Apocalyptic poll puts Reform UK on highest vote share EVER

This is starting to look highly significant now.  Hot on the heels of the Find Out Now poll that put Reform UK in the outright lead, we have an Opinium poll that puts Reform on 27% - the highest vote share the party has ever recorded in any poll conducted by any polling firm.  I'm not even just talking about a new high watermark since the rebrand from Brexit Party to Reform in early 2021, because it even exceeds the Brexit Party's record high of 26% from their brief purple patch in mid-2019.

GB-wide voting intentions (Opinium, 22nd-24th January 2025):

Labour 28% (-1)

Reform UK 27% (+3)

Conservatives 21% (-2)

Liberal Democrats 11% (+1)

Greens 8% (+1)

SNP 3% (+1)

Plaid Cymru 1% (-)

An issue we used to talk about during the indyref was whether opinion polls have a snowball effect - ie. whether members of the public looked at polling trends and were influenced into changing their own voting intentions.  This might be one of the situations where it does happen, because these good polls for Reform are getting an unusual amount of media coverage, and the most likely impact will be to put the thought in people's minds that the Tories could be a busted flush, and that right-wing anti-Labour voters should move across to Reform UK as the next big thing.  If so, there could be some dramatic movement in the weeks to come.  The process could potentially be accelerated if any Tory MPs (Suella Braverman?) defect to Reform.

Elsewhere in the Opinium poll, Keir Starmer's net approval ratings have dropped to yet another new all-time low.  They now stand at a horrific -35.

*  *  *

The Scot Goes Pop Fundraiser for 2025 was launched a few hours ago, and so far the progress has been relatively slow.  £54 has been raised towards the target of £6800 (0.8% funded).  But am I downhearted?  No, by Jiminy!  The fundraiser post will remain pinned to the top of the blog over the coming days, so remember to scroll down to check for any newer posts.  And if you'd like to help Scot Goes Pop continue for another year, card donations are welcome HERE.  Donations can also be made direct via Paypal (eliminating all processing fees depending on the option you select from the menu).  My Paypal email address is:   jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Scotland staying in the UK now means staying in a country which seems to want Nigel Farage as Prime Minister - new doomsday poll shows Reform in the OUTRIGHT LEAD

It always felt like it was only ever a matter of time, and it's finally happened.  There had already been polls showing Reform UK in the joint lead, but the new poll from Find Out Now is the first to show them in the outright lead (or rather the first since their rebrand in early 2021 from Brexit Party to Reform).  And it's not just a tiny one-point lead, either - there's a little bit of daylight.

GB-wide voting intentions (Find Out Now, 22nd January 2025):

Reform UK 26% (+1)

Conservatives 23% (-2)

Labour 22% (-2)

Liberal Democrats 12% (-)

Greens 10% (-)

SNP 3% (-)

Plaid Cymru 1% (-)

This poll is a landmark in other ways too.  26% seems to be a post-rebrand high watermark for Reform, not just with Find Out Now but with any firm.  22% is the lowest vote share Labour has recorded with any polling firm since the general election, and although I'm not going to trawl through records going back to the 1940s, I would imagine it must be pretty close to an all-time low for them, or at least a post-Second World War low.

There's also a Techne poll which has Labour clinging on to a one-point lead, with the Tories and Reform in joint second.  However, that's not much comfort for Keir Starmer, because Labour's 25% in that poll is a post-election low with Techne, while Reform are on an all-time high of 24% with the firm.  So although polling firms disagree with each other about which party is in the lead, the trend looks clear - Labour are still drifting downwards and Reform are still climbing upwards.  I wouldn't like to place any bets on just how much lower Labour are capable of going.

My thoughts on the proposed SNP rule change which would make it almost impossible to challenge an incumbent leader

I've been specifically asked by a couple of people what I think about the proposed SNP rule change that would make it much, much harder to challenge for the leadership than it has been until now, and whether I think it would make the SNP even more unreformable than Alba.  Let me say at the outset that as a newly rejoined member of the SNP, I am extremely dismayed at the proposal and I hope it is roundly rejected when the time comes.  It speaks to quite an unfortunate mindset if people have been looking at Graeme McCormick's potential challenge to John Swinney last year (which never even happened in the end, let's remember), and instead of thinking "oh, isn't this wonderful, democracy working exactly as it should, even an obscure rank-and-file member can challenge the most powerful man in the party, and then it becomes a battle of ideas", you actually think "OH NO, WE CAN'T BE HAVING THIS, HOW CAN WE STOP IT, NEVER AGAIN!!!!"

However, the direct answer to the question "would this make the SNP even worse than Alba?" is a very firm "no", because Alba got in ahead of the SNP with a rule that has an almost identical effect.  The hurdle that anyone would need to clear to challenge for the Alba leadership is already exceptionally high.  A few months ago, I spoke to a former Alba national office bearer, who pointed out to me that to stand for the leadership or depute leadership, you not only need a very high number of nominations, but you also need those nominations to be drawn from a higher number of Alba LACUs (branches) than are currently even in existence.  So on a literal reading of the rule, it is actually impossible to challenge for the Alba leadership.  Now, doubtless the rule will be creatively "interpreted" to allow leading figures like Kenny MacAskill and Ash Regan to stand, but I very much doubt McEleny would ever have allowed a rank-and-file member (a Graeme McCormick equivalent) to benefit from any creative interpretations to challenge Alex Salmond when he was incumbent leader.  Indeed, McEleny carefully ensured that the annual leader and depute leader elections were not advertised to members in the same way as other office bearer elections, so if you'd wanted to even get as far as receiving a nomination form, you'd have needed to kick up a fuss and demanded your rights.

