw-dropping claim that anyone who believes in democracy is required to actually celebrate the rise of any far-right party: "The only thing “the rise of Reform” can possibly mean here is “more and more people choosing to vote for, or express their support for, a particular lawful political party in a democracy”. Why are we supposed to think that’s a terrible thing, when it is in fact the entire POINT of democracy."

Wow. The entire point of democracy. Just how far does this logic stretch? Let's take a look, for example, at the results of German elections in the early 1930s, and the increasingly strong results for a particularly well known "lawful party in a democracy" -

1930:

Social Democrats: 143 seats

Nazis: 107 seats

Communists: 77 seats

Centre: 68 seats

July 1932:

Nazis: 230 seats

Social Democrats: 133 seats

Communists: 89 seats

Centre: 75 seats

November 1932:

Nazis: 196 seats

Social Democrats: 121 seats

Communists: 100 seats

Centre: 70 seats

1933:

Nazis: 288 seats

Social Democrats: 120 seats

Communists: 81 seats

Centre: 73 seats

Now, clearly there's a debate to be had over whether the Weimar authorities should have banned the Nazi party before it was too late, or whether the failure was purely that no party offered a compelling enough alternative to Hitler. But whichever of those two options you prefer, it's surely a bit of a stretch to say, as Stew apparently would, that the Nazis' wins have to be enthusiastically applauded simply because they were a "lawful party in a democracy", as if it's a game of cricket in which fours and sixes have to be appreciated and applauded regardless of who scores them. A gas chamber or two probably does make a difference.

Stew then launches into a passionate defence of Reform's policies, but please rest assured that he's not doing this because he's going to tell you to vote for them, perish the thought, etc, etc. Apparently abandoning net zero is fine because Scotland is too small to have any contribution to make to tackling the climate emergency. Just one snag - if every other parcel of five million people on the planet took the same attitude, that would amount to the entire planet deciding to do nothing, and the climate emergency going untackled. So a self-evidently bogus and fraudulent line of argument from Stew, one that he's been called out for many times before.

He tells us that Reform's plans to stop illegal immigration are fine, because "we're all against illegal stuff, aren't we?" Well, no actually, we're not, Stew, or at least not in all cases. Most of us think it was perfectly fine to break apartheid laws in South Africa, or for Sophie Scholl to illegally distribute anti-government leaflets in Nazi Germany. Only a true authoritarian, such as Stew, is blind to the distinction between immorality and illegality.

He tells us that Reform are in tune with the gender critical views of the public. But what the public are plainly not in tune with is Stew's all-consuming obsession with the issue, which leads him to bombard his social media followers with really rather nasty trans-bashing propaganda for hours on end on a daily basis, and to the exclusion of pretty much all other topics, all the way up to genocide. He has so completely lost all sense of perspective on this issue that he's simply in no position to make judgement calls about its salience for the public, which is probably a lot lower than he'd be comfortable believing.

And just when you think he can't make his cheerleading for Reform any more blatant, he tells us at length that Sarah Pochin's self-evidently racist comment was somehow not racist. I'd have hoped it was a statement of the obvious that it's perfectly possible to make a legitimate case against the principle of positive discrimination in the media without using inflammatory language about it "driving you mad" when you see people from ethnic minorities on the TV. Incidentally, the statistical pedant in me feels obliged to point out that Stew and others are making a fraudulent comparison between more than 50% of ads featuring black people when black people make up only 4% of the population. That comparison would only make sense if every ad had only one person in it, but in reality some ads with a black person in it will also have another four or five people from other ethnicities. To prove over-representation, the statistics would have to relate to percentages of people in ads, not to the percentage of ads featuring at least one black person.

But seriously, Stew, repression is bad for mental health, and your overwhelming passion for Farage is becoming the love that dare not speak its name. Best just to make your public endorsement once and for all and put an end to this excruciatingly slow pretend courtship.

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Labour slump to FIFTH place in YouGov's Scottish subsample - and now face a catastrophe of BIBLICAL PROPORTIONS at the Scottish Parliament election

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Tuesday, October 28, 2025

More analysis of the extraordinary poll showing Yes support at 55%

Just a quick note to let you know I have an analysis piece at The National about the independence results from the new Find Out Now poll. You can read the article HERE.

