Wow. Where to begin with this little lot? First of all, Stew, you'll have to forgive me for neither knowing nor caring what "this Bindel-Webberley thing" is when it's at home, although I don't suppose any of us are going to faint with amazement to learn that it's got something to do with the trans issue, the one and only subject that you have obsessed about twenty-four hours a day for years on end.
Secondly, and I don't know how to break the news to you, but "Both Votes SNP" is not some kind of metaphysical concept like gender ideology that you can claim doesn't exist in the real world. Nor can it be proved or disproved by science. It's simply an option that voters can freely exercise in an election, whether you like it or not. That's kind of the nature of democracy - you can scream "SNP BAAAAAD" and "NO VOTES SNP" at voters as much as you like, but it's still their prerogative to say "actually we have minds of our own and we'll choose how to vote for ourselves". Almost certainly hundreds of thousands of people will choose the Both Votes SNP option next May. I mean, if you really want to, you can channel your inner Tom Baker and chant "I DENY THIS REALITY" throughout election day, but it'll still be happening just the same.
Thirdly, you're probably not ideally placed to brand other people's arguments as "intrinsically nonsensical" or "obfuscatory" given that your own critique of Both Votes SNP, such as it was, evolved in the following manner over the space of just a few months:
* First you claimed there was "zero chance, none" of pro-independence parties winning a majority of seats at next year's Holyrood election, and therefore it was pointless to vote SNP on the list for that reason.
* Then you dramatically U-turned and said that not only was there a 100% chance that pro-independence parties would win an overall majority of seats, but that the SNP had a 100% chance of winning a majority on their own, and that they even had a 100% chance of winning that majority on constituency seats alone - ie. that they were certain to win at least 65 of the 73 constituency seats. Therefore, you claimed people should vote tactically for non-SNP parties on the list, because the SNP were certain to win so many constituency seats that they couldn't possibly win any list seats at all, and list votes for them would consequently be wasted.
* In a thrilling plot twist that not even Jane Austen could have dreamt up, you then claimed to have never called for tactical voting in the first place, and pretended you had simply been saying that people shouldn't vote for the SNP on either the constituency ballot or the list, because you think they're a rubbish party. Astonishingly, you also claimed never to have said that the SNP were going to win 65 seats - even though you had supplied actual maps showing the exact 65 you were talking about!
After a rollercoaster ride like that, I'm not even going to try to predict which version we'd be treated to if somebody asks you about the subject this week.
Fourthly, you're self-evidently correct that it would have been foolish to engage me - or anyone else! - in debate on a subject that you're all over the place on, but luckily you're incorrect in your claim that you actually did try to engage. What you instead did, of course, was launch into an epic multi-tweet monologue and pretend not to notice that I had replied umpteen times to each individual tweet. After about half an hour of talking pompously to yourself, you then said something like "I realise only I have said anything in this debate so far, so I will now stop and allow you to say something if you wish". The comic timing was impeccable, I'll give you that, but I'm afraid I can't give you much else.
You then got so frustrated with someone actually replying to you (gosh! the impertinence!) that you then reblocked me, and went full Arnold J Rimmer by getting ChatGPT to declare you the winner of the debate, and - get this - you even published what the AI bot had said in reply to your pleading prompts. Most people would have stopped themselves before doing that, but the Stew Embarrassment Threshold seems to be somewhat higher than for most mortals. To demonstrate what you had just done and how you had done it, I invited Grok to give its own verdict on the debate, and it actually provided a remarkably detailed and compelling case for concluding I had won. You then claimed to think it was hilarious that I had published Grok's analysis, apparently oblivious to the fact that the joke was still on you, and that Grok was simply smoking you a kipper, in anticipation of you being back for breakfast.
I don't think anyone can seriously deny that I've patiently humoured you as you've advanced these excruciatingly bad excuses for panicking and bailing out of the Twitter debate, but I must say that after your two latest tweets my patience on that score is now at an end. Let me remind you that after Charlie Kirk's murder, you said you were heartbroken. That startled many of us, because the systematic extermination of hundreds of thousands of innocent Palestinians had left you at best unmoved. At worst, you were actively angry at the victims of the genocide for allowing themselves to be filmed and thus ill-manneredly distracting you from the vital task of bullying people with gender dysphoria around the clock. And yet, Kirk's death, just one death, a tiny fraction of the Gaza tragedy, and suddenly there was emotion from you. You gushed that emotion. Paragraph after paragraph after paragraph. What we had all overlooked, of course, was that Kirk was not Palestinian and was therefore an actual human being in your eyes.
What moved you so much about Kirk, you claimed, was that he believed in actual debate with his political opponents, just like you always have, or so you said. You insisted that you had never run away from a debate in your time as a blogger, except with people who already agreed with you. Well, I think we've safely established that I do not agree with you about much, so I qualify and it's time for that debate to actually take place. And this time there must be a format that ensures that you cannot get away with your party trick of pretending not to notice that the person you are debating with has actually replied to you. It must be, in a nutshell, a video debate. If you wish, we can have a neutral moderator to keep order and to ensure fairness, although note I do mean neutral and not Andy Ellis. As Scotland is probably too distant a country for you to realistically travel to, I would suggest doing it by Zoom call, with both of us given permission to record the call, so neither of us can pull a fast one with the editing.
The debate can if you wish touch on the Both Votes SNP issue, although I suspect that part of it won't take very long. It'll just be a case of me saying "I agree with every word of your blogposts in 2016 explaining why tactical voting on the list doesn't work, and can't work, in the Additional Member System, and as the Additional Member System hasn't changed one iota since 2016, what's your point?" More interesting topics for the debate, I would suggest, will be your controversial views on the genocide, your provocative wish to eradicate the Gaelic language, and your extraordinary claim on general election day last year that your readers should vote Labour because that would bring us closer to independence. Perhaps we could have a progress report from you on that one, particularly in view of your tweet the other day mocking Owen Jones for making vaguely supportive noises about Keir Starmer in 2020, long before it became clear what Starmer was like, which strikes me as considerably less embarrassing than actually telling people to vote for Starmer on general election day 2024.
I'd also like to explore with you the interesting football-related metaphor you attempted the other night after Scotland's victory. You said it showed that you can achieve things in politics if you actually attack rather than shuffle sideways. But perhaps the correct lesson is that you can win at politics if you don't keep self-harming by shooting at your own goal, by for example constantly telling your readers to vote for unionist parties? Unless, of course, you've already switched sides and just haven't bothered changing your jersey yet.
Please do let me know your thrilling excuses for ducking / ignoring this debate challenge at your earliest convenience. You know my email address - it's the same one you sent an almost-certainly illegal unsolicited message to in 2021 calling me a "wretched little c**t", and it's also the same one you cowardly instructed your solicitor David Halliday to send legal threats to 24 hours later. Looking forward to hearing from you in much happier circumstances, Stew!
Debate is everything. Let's do it for Charlie.