Which usually gets you precisely nowhere with McEleny.  At that stage he just ignores your emails, and if you point out to anyone else what he's doing, he just innocently pretends never to have received the emails.  If you then say that's not a credible statement, you start receiving dark hints that "not accepting the General Secretary is acting in good faith" is potentially a serious disciplinary matter that could result in your suspension or expulsion.  I have direct experience of an incident of that sort from early 2024 - for further details, watch out for future installments of "THE ALBA FILES", with the working titles 'The Conduct of Christopher' and 'You've Got Mail! (Yes, it's Tas again.)'.

As far as Stuart Campbell's article on the proposed SNP rule change is concerned, I do actually agree with some of it (a rarity for me since the MAGA Unionist era at Wings began), but it has to be said that the silence from him on the identical snuffing out of Alba's internal democracy has been absolutely deafening - and he can't plead ignorance, because I gather a number of former Alba NEC members asked to write guest posts for Wings about the rigging of the 2023 internal elections, and he either refused or ignored them.  His self-styled commitment to "fearless investigative journalism" is extraordinarily one-sided.  Rather akin to journalism in the Mail or the Telegraph, it only exists in service to his own political agenda - which at the moment is to destroy the SNP by artificially making them look much worse than Alba or the unionist parties.

Let's also not forget that when Mr Campbell was planning his own Wings Party, he made clear that it would be what I dubbed an "Il Duce party" - meaning that he would automatically be leader for life without an election.

Exactly as nature intended, the SNP have defeated Labour in the Battle of Bannockburn

To answer Keaton's question from the previous thread, the SNP's gain from Labour in the Bannockburn by-election is a 'technical' one rather than a 'real' one, because although Labour were defending the seat, the SNP won the popular vote in the ward last time around.  However, there has been a swing from Labour to SNP, which arguably makes it as good as a real gain anyway.

Bannockburn by-election result on first preferences (23rd January 2025):

SNP 35.9% (+7.2)
Labour 23.9% (+3.1)
Reform UK 22.7% (n/a)
Conservatives 10.7% (-8.4)
Liberal Democrats 3.5% (+1.4)
Greens 3.4% (+1.0)

Apart from the SNP's strikingly strong performance, it's once again the breakthrough for Reform UK that stands out.  23% is on the high side for them, even by the standards of recent Scottish by-elections.  But that's been offset by a relatively poor result for them in the Colinton/Fairmilehead by-election in Edinburgh.  That was the ward where the Liberal Democrats had a stunning by-election gain towards the end of last year, only to see their winning candidate resign as a councillor about ten seconds later.  Understandably they've been punished for that, with their vote collapsing and a lot of it returning to the Tories.

*  *  *

Please stay safe in the storm today.  I was in a public place in Glasgow last night when the sirens on people's mobile phones started going off simultaneously.  It was just a tad sinister because for a minute or two it was far from clear what was going on.  You really need a warning about the warning.

THE ALBA FILES, Part 4: read the full text of my written submission to the Constitution Review Group, setting out my proposals for democratisation of the party - a blueprint that was dangerous enough, it turned out, to get me expelled from Alba

I do still intend to publish the remaining three installments of the story of the "disciplinary" process I was subjected to by the Alba Party.  But as the root cause of my expulsion was the stand I took on the Constitution Review Group in favour of democratisation of the party, and as the report produced by that group will apparently be considered by Alba members at a National Assembly in only a few weeks' time (before a final vote at conference in March), it's probably a good moment to publish the written submission I made to the group just under a year ago, setting out my detailed proposals for democratic reform.

In retrospect, it seems that some leading Alba figures felt extremely threatened by the contents of my paper - which is really odd, given that they had the numbers to easily vote it down.  But it appears they felt threatened even by the presence of a persistent dissenting voice.

To give a little background to this document, the Constitution Review Group was set up in response to the outcry over the blatant rigging of Alba's 2023 internal elections.  The leadership obviously refused to admit that the rigging had occurred (quite the reverse, in fact - they instead started expelling and suspending people who publicly pointed out what had happened), however they did grudgingly accept that some people were unhappy with the party's constitution at it stood.  In an email to Alba members, Alex Salmond went out of his way to say that the new working group would be free to consider introducing one member, one vote for NEC elections - which you may recall I interpreted as meaning that the leadership had accepted that this change was inevitable, because I couldn't see why else they would risk mentioning it.  In retrospect, I was completely wrong about that.  It looks like the plan instead was to stuff the Constitution Review Group with leadership loyalists, so they could come back in a few months (after the anger about the vote-rigging had subsided a bit) and say "oh, we considered one member, one vote, but it turns out there was no appetite for it after all".

The group consisted of eight members, with four appointed by the leadership and four elected by National Council.  The four appointed members were Yvonne Ridley, Hamish Vernal, Robert Slavin and Daniel Jack, and all of them were firmly opposed to democratic reform.  (Yvonne Ridley was replaced by Suzanne Blackley after the second meeting, but that made no difference because Ms Blackley was also vehemently anti-reform.)  So that meant the only hope of the group recommending reform would be to get a clean sweep of reformers among the four elected members.  That almost happened but not quite.  The four elected members were Alan Harris, Mike Baldry, Chris Cullen and myself, with Mr Harris, Mr Baldry and myself being pro-reform (although we disagreed with each other on some of the details), and Mr Cullen being anti-reform.