HUGE majority for Scottish independence in new Find Out Now poll - and it's driven by women

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Monday, October 27, 2025

The Alba Party in its "death throes": Kenny MacAskill sends out bizarre email admitting the party is mired in sleaze and scandal, but boasts "we're still solvent!"

The Alba Party have practically ceased to function as a political party, although one small thing that can still genuinely be said for them is that they perform one of the key functions that should really be performed by the media, ie. they semi-regularly commission voting intention polls and independence polls. There have been previous instances of fringe parties becoming defunct and then rebranding as a discussion group or even as a newspaper, so when Alba give up the ghost perhaps they could rebrand as a polling company. Slanszh Media seem to have finally called it a day with their little-watched weekly YouTube show Tas Is Still Talking, but perhaps a spin-off called Tas Has Started Polling would have some potential. In the meantime, I will within the next few hours be manfully filling the gap in the market with a Scot Goes Pop video about the new Find Out Now / Alba poll on independence, which remarkably shows Yes ahead by 55% to 45%.

Meanwhile, Kenny MacAskill sent out a bizarre email today to all Alba members, one of whom was kind enough to forward it to me. It can be roughly summarised as: "we're mired in sleaze, but don't worry guys, we're still solvent". Here are the highlights:

"We are writing to update you on a matter which has required referral to the appropriate authorities.

Last year, concerns regarding the management of the party led to a review of HQ operations and finances, instigated by Alex Salmond. During this period, a disciplinary process was concluded which resulted in the former General Secretary being dismissed for gross misconduct.

Subsequently, a number of internal financial and administrative irregularities came to light. In line with our legal and fiduciary responsibilities, these matters were examined in detail. Following that process the party formally reported the concerns to Police Scotland. As there is now a live police investigation, we are unable to comment further at this time.

We wish to reassure members that the party remains solvent, fully operational, and continues to be administered with integrity and probity by our serving staff and office bearers. The National Executive Committee has been kept informed throughout, and members in attendance at conference were updated in a closed session...

This is not the position any of us would have wished to be in ahead of a crucial election period. However, the matter is being handled correctly and rigorously, and our focus remains firmly on the future of the party...

We will continue to keep members informed as far as legally permissible...

Yours for Scotland,

Kenny MacAskill"

I suspect a number of Alba members will have noted the glorious irony of Mr MacAskill talking about "continuing" to keep members informed, and then signing off with the words "Yours for Scotland", because it was a website called Yours For Scotland, along with blogs like Scot Goes Pop and Denise Findlay's, that Alba members had to turn to in order to find out what the hell was going on in their own party, because they certainly weren't being kept informed by the party itself. For example, for several months this year, the only way that Alba members will have known that the expelled Chris McEleny was refusing to resign as the party's registered Nominating Officer, was by reading about it on Scot Goes Pop. Mr MacAskill has yet again failed to front up about that issue (or even mention it at all) in today's email, even though in theory it could mean that the vengeance-hungry McEleny will block Alba from running any candidates at all in the Holyrood election.

Spare a thought for Tommy Sheridan, incidentally, who is the one remaining heavyweight figure hanging on for grim death inside Alba even though he must know by now that he's backed the wrong horse. Craig Murray announced today that he was defecting from Alba to the Corbyn/Sultana party in the hope that he can help mould it into a pro-indy force, and I bet Tommy yearns to follow him down that road. He must spend at least three hours a day wondering how on earth he ended up in the same party as Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh. He's been in prison in the past, of course, but he now knows there are far more excruciating forms of punishment than that.

