The levels of support for Reform UK in one corner of Bath are Stewpefying

I don't know about you, alert readers, but I'm starting to get the impression that the controversial "Stew" blogger is just ever so slightly hooked on Scot Goes Pop.  His latest article is the *fifth* in the last three weeks or so to directly reference me, and he also lapses at one point into a little spiel about YouGov being the only polling firm to correctly structure and weight their Scottish subsamples, which is no more than a light rewording of what I say here on an almost weekly basis.

Honoured to have you as a stewdent, Stew, and I was particular chuffed to be the centre of attention in this section - 

"If you’re a fan of lazy, superficial political analysis from the mentally unwell, you might have read this week about John Swinney’s great strategic triumph of having “coaxed” an “endorsement” out of the Daily Record for Thursday’s by-election in Hamilton.  And if so, you might be forgiven for thinking that that analysis looks pretty stupid now."

For the uninitiated, yes it was me who used the words "coaxed" and "endorsement".  (Never let it be said that I'm getting under this guy's skin or anything.) Stew is basically trying to have a gloat about the fact that the Record have since balanced out their Swinney front page with a similar one featuring Anas Sarwar making Labour's pitch for the Hamilton by-election.

But, y'know, everything's relative, Stew.  I'd probably feel a lot stupider if I had done something really crazy like throwing away tens of thousands of pounds of other people's money on a loopy defamation court action against Kezia Dugdale.  I've never actually done anything quite as breathtakingly idiotic as that, and in fairness neither have 99.999999% of the rest of the population.  That means there are six-year-old schoolchildren in Yetts o' Muckhart who technically have superior political acumen to Stew, which is pretty darn impressive when you think about it.

But I digress.  The reality, of course, is that the Record were making a big statement with the Swinney front page that triggered Stew so much, and although they may have then made a remedial gesture to smooth things over with Labour after receiving a frantic "what happened to our love?" phone call, to a large extent that statement still stands.  Nobody will be in any doubt that this traditional Labour paper is, at the very least, choosing not to endorse Labour at the by-election.

The other key point to make here is that the two front pages taken together are likely to drive up turnout in Hamilton, which I'd have thought the SNP would be pretty happy about.  Most of the theories about how Reform might pull off a win hinge on there being a low turnout, and on Reform supporters being the most motivated to vote.

But if that obvious point has occurred to Stew, it's certainly not dampening his enthusiasm, because he uses the rest of his blogpost to excitedly talk up Reform's chances for all he's worth.  He still genuinely thinks he's building up to his big announcement next May without anyone noticing what he's doing ("We honestly COULDN'T HAVE IMAGINED even six weeks ago that we'd be saying this, but sometimes circumstances change in the most unpredictable of ways, so you know what?  F**k it, to win independence we'll first have to kill it.  You know what you have to do.  The alertest of readers will be voting Reform on Thursday.")

Come on, Stew, your elaborate sales pitch failed before it even really got started.  EVERYONE KNOWS what the big plan is.  You're putting yourself and everyone else through a great of deal of pain for nothing.  You may as well just don your "I'm With Nige" T-shirt a year early, and start living the dream openly.

But will the people of Hamilton elect a Reform MSP on Thursday and make Stew happy?

Option A: Happy Stew

Or will they elect an SNP MSP and make Stew angry?

Option B: Angry Stew

Be the first to find out by sticking with Scot Goes Pop's comprehensive coverage of by-election week.