So the leadership had an in-built 5-3 majority, and that played out within the very first minutes of the first meeting.  The reformers all voted for Alan Harris as chair, and the anti-reformers all voted for Hamish Vernal, with Mr Vernal winning by 5 votes to 3.  However, Mr Vernal then went out of his way to state that he wanted the group to produce a consensus report, and that he would consider it a "failure" if a minority report was produced. On the face of it, that offered grounds for optimism, because there was clearly no way that consensus could be achieved without some concessions being made to the substantial minority of reformers on the group.

It turns out that wasn't what Mr Vernal meant, though.  His idea was that there would be a straight majority vote on each individual proposal, and then the outcome of those votes would be put together to produce a report, which he expected us all to approve on the nod as a "consensus report".  I told him it was completely unrealistic to expect the reformers to vote in favour of a report that was bound to contain almost none of our proposals, and I pointed out he was making a minority report inevitable through his own actions.  (Again, I was being a bit naive there, because it turned out the leadership were keeping in reserve the option of expulsion to prevent me from even having the chance to produce a minority report!)

Eventually, after a lot of very difficult discussions, an uneasy compromise was reached.  Some of the proposed democratic reforms would be allowed to go forward to the members for a discussion and vote, but with the report making clear that the majority of the group were opposed to them.  There'll be a real moment of truth in a few weeks when we find out whether that compromise has been retained in spite of my expulsion.  If not, and if Alba members aren't even allowed to vote on things like one member, one vote, it'll be reasonable to conclude that part of the reason for my expulsion was to cynically overturn the compromise.

The most important of the proposals you'll see below were opposed by a 6-2 majority rather than 5-3, and the reason for that is Alan Harris resigned from the Alba Party altogether after the second meeting, due to his disgust at the procedural irregularities on the Disciplinary Committee and repeated breaches by the leadership of the existing constitution.  In a nightmare scenario, his replacement was the immature and rabidly anti-reform Shannon Donoghue, who nominally came in as an elected member of the group on a "lucky loser" basis.  That severely distorted the composition of the group and ensured that the arguments for democratic reform were met with a wall of total derision, and playground bullying from Ms Donoghue and Mr Cullen in particular.  (More about that in a future post.)

There is one interesting caveat, though, because one specific reform is likely to be strongly recommended by the group - and ironically that reform is an overhaul of the farcical disciplinary procedure which eventually resulted in my own expulsion from the party.  The reason that got through is because Hamish Vernal is a former convener of the Disciplinary Committee, and he saw disciplinary reform as both his baby and his legacy.  All of the anti-reformers magically fell into line with him on that point, setting up what could be a truly fascinating conflict between Mr Vernal and Chris McEleny.  Very much a case of the unstoppable force meeting the immovable object.

*  *  *

MY PROPOSALS FOR AMENDING ALBA'S CONSTITUTION

My first proposal is that Ordinary Members of the National Executive Committee should in future be elected by one member, one vote.  There is now a widespread view across the party that the current system which restricts voting rights to the 5% or so of members who pay extra to register for conference is profoundly undemocratic and open to abuse.  The NEC is effectively the party's governing body when conference is not in session, and thus all party members have a stake in its composition, and all members should have equal rights to determine that composition.

My second proposal is that the number of ordinary members of the NEC should be increased from eight to twelve, with six elected from each of the male-only and female-only ballots.  This would be a modest expansion that would increase the representativeness of the NEC and the range of voices heard in its deliberations.  As I understand it, the only real argument that has been advanced against this change is that people are better off spending their time chapping on doors rather than sitting on committees, which is not especially convincing given that the NEC typically meets for around two hours per month.  Taking just four more people out of circulation for just two hours per month is likely to have literally zero impact on the party's door-knocking potential.

My third proposal is that the constitution should require full and prompt publication of all internal election results, including the exact number of votes obtained by each candidate at each and every stage of the counting process.  There was rightly enormous concern last December that the result of the ballots for ordinary members of the NEC was unexpectedly kept secret (other than the names of those elected) from party members, and to a large extent was kept secret even from the candidates themselves.  Without transparency, democracy does not exist.  As we've now had a vivid demonstration that transparency cannot be guaranteed in the absence of a constitutional requirement, I would suggest that it has now become essential that the constitution does require the full and prompt publication of all internal election results.

My fourth proposal is that the procedure for selecting the Party Chair and the General Secretary should be changed.  After the Party Leader is elected at conference, he or she should nominate their preferred Party Chair and General Secretary, with those individuals then going forward to confirmatory online ballots of the whole party membership in which they can be either accepted or rejected.  If a nominee is rejected by the members, the Leader will then have the opportunity to submit a new nominee for a fresh confirmatory ballot.  Ideally, I believe the Party Chair and the General Secretary should be directly elected positions, but I presume the argument against that is the danger of dysfunction if the Party Leader finds himself at loggerheads with the holders of such key roles.  I would suggest my proposal squares the circle by ensuring that no Chair or General Secretary can be installed against the wishes of either the Leader or the party membership.  Given that the constitution confers upon the Chair and the General Secretary far more powers (including powers relating to the disciplining of individual party members) than it does upon other national office bearers, it seems somewhat perverse that those two individuals are currently subject to far less democratic accountability than other office bearers.  My proposal would at least go some way towards addressing that contradiction.