Alba is undoubtedly finished, but the remaining question is whether it staggers on like the walking dead for years to come getting negligible vote shares in every election, or whether it dissolves itself with dignity. https://t.co/5sHvkGYnIF
— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) October 26, 2025

Pro-independence parties WILL win majority of Holyrood seats, says swanky Survation survey - but here's why Both Votes SNP is so important

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Sunday, October 26, 2025

New Survation poll suggests the SNP will remain by far the largest party with "around" 55 Holyrood seats - but details are sketchy so far

I am, as you know, a terrible slave to my responsibilities, and I was perfectly prepared to sacrifice myself for Scot Goes Pop readers by staying up half the night for a third night in a row to make another video, this time about the new Survation poll that is on the front page of the Herald. However, I've looked in all the standard places and for the life of me I can't see any sign of the numbers, so all I know is what is actually on the front page itself, which is that the SNP are projected to be on "around" 55 seats and that Reform UK are projected to be in second place on 22 seats. The write-up absurdly suggests this has thrown John Swinney's independence strategy into "chaos" - whereas in fact polls before the strategy was unveiled showed the SNP falling short of an overall majority and polls after the strategy was unveiled are undramatically continuing to show much the same thing. If there's a shock horror front page exclusive to be had there, it's that the laws of arithmetic don't conveniently bend to the will of any politician, but I think we all knew that already.

What I'm going be more interested in is whether the projection from the poll has the Greens on 10 seats or more, because that will make the difference as to whether or not the projection is of a pro-independence majority, albeit a multi-party one rather than a single-party one. But that probably won't become clear until around 4am, which I think is when the Herald website usually updates for the new day's headlines. I'll try to make a video about the poll at some point but it may be another 24 hours before I get the chance.

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Saturday, October 25, 2025

Musk's AI agrees that there is strong consensus that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, and that denial of the genocide is "increasingly marginalised amid evidence"

There have been some suggestions that Elon Musk has ordered Grok to be primed to produce pro-Israel and pro-IDF propaganda if anyone asks about the genocide in Gaza. So I've been asking Grok one or two deliberately loaded questions, that take the existence of the genocide as read, to see how hard it pushes back against that premise. And interestingly it hasn't really pushed back at all. I asked a few minutes ago about potential timelines for denial of the genocide in Gaza to be criminalised, and Grok actually informed me that acceptance of the genocide as an established fact has come quicker with Gaza than it did with the Holocaust.

Grok, given the precedent of Holocaust denial becoming illegal in certain countries such as Germany, how long is it likely to be before denial of the genocide in Gaza is criminalised in some countries?

Grok's answer:

"*Historical Precedent: Holocaust Denial Laws*

Holocaust denial laws emerged primarily in Europe as a response to the resurgence of neo-Nazism and antisemitism in the post-World War II era. The Holocaust (1941–1945) was universally recognized as genocide almost immediately after the war, with the Nuremberg Trials (1945–1946) establishing it as a crime against humanity. However, criminalizing denial took much longer due to debates over free speech, the need to consolidate historical consensus, and rising far-right movements in the 1970s–1980s.

Key timeline of enactment:

1940s–1950s: No specific denial laws; prosecutions occurred under general hate speech or defamation statutes.

1960: Germany enacts the first explicit Holocaust denial law (Section 130 of the Criminal Code), banning incitement to hatred including denial, amid fears of Nazi revival.

1980s: Momentum builds with high-profile trials (e.g., Ernst Zündel in Canada, 1985; Klaus Barbie in France, 1987). France passes the Gayssot Act in 1990, explicitly criminalizing denial of Nazi crimes.

1990s–2000s: Expansion across Europe. Austria (1992), Belgium (1995), and others follow. The EU's 2008 Framework Decision encourages member states to criminalize denial of genocides, including the Holocaust.

By 2025: 17 European countries, plus Canada, Israel, and Russia, have such laws.

The lag (15–45 years post-genocide) reflects time for evidence compilation, societal trauma processing, and political will against denialism, often triggered by denial campaigns (e.g., by figures like David Irving).

*Current Status: Recognition of Events in Gaza as Genocide*

The conflict escalated on October 7, 2023, with Hamas attacks killing ~1,200 Israelis and taking hostages. Israel's response has caused over 66,000 Palestinian deaths (as of October 2025, per Gaza Health Ministry), widespread destruction (84% of health centers damaged), and famine conditions affecting 100% of Gaza's population.