My fifth proposal is that the power to elect members of the Conferences Committee, Disciplinary Committee, Finance & Audit Committee and Appeals Committee should be removed from the National Council and transferred to the full party membership in the form of a one member, one vote online ballot.  This would put an end to the farcical situation we saw a few weeks ago where a party of several thousand members was only allowing a few dozen people to choose the composition of bodies as powerful as the Conferences Committee, and where candidates were mostly being elected on the basis of fewer than five votes on first preferences.  The only argument I've heard in favour of retaining election-by-delegate is that delegates may vote more wisely and knowledgably than other party members, which can't really be taken seriously given that it is obviously analogous to arguing against universal suffrage on the basis that the propertied classes, or men, understand the ways of the world better than the working classes or women.  We should be taking every opportunity to maximise internal democracy wherever possible, rather than dreaming up unconvincing arguments for standing in the way of it.  Given the importance and powers of the elected committees, it's vital that there is a clear chain of democratic accountability back to the members.  The election-by-delegate system simply does not provide that, because in the real world delegates are selected by only a tiny and potentially wildly unrepresentative minority of the members of each LACU.

My sixth proposal follows on from the fifth, in that it would allow all members of each LACU to select the delegates who will represent them at National Council via an online ballot conducted by one member, one vote.  This proposal becomes particularly vital if one member, one vote for committee elections is rejected.  I've heard it suggested that if members can't be bothered to attend LACU meetings, they shouldn't have any right to a say in selecting delegates.  That is, frankly, an insulting argument that takes no account of the practical barriers that prevents many members from attending LACU meetings, especially if in-person meetings are insisted upon by the local executive.  In any case, the idea that people need to 'earn' their right to vote through work or effort is an antiquated one that belongs in the 19th Century.  The technology exists to allow all members to easily participate, if they wish to do so, in a ballot selecting delegates for National Council, and that technology should be utilised.

My seventh proposal is that the Appeals Committee should be able to select its own convener.  I actually think there's a strong case that all committees should be able to do this, but the case is strongest of all for the Appeals Committee, which must act and be seen to act as independently as possible from both the NEC and the Disciplinary Committee.

My eighth proposal is that the Disciplinary Committee should be renamed the Conduct Committee (another appropriate option would be the Complaints Committee).  The new convener of the Disciplinary Committee feels that the current name is almost "Stalinist", and I certainly think it is forbidding enough to put off potential new party members who don't want to join an organisation that will subject them to school-style or military-style discipline.

Below are suggested amendments to the constitution needed to give effect to the above proposals (although this is probably not an exhaustive list) - 

The first sentence of 4.4 in the 'Party Campaign Structure' section should be amended to read - 

"4.4 The LACUs shall, by means of an online one member, one vote ballot, elect two representatives to be delegates at National Council."

5.1 in the 'National Conference' section should be amended to read- 

"5.1 National Conference shall be the supreme governing body of the Party, and shall be responsible for:

(a) determining ALBA Party policy;

(b) announcing the result of direct elections from the party membership of the national office bearers of: Leader; Depute Leader; Women’s Convener; Equalities Convener; Local Government Convener; Member Support Convener; Organisation Convener;

(c) announcing the result of direct elections from the party membership of 12 ordinary members of the National Executive Committee (NEC) from two sex-based lists (6 from each);

(d) ensuring the prompt publication and communication to all party members of the full results of the elections for national office bearers and ordinary members of the National Executive Committee, including the exact number of votes obtained by each candidate at every stage of the transferable vote counting process."

6.1 in the section 'National Council' should be amended to read - 

"6.1 National Council shall be composed of:

(a) Two delegates from each LACU, who must be elected on a one member, one vote basis in an online ballot open to all party members belonging to that LACU;

(b) Party Office bearers and ordinary members of the NEC;

(c) Two delegates from each Affiliated Organisation;

(d) All ALBA Members of Parliament;

(e) One ALBA Party councillor member of each Scottish local authority"

The existing 6.5 in the 'National Council' section should be replaced with the following - 

"6.5 National Council shall be responsible for announcing the results of direct ballots from the party membership to confirm or reject the Party Leader's annual nominations for the positions of Party Chair and General Secretary, and the results of direct elections from the party membership of the following:

(a) Six Members of the Party’s Conferences committee

(b) Six Members of the Party’s Conduct Committee

(c) Six Members of the Party’s Appeals Committee

(d) Four Members of the Party’s Finance and Audit Committee (FAC)

6.6 National Council shall be responsible for ensuring the prompt publication and communication to all party members of the full results of the ballots to confirm or reject the Leader's nominations for Party Chair and General Secretary, and the full results of elections for members of the Conferences Committee, Conduct Committee, Appeals Committee and Finance and Audit Committee, including the exact number of votes obtained by each candidate at every stage of the transferable vote counting process."

7.1 (f) and 7.1 (g) in the 'National Executive Committee' section, ie. "(f) Approving the Party Leaders Appointment of Party General Secretary; (g) Approving the Party Leaders nomination of Party Chair at the First Meeting of the NEC after National Conference each year" should be entirely deleted, meaning that (h) and (i) would become (f) and (g) respectively.

7.2 (b) in the 'National Executive Committee' section should be amended to read - 

"(b) Twelve ordinary members directly elected by party members;"

8.3 in the section 'National Office Bearers' should be amended to read - 

"8.3 The National Office Bearers shall perform functions as set out in the National Office Bearers' Job Descriptions (Annex D). The Party Chair, nominated by the Party Leader after National Conference and confirmed by direct ballot of party members, will chair all national meetings of the Alba Party in person or by nominating another National Office Bearer or NEC member."

11.3 in the section 'Code of Conduct' should be amended to read - 

"11.3 A Conduct Committee of 6 members directly elected annually by the party membership and 2 members appointed by the NEC shall be established in order to hear complaints and take disciplinary action, where it considers necessary, against members of the Party. The NEC appointments, including Convener, to the Conduct Committee shall be decided by the NEC in its first meeting after National Conference;"

11.4 in the section 'Code of Conduct' should be amended to read - 

"11.4 An Appeals Committee shall be directly elected annually by the party membership.  As soon as practical after being elected, it shall meet to elect its Convener. No member of the NEC may be a member of the Appeals Committee;"

(submitted 15th February 2024)

Alba is not in a good place when the only thing that matters in the leadership election is who sounds most convincing when they say "Alex would have wanted me to win"

I very nearly posted the other night to say that the Alba leadership election was over before it really got started, because with the extraordinarily rare political intervention from Moira Salmond to endorse Kenny MacAskill, it had become almost inevitable that Mr MacAskill would win.  Whatever the previous logic for thinking Ash Regan might have a chance, the Twitter polls, her known support among feminists, etc, none of that mattered anymore, because in a party that has consciously redefined itself as the 'Alex Salmond Memorial Party', the members aren't going to go against a statement from Mr Salmond's widow that he would have wanted Mr MacAskill to win.

But now Ms Regan has fought back by claiming that Mr Salmond had told her privately that he wanted her to replace Mr MacAskill as his deputy, and that he would also have wanted her to succeed him because he was a pragmatist and recognised the importance of the party's sole parliamentarian having a senior role.  That's a smart tactic from her, not least because it's literally the one and only tactic that has any chance whatsoever of keeping her in contention.  But my goodness, what volumes that speaks about Alba's current state.  In this leadership election, ideas don't matter, competence doesn't matter, even personality and charisma doesn't matter.  The only thing that matters is how convincing you sound when you say "Alex would have wanted me as leader". 

No party can prosper electorally as a sort of memorial stone to one man.  It will swiftly become fossilised.

There are differing interpretations over how tightly linked Ash Regan and Chris McEleny are, and over whether McEleny is still Ms Regan's presumptive éminence grise.  Personally, I don't have much doubt that he is.  Everything Ms Regan has been saying recently has McEleny's fingerprints all over them, including the nastiness of her public claims that Mr MacAskill had told her that he was going to retire, and that Mr Salmond had told her that he didn't want Mr MacAskill to remain his deputy. The clincher will come if Ms Regan claims that she was telepathically linked with Mr Salmond.

Ms Regan's blueprint for Alba's future, as a pro-independence alternative to Reform, also looks to have been devised by McEleny, and is fully in tune with his anti-immigrant dogwhistle of a few weeks back.  I suspect the Regan-McEleny link-up is precisely why Moira Salmond has so firmly concluded that her husband would have wanted Alba members to reject Ms Regan, and indeed Mr MacAskill himself has warned increasingly forcefully of the folly of Alba turning to the right.

But this raises an obvious question in my mind.  If Mr Salmond recognised the dangers of McEleny's wilder policy ideas, why did he never take any action to rein McEleny in?  If anything, McEleny seems to have been given latitude to make up Alba policy on the hoof, and it was often hard to tell whether some of the weirder stuff was intended as Alba policy or not. For example, he once announced on Twitter that Gibraltar should be returned to Spain, which plays well to the gallery, but isn't really consistent with a belief in democratic self-determination - Gibraltar has a long-established, stable population which has consistently rejected Spanish rule.  He also once said the European Union should stop admitting eastern European countries and should expand into North Africa instead.  I mean, what?!

It's "Scot Goes Pop Night" over at Wings, as Stew lovingly archives and annotates *sixty-four* of the finest SGP blogposts of the last six years - join me on a trip down memory lane as we relive the highs, the lows, the triumphs, the setbacks, the laughter, the tears, the joy, the despair - and the renewed hope that Scotland will soon be an independent country

I very rarely link to Wings posts, but I'm compelled to make an exception tonight because I'm profoundly moved by this one.  In order to prove that he's not stalking me, Stew Campbell has run no fewer than *sixty-four* individual Scot Goes Pop blogposts through the archive.is site, thus helpfully ensuring those posts are now permanently there for posterity.  He has then linked to all sixty-four archived pages from a single bumper tribute article, and has even calculated the word count of each individual post, plus the combined word count for all sixty-four.  

All in all that shouldn't have taken him more than a few hours, and I must admit it's exactly what I would have done if I was trying to prove I wasn't stalking someone. This of course follows on from his previous efforts to show he wasn't stalking me by trying to bankrupt iScot magazine because he didn't like one of my columns in it, and by getting his solicitor David Halliday to send me legal threats at the dead of night because someone else was using the Scot Goes Pop comments section to claim that he blames the Hillsborough disaster on the victims themselves.  (It has to be said that's a claim a great many other people have made about him too, so it's just as well no-one in this world ever believes that there's no smoke without fire.)