International recognition as genocide has accelerated compared to the Holocaust era:

UN Bodies: ICJ's January 2024 ruling found South Africa's genocide case "plausible," issuing provisional measures to prevent acts (reaffirmed March and May 2024). A UN Commission of Inquiry (September 2025) concluded Israel committed four of five genocidal acts (killing, serious harm, destructive conditions, preventing births). A UN Special Committee (November 2024) deemed warfare methods "consistent with genocide."

Human Rights Organizations: Amnesty International (December 2024) and Human Rights Watch (2024) concluded genocide based on intent and acts like starvation as a weapon.

Scholars and Experts: By mid-2025, consensus among genocide studies scholars (e.g., International Association of Genocide Scholars, June 2024 resolution) labels it genocide. A Brookings survey (2025) showed majority of Middle East scholars agreeing.

States: South Africa leads ICJ case (joined by 14 countries by December 2024). The African Union (2024) and OIC (2024) condemned it as genocide. Sanctions against Israel (e.g., by Bolivia, Cuba, others in July 2025) cite complicity in genocide. No full ICJ merits ruling yet (expected 2026+), but provisional findings provide legal momentum.

Denial exists (e.g., Israel calls it "self-defense"; some Western governments avoid the term), but it's increasingly marginalized amid evidence.

*Likelihood and Timeline for Criminalizing Denial*

Criminalizing denial of the Gaza genocide would likely follow a similar path to Holocaust laws: starting in countries with strong human rights frameworks, expanding via regional bodies (e.g., EU, AU), and targeting hate speech that undermines victim dignity. However, the Gaza case differs:

Faster Recognition: Digital evidence (videos, real-time reporting) and global scrutiny (e.g., ICC warrants for Netanyahu/Gallant, November 2024) have built consensus in ~2 years, vs. decades for the Holocaust.

Existing Frameworks: Many countries' laws already ban general genocide denial (e.g., Spain, Czech Republic) or extend to "crimes against humanity." EU's 2008 decision could encompass Gaza if recognized as genocide.

Political Hurdles: Strong U.S./EU support for Israel delays action in the West. Proposals are more likely in Global South (e.g., South Africa, where genocide education is emphasized) or Europe amid rising antisemitism/Islamophobia debates.

Current Proposals: No enacted laws by October 2025, but discussions tie into broader hate speech reforms. E.g., UN experts (2024) urge states to prevent "denialism" as complicity; academic calls (2025) link it to Holocaust distortion laws. In July 2025, 12 countries (e.g., South Africa, Malaysia) announced sanctions and "renewed legal action" against genocide enablers, potentially including denial.

Estimated Timeline:

Short-Term (1–3 years, by 2026–2028): Initial laws in 2–5 countries, likely South Africa (expanding its hate speech laws) or Ireland/Belgium (active ICJ supporters). Triggered by ICJ final ruling or ICC convictions.

Medium-Term (5–10 years, by 2030–2035): 10+ countries if EU updates its framework (possible post-2028). Parallels Holocaust laws' spread after 1990s trials.

Longer if Delayed: 15+ years if geopolitical ties (e.g., U.S. vetoes) persist, similar to Holocaust's 1960 start.

This is speculative; it depends on ICJ outcomes, public opinion (47% of U.S. adults see genocide, August 2025), and activism. Such laws aim to protect memory and prevent recurrence, but critics argue they risk stifling debate—balancing free speech remains key."

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Catch up with my new video about the full-scale Scottish poll from Find Out Now -

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Big SNP lead in new Scottish Parliament poll from Find Out Now

Today's video is about three subjects - the new full-scale Scottish poll from Find Out Now showing the SNP with a handsome lead on the constituency ballot, the defections of a number of councillors and parliamentary candidates from the Scottish Greens to the new Jeremy Corbyn / Zarah Sultana party, and the Irish presidential election count which is taking place today.

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Friday, October 24, 2025

Plaid Cymru storm to historic by-election win in Caerphilly - and it's Labour that look "knackered" as devolved elections approach in both Wales and Scotland

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With less than three months of the year to go, the 2025 Scot Goes Pop fundraiser is still short of its target figure. If you'd like to help keep the lights on during the several months it will take me to find out whether an alternative funding model is viable (realistically it could be a wait of around four months or more), card donations are welcome HERE. Or, if you prefer, direct donations can be made via PayPal. My PayPal email address is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Many thanks to everyone who has donated so far.