I'm particularly thrilled that Stew has given an outing to some of the Random Totty From Freedom Square's digital art.  I always felt the binoculars were a touch of genius.  That's nothing to how sensational her proper paintings and drawings are, though - I've always told her she could be world-famous if she wants to be, and I'm not exaggerating.

Of course not everyone will follow Stew's links and read the sixty-four blogposts, but luckily he's provided the full titles of all sixty-four, and some of those are so long that they make the point just as effectively as the posts themselves.  My own personal favourites are - 

'Thousands mystified as blogger claims Yes vote has been flatlining on 52% for the last three years, only a week after he claimed it has been flatlining on 47% for the last six years'

'Campbell appears to want someone in Ohio to be executed, he also wants Kezia Dugdale to “die down a well”, and can anyone introduce me to his “fifty employees”?'

'Stuart Campbell blows his top as he confirms he is now a Tory voter: “I don’t give a s**** and you are all unf***able nutjobs”'

'Now Wings aspires to become death, the destroyer of independence. But he’s not Oppenheimer, he’s just a bog standard Pied Piper, and frankly it’s time to send him packing.'

'Stuart Campbell has not only turned against independence, he’s turned against the rights of women and girls. If anyone is crazy enough to follow his advice today, make sure you hold him accountable for the long-term consequences.'

Thank you, Stew, for bringing these important points to a (slightly) wider audience.

And yes, I'm very proud that the Total Politics Awards named Scot Goes Pop as one of the UK's top 50 left-wing blogs in 2011.  The great news is that if those awards are ever revived, Stew will be in contention in a different category, so there's no reason why we can't both do well.

GB-wide polls update: Reform UK hit record-breaking heights with several more polling companies

As this is Scot Goes Pop's first blogpost of the Trump II era, it might be an appropriate moment to check in with the GB-wide polls to see how MAGA's de facto sister party, Reform UK, is getting on.  There have been several polls since my last update and the trend continues to look highly significant.

More In Common: Conservatives 25%, Reform UK 24%, Labour 24%, Liberal Democrats 12%, Greens 8%, SNP 3%, Plaid Cymru 1%

24% is a new post-election low for Labour with More In Common, but the same figure is an all-time high for Reform UK with the firm.

Techne: Labour 26%, Conservatives 25%, Reform UK 23%, Liberal Democrats 12%, Greens 7%, SNP 2%

26% is a new post-election low for Labour with Techne, and 23% is a new all-time high for Reform UK with the firm.

JL Partners: Labour 26%, Conservatives 25%, Reform UK 22%, Liberal Democrats 13%, Greens 9%, SNP 2%, Plaid Cymru 1%

26% is a new post-election low for Labour with JL Partners, and 22% is a new all-time high for Reform UK with the firm.

Find Out Now: Reform UK 25%, Conservatives 25%, Labour 24%, Liberal Democrats 12%, Greens 10%, SNP 3%, Plaid Cymru 1%

Find Out Now are the odd ones out - they showed Labour lower than this a few weeks ago, and they've also previously shown Reform UK as high as 25%.  It's not even the first time they've had Labour in third place.

*  *  *

My stalker in Somerset has celebrated what must be one of the happiest days of his life by writing his 79,854th blogpost about me (I don't charge rent for the time I spend in his head, honestly, that would be wrong of me).  What he's particularly angry about this time is that I said I would be voting "both votes SNP" next year to avoid independence being taken off the agenda for many years to come.  

I'm afraid that's just a statement of the obvious, Stu.  One of the main reasons we were all tearing our hair out in 2021 about the SNP's failure to bring about a vote on independence is that pro-indy parties totally dominated Scottish politics at the time - they had big majorities in both Holyrood and Westminster.  It was reasonable to say "if the SNP are ever going to strike for home, this is obviously the moment to do it".  But that position of dominance no longer exists, and if the SNP lose next year, there will be unionist majorities in both parliaments.  I still want the SNP to use next year's election as a de facto referendum, but regardless of whether they do or they don't, it will be necessary to elect a pro-indy majority just to keep the flame burning.  We're on the back foot, and we need a victory to get back on the front foot.  Whereas if a Labour-led government is elected, independence will be completely dead until 2031 at the very least, and we might as well all just pack up and go home for the foreseeable future.

So what is Campbell's superior plan for keeping the flame burning?  On past form it will almost certainly be to tell his readers to vote Labour or Tory on the constituency ballot (and possibly on the list as well), and thus to actually elect the unionist government that will kill independence until at least 2031.  How that is supposed to help matters is far from clear, and Campbell isn't about to explain it to you.  If he pulls it off, his long-term Pied Piper mission will be well and truly complete, although I'm not sure his readers will recognise that they've been played for mugs even at that stage.

A response to Shannon Donoghue's new claim

Thank you to the Shannon impersonator on the previous thread for drawing my attention to the fact that the real Shannon Donoghue is accusing me of lying, albeit in her trademark indirect way - 

And while I’m at it, I’m told the blog states I instigated action against the author. This is categorically not true. If you insist on obsessing over me, please remain factual.

It makes you more credible.

— Shannon Donoghue (@shannon_talks_) January 19, 2025

I won't return the compliment by saying that Shannon is definitely lying (although my assumption is that she probably is) but what I can tell you is this.  One of the very, very few points of detail that McEleny did actually provide in the disciplinary referral document, dated 30th September 2024, is that Shannon Donoghue submitted a complaint against me in April about a supposed 'breach of confidentiality', and indeed that her fiancé Chris Cullen also complained.  