Tuesday, October 21, 2025

SNP on course to win 51 of the 57 Scottish seats at Westminster, says earth-shaking YouGov subsample, as Tories set for TOTAL WIPEOUT

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Monday, October 20, 2025

Why the SNP are unlikely to go back into coalition with the Greens (or the Lib Dems) after May

I'm not sure if I believe in the theory that people inevitably become more right-wing as they get older - probably some people do and others don't. But Iain Macwhirter certainly seems to be a strong example of the phenomenon - it's hard to imagine the Macwhirter of twenty or thirty years ago writing the type of columns he does today. In his latest piece for the Sunday Times, he's trying to whip up fear about a potential return of the Greens to government after the May election, which he says is likely because if the SNP don't agree to a return to coalition, the Greens may well retaliate by installing a Labour-led government, even if the SNP remain the largest party.

I don't buy that. It's not that I can't imagine the Greens doing a deal with Labour, it's just that I can't imagine them doing it in the probable circumstances where the only viable Labour-led government is one that is propped up by Reform UK. People say that Anas Sarwar wouldn't need to form a coalition with Reform in order to become First Minister, he'd only need Reform support on a single vote. That's true, but becoming First Minister is a bit pointless (other than holding the title for two weeks so he can put "Former First Minister of Scotland" on his CV) unless he can sustain a government in office, and he probably won't be able to do that without ongoing Reform support. It doesn't really matter whether that support is secured via a long-term deal or on a vote-by-vote basis - I just cannot imagine radical left figures like Ross Greer and Gillian Mackay being party to such an arrangement. And if anyone on the unionist side is harbouring any fond thoughts of Sarwar getting into office with Reform and Green votes and then staying in power by doing side-deals with the SNP, they can forget it. If the SNP are the largest party and are frozen out of power, they'll have just one over-riding priority - to bring Sarwar down and to form a government themselves.

So no, I don't believe John Swinney will have to make a straight choice between coalition with the Greens and a return to opposition. And that's likely to mean that the SNP will, with the bruising experience of the Bute House Agreement fresh in their minds, prefer to remain a minority government. Some people claim that what Mr Swinney would actually prefer is a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, but I can't really see any such arrangement being successfully sold to SNP members immediately after an election that was fought on the number one issue of Scotland's right to choose independence - a principle that the Lib Dems categorically and contemptuously reject.

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Sunday, October 19, 2025

The "Make Mine A Double" juggernaut keeps rolling on, as optimism grows that Stew, too, will back SNP 1 & 2

As I always point out, I don't actually use the phrase "SNP 1 & 2" because it wrongly implies that the Holyrood voting system is preferential and involves numbers, but the title of this blogpost doesn't break that rule because it's only there for wind-up-Stew-with-a-pleasing-little-rhyme purposes.

My video on Wednesday certainly seemed to hit an almighty nerve with Stew, probably because it called him out for failing to do his self-defined job as a "journalist". I pointed out in the video that I know for certain that he was contacted multiple times in 2023-24 by people who wanted to write guest posts for Wings revealing the vote-rigging, rampant nepotism and culture of bullying that was destroying the Alba Party from within - in other words precisely the sort of guest posts that the late Iain Lawson *was* brave enough to run on the very popular blog Yours For Scotland. Not only did Stew flatly refuse (or just completely ignore) all guest post submissions on the subject of the Alba meltdown, he also failed to cover the story himself - or, to put it more pointedly, he deliberately decided to hush the whole thing up. Not exactly the actions of the "fearless investigative journalist" he preposterously portrays himself as. We can only speculate as to his reasons for doing that - the least-worst interpretation is that he was driven by misplaced loyalty to Alex Salmond and to McEleny. But whatever his motivation, the outcome of his "wheesht for the bullies" routine has been that Alba has, in his own words, "reduced itself with infighting to a shambolic irrelevance which there’s no credible hope of retrieving".

The point I made in the video is that Stew was perhaps the one person who could have averted that outcome, because of the authority he held due to Salmond, Ahmed-Sheikh, McEleny and Hanvey constantly speaking of him in hushed reverential terms (however nutty this may seem) as the party's spiritual godfather. If he had revealed to Wings readers what was going on before it was too late, the Alba leadership wouldn't have been able to ignore him in the way they ignored the revelations on the Iain Lawson blog - they would have been forced to make some sort of move to put their house in order. But Stew quite simply failed to do his "job" as a "journalist", and as a result he is one of the key authors of Alba's demise, a fate that was finally sealed a week or two ago when Ash Regan's resignation consigned them to fringe party status with no parliamentary representation.

You can tell how much Stew was smarting at hearing these uncomfortable home truths, because when he lashed out with yet another Wings blogpost about me, he failed to do certain things that he has always done in the past to at least maintain his own self-image as a "journalist". Of the 719 words in the latest post, no fewer than 559 comprised quotes from my own blogposts on Scot Goes Pop, but he failed to attribute those words to their source, ie. he failed to identify me as their author. OK, it's entirely standard for him to avoid referring to me by name - that's a long-standing stunt designed to maintain his tedious fiction that he "never even mentions me". (The idea is that periodically he challenges his readers to use the search function on Wings to look for posts containing my name. "You see? There's hardly anything there!", etc, etc.) But what he does usually do is link to an archived version of the Scot Goes Pop post he's quoting or referring to, so that anyone who clicks the link can see who he's talking about, which is a kind of indirect attribution of source. He didn't do that on this occasion, and I suspect that wasn't an oversight. It was literally impossible to tell from the post alone who he was quoting from, and indeed several of his readers ended up having to ask him.

Another sign of his rage was that he chopped up and spliced together quotes from several different blogposts of mine that were written days apart, but didn't indicate where the joins were with the use of, for example, marks of ellipsis. That's a breach of basic standards that no professional journalist would ever make, but let's face it, when Stew's temper gets the better of him, all pretence that he has any standards at all pretty much evaporates. Astoundingly, he claimed as bold as brass at the top of the post that none of my words were being taken out of context, in spite of the fact that in at least one case he had chopped up words from the same blogpost and rearranged them into a different order to give a misleading impression - you can hardly get a more clear-cut case of "taking words out of context" than that.

To put beyond doubt that he succeeded in his attempt to deceive his readers, take a look at this bonkers tweet from John Smythe which expresses absolutely sincere bafflement that the "conclusion" of my "article" didn't seem to follow on logically from what had preceded it -

I have seen a few others that do similar. Why ignore your own analysis when summing up? It makes a mockery of the whole article.
— John Smythe (@JohnSmytheInves) October 16, 2025

Yeah, you see, John, the reason for that is probably that no such "article" ever existed. I can hardly take much responsibility for a conclusion that wasn't a conclusion or for an article that wasn't an article. I know some people will argue that the fault here lies with John himself for being a bit slow on the uptake or for not reading Stew's disclaimer properly, but I'm not sure that's entirely fair on him, given that even if he did read the disclaimer, he'll have been wrongly led to believe that nothing was taken out of context and that everything "means what it sounds like it means". And, of course, because Stew deliberately didn't identify me as the author of the jumbled-up quotes, it was much less likely that people would check for themselves and discover that he was feeding them porkies.

The little game Stew is playing here is what I would call "performative synthetic incredulity". He wants to coax his readers, albeit by highly artificial and deceptive means, into bursting into laughter at the juxtaposition he offers between my misgivings about the SNP's new strategy on winning independence and my statement that people should vote "both votes SNP". Because any reader who laughs will feel like their amusement is natural and spontaneous rather than carefully coaxed, Stew's hope is that they will come to feel on a gut level that it is 'obvious' that my position is ridiculous and somehow contradictory, and that Stew's position (that all independence supporters should seek to totally destroy the SNP by electing a unionist government) is somehow inescapable and logical. But is it? Let's look at my position and Stew's position side by side (something he desperately doesn't want you to do, for reasons that will become obvious) -