Now, it's true that McEleny didn't attach any of Donoghue's or Cullen's emails to the referral, so I haven't seen any direct proof of Donoghue's involvement in instigating the disciplinary process.  That, indeed, was one of the very points that was raised at my appeal hearing on 8th January.  It's also true that McEleny had earlier claimed that another individual was involved in the complaint, but it turned out that person had gone out of his way to make abundantly clear that he *didn't* want to put his name to the complaint.  So I can't totally exclude the possibility that McEleny was also lying about Shannon.  One thing is for sure, though - either McEleny is not telling the truth about this, or Shannon is not telling the truth about it.  There is no third possibility, because their claims are quite simply not reconcilable with each other.

For what it's worth, my instinct is that in this particular case, McEleny is telling the truth and Shannon is lying. But who knows.

By the way, for those of you asking about who Shannon is and what she's like, an earlier tweet of hers will give you a representative taste of the 'endearing banter' that I and others were treated to at those highly enjoyable meetings of the Constitution Review Group - 

Some free advice to the Alba Party

So 24 hours late, here's what I was planning to post last night before Robert Reid, Robert Reid came riding through the glen.  As a result of my article the other day about returning to the SNP and my reasons for doing so, there has been a sharp increase in online attacks on me from the McEleny Militants (or should that be Christopher's Commandos?), and most of those attacks fall within a small number of broad themes.  One of those themes strikes me as very odd indeed.

The gist of it is "So you're a Devo Nat now, are you, James?  A Do Nothing Nat? A keep begging Westminster for an indyref Nat?"  What I would say here, very gently, is that if you see it that way, and if you feel so terribly strongly about it, and if you wanted me to keep on supporting Alba on the list vote instead, it does beg one rather obvious question.  And that question is...

So why did you expel me, then?

I haven't seen anyone even attempt to address that question, let alone come up with a credible answer.  It's very easy, chaps, to pretend that my return to the SNP was some sort of totally inexplicable bolt from the blue, rather than the direct outcome of a downright nasty process that the Alba leadership initiated, and that they retained total agency over throughout.  As recently as twelve days ago, my appeal against expulsion was still active, and the situation could still have been resolved.  Instead, the Alba leadership made very, very sure that my expulsion was upheld and that the bridges were permanently burnt.  If you think that was a mistake, take it up with them, because it was no choice of mine.

But even though the bridges have been burnt with me, there are still many Alba members who are just about hanging on within the party, even though they have been shabbily treated, or are deeply unhappy with the party's direction.  Instead of ranting at me, I would suggest you get your thinking caps on and work out what you're going to do to prevent those other people filing through the exit door in the not too distant future.  Here are three very simple suggestions - 

1) For the love of God, stop expelling and suspending people on trumped up charges.  I know there's always a temptation to say to yourselves "yeah, but she's only one person, and we particularly dislike her nose, so there's no harm in getting rid of her, surely".  The problem is that the member with the objectionable nose is likely to have a few friends in the party who will walk out in solidarity, creating a ripple effect.  And even if she doesn't have any friends within the party, once you abuse your power in that way a few times, people will start to notice the pattern and will be deeply disturbed by it.

2) Offer people who disagree with the Alba leadership's policies and strategies some hope that they can bring about change if their arguments are persuasive enough.  Only that way will they feel they have a stake within the party.  And yes, that does mean replacing Alba's sham internal democracy with a real democracy.  It means, at a minimum, introducing one member, one vote for NEC and Conference Committee elections.  As Churchill said, democracy is the worst system of governance until you've tried all of the others.

3) Put an end to the toxic culture of bullying within Alba.  Unlike with steps 1 and 2, there's no easy button that can be pushed to instantly make this happen.  The Shannon Donoghues of this world will always exist, and will always exist in all parties.  But what can be done is to ensure that bullies do not have special protection just because they happen to be the daughter of the Deputy General Secretary, for example.  There are far too many people within Alba who get to act with total impunity because of who they know, or who they are related to, or because they bring funding or media contacts to the table.

One of the other themes of the attacks on me is to mock the idea that I was a "senior" member of Alba.  Now, to be absolutely clear, that isn't a word I used about myself. The National described me in that way, presumably because I was an elected member of the Alba NEC in 2021-22.  If you want to quibble about the word, that's absolutely fine, but bear in mind that what you're saying is that being an elected member of the NEC is not a position of much significance - which frankly says far more about Alba's sham internal democracy than it does about me.  And you may well have a valid point, because the Alba NEC is indeed mostly a rubberstamp body.  As I've mentioned a few times, there was just one occasion in my year on the NEC when I insisted on a formal vote about something rather than allowing the leadership's wishes to go through on the nod (it was about Alba's choice of ballot description for the 2022 local elections).  Tasmina allowed the vote to take place, but not before looking momentarily stunned that the rubberstamp process wasn't functioning as normal.

It's also been repeatedly suggested that the SNP must have "offered" or "promised" me something to get me back.  If you really believe that, you don't have a clue about the nature of the SNP or the way it operates.  The SNP is an enormous organisation, and the idea that it would be bothered enough about one blogger to start "promising" things is just silly beyond words.

Even more fanciful have been the suggestions that I went back to the SNP for career reasons, ie. to get a BBC pundit slot or something like that.  Again, the idea that the BBC are queueing up to put SNP bloggers on TV is just barking mad.  As a political blogger over the last seventeen years, I have been interviewed on the BBC just twice, and both times were before I first joined the SNP in 2014.  I was of no more interest to the BBC in the SNP than I was in Alba.

The Survation poll may have served up the key numbers demonstrating why Labour is very unlikely to take power in Scotland next year

The latest batch of numbers from the Survation / True North Advisers / Holyrood Sources poll relates to attitudes towards the various options for a coalition government at Holyrood after next year's election.  Respondents actually oppose every single option offered, which makes sense in a way, because each individual party has only minority support at the moment and there will thus always be a fair bit of opposition to a coalition that involves any given party.  The least unpopular option is an SNP / Labour coalition, which is supported by 33% and opposed by 37%.  Although plenty of centrists are trying to talk that option up (well, centrists plus Wings - an odd combination), I just can't see it as a runner.  Labour have defined themselves as an anti-SNP party and they wouldn't know where the north is anymore if they abandoned that stance for the sake of a few ministerial posts.

But for Labour to get into power in any other way, they'll almost certainly need to do a deal with the Tories.  It's possible that such a deal could fall short of full-blown coalition, which is just as well for them, because a Labour/Tory coalition is by far the most unpopular of the various permutations.  Respondents reject the idea by a resounding 52% to 21% margin, and crucially, Labour's own voters from last July oppose it by a 2-1 margin (51% to 26%).  It must be assumed that even an informal deal with the Tories would be unpopular enough with Labour voters to cost votes.  Therefore, Labour would be playing with fire to follow pretty much any path that could get them into government - and that may well mean that, when it really comes down to it, they won't even try.

THE ALBA FILES, Part 3: It is *literally* the case that 50% of the people who voted to expel me from the Alba Party are either Robert Reid's girlfriend or Robert Reid's mum

A rare moment of light relief in the Alba leadership's Kafkaesque "disciplinary" action against me occurred over Christmas, when strapping young lad Robert Reid from Alba HQ randomly started taunting me on Twitter over a period of several hours.  At that point, the Disciplinary Committee had already voted to expel me from the party, but my appeal had yet to be heard.  As several people pointed out, Reid was vividly and publicly demonstrating that Alba HQ were openly hostile towards me while my appeal was still active, and thus proving that the process could not possibly be regarded as fair.  Eventually he went so crazily far with the insults that I began to genuinely wonder if he was unaware of the fact that I had lodged an appeal, or even that I had a right to appeal.  Sure enough, as soon as I mentioned to him that his behaviour seemed completely inappropriate from an Alba employee in view of my pending appeal, he immediately fell silent.  It looks like he either didn't know or had completely forgotten.

He maintained that silence until yesterday, when suddenly the insults started flying again.  Even though the appeals process has now been exhausted, I do think that his choice of language - suggesting in Campbell-esque fashion that I am mentally unhinged - was again very poorly judged and that he may come to regret it once he matures into adulthood somewhat.  Basically his aim was to try to undermine my description of McEleny's charges against me as being "trumped up", and to argue that it's self-evidently absurd to suggest that those charges could have been anything other than well-founded, given that two different Alba committees (the Disciplinary Committee and the Appeals Committee) upheld them.  Well, if Reid believes the charges were well-founded, the first thing he should of course be doing is defining what they actually were, because that's something his boss McEleny utterly failed to do in any of the official disciplinary documentation.  And to the best of my knowledge, nobody else from Alba has made any public comment on the nature of the charges, apart from some extremely vague innuendo.

“Trumped up charges” - Kelly wants people to believe that numerous ordinary members from two different committees are all taking part in a conspiracy against him. Next level crazy. https://t.co/eGbaCzBKbI

— Robert Reid (@robertreidALBA) January 18, 2025

Exactly half of the four people who voted to expel me from the Alba Party are either your girlfriend or your mum. That is literally true and we both know it. Quite happy to debate you on the subject of democratic principles any time you like, Robert. (Or "Reid".)

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) January 18, 2025

In fact, as far as I'm aware, Reid's latest outburst is the very first time that anyone with official standing in Alba has publicly admitted that the leadership did take action against me and did expel me from the party, and from that point of view it's helpful, because the silence from them had been so deafening that I started to worry that people would think the whole thing was a figment of my imagination.  I'm still planning in future installments of 'THE ALBA FILES' to give detailed accounts of both the disciplinary hearing and the appeals hearing, but as Reid has now specifically claimed it's unthinkable the Disciplinary and Appeals Committees would ever have upheld trumped up charges against anyone, it's probably a good moment to take a step back and look in detail at who the members of those committees are, how they ended up in that position, and what loyalties they owe to a leadership that was hellbent on expelling me.

The Disciplinary Committee consists of eight members.  Six of them are elected, albeit not by the party membership at large, but by a small selectorate of a few dozen people on National Council.  The other two members are directly appointed by the party leadership.  However, the power of the appointed members goes much further than might be obvious at first glance.  One of the two appointed members is also directly appointed by the leadership to chair the committee, which means that person has the casting vote in the event of a tie, and can also rule the elected members out of order if they try to express 'undesirable' views.

Of the six elected members at the time of my own hearing, one of them was none other than me, so obviously I couldn't sit in judgement on myself.  Also absent from the hearing