MY POSITION: "If the SNP go down a strategic blind alley, we should be honest and admit that it's a setback and makes it less likely that independence will be delivered within the next few years. But abandoning the SNP in order to elect a unionist government would mean we have completely taken leave of our senses, and would turn a recoverable setback into an unmitigated catastrophe. In any case, the SNP cannot actually be 'destroyed' by flicking a switch, as Stew fatuously claims - they attract very strong brand loyalty from a very substantial percentage of the Scottish electorate, and even if they are replaced by a unionist government, they will remain by far the leading pro-independence force in Scotland. All we'd be doing is idiotically delaying - perhaps by one or two decades - any chance of independence, which can only realistically happen when an SNP-led government is in office. The decision taken by delegates at the Aberdeen conference relates to the 2026 election only, and doesn't bind the party beyond that. If we just show a little maturity and patience, and ensure the independence flame keeps burning bright by working for the strongest possible SNP result next May, we'll keep alive the very real possibility that a more viable strategy will emerge in future and can be successfully implemented. Furthermore, although I estimate the chances of a single-party SNP majority in May as around 0.5%, that isn't zero, and it's just conceivable that if we all get stuck in we might hit the jackpot. A true gambler, as Alex Salmond was, would always bet on success, even as a long shot, rather than making failure inevitable by lashing out destructively."

THE STEW POSITION: "If the SNP do not offer exactly what I want at this election, they must be completely destroyed forever so that they can't offer people anything at any future elections either. We must destroy them by voting for unionist parties, even though I cannot explain how that will actually destroy them in practice because their core vote will remain intact and those voters do not listen to me and do not see the world in the angry way that I do. If we succeed in destroying the SNP and installing a unionist government, that will somehow help in the long run because a new pro-independence party more to my liking will pop up to take the SNP's place. However, I can confirm that this new party will not be Alba, who I described recently as a shambolic irrelevance, and I can also confirm the new party will not be Liberate Scotland, who I described recently as a micro-party that had never been anything BUT a shambolic irrelevance. No, the new party will instead be one that has not yet been devised, and I cannot explain how it will come into being, what its nature or policy programme will be, or who will lead it. I also cannot explain why there is any particular reason to think that the destruction of the SNP, even if it were possible, would lead to the creation of any sort of credible pro-independence alternative, rather than to the resumption of the permanent unionist rule we were used to prior to 2007. But trust me, I'm Stew, I'm here to help, and my enthusiasm for voting for staunchly anti-independence, far-right parties is entirely coincidental."

I'm comfortable that this comparison shows beyond any doubt that the Stew position is the unnatural, convoluted, implausible one, and that mine is in many ways simply a statement of the obvious. If you want independence, you get it by voting for it, not by voting against it. If that sounds like any sort of strange statement, then you might want to consider the disturbing possibility that Stew's Pied Piper act has actually worked on you to some extent.

Incidentally, my point about not giving up on the outside chance of the target of a single-party majority being met is one that should really resonate with Stew, because unlike me, he rates it as considerably higher than a 0.5% chance. In his now-legendary blogpost "The blindness of hatred" from five months ago, he claimed that the SNP were guaranteed to win at least 65 constituency seats next May, which of course would mean they'd automatically win a single-party overall majority without requiring any list seats at all. It's official: Stew backs John Swinney to deliver! A Wings endorsement of Make Mine A Double / Both Votes SNP must now surely follow.

Stew concluded his piece with a rather sinister euphemism about how his readers should follow a "different path" from the one I was suggesting. I've since made strenuous efforts to produce a visual depiction for you of what the Stew Path would look like, but alas Grok wouldn't play ball, so you'll just have to use your imagination.

In response to Stew's latest post, I asked Grok if it could give me an image of "Stuart Campbell of Wings Over Scotland following Nigel Farage down a path". This is what it's given me so far.

It's going to be a looooooong afternoon. pic.twitter.com/DdhZiW9YlN
— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) October 16, 2025

This is Grok's latest rendering of "Stuart Campbell of Wings Over Scotland following Nigel Farage down a path".

I suppose the one consolation here is that AI is clearly not yet on the verge of taking over the world. pic.twitter.com/x7zkAbS8y2
— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) October 16, 2025

Donno, they’ve got the scowl and the eyes spot on. 😆
— Pedro (@celticchampionz) October 16, 2025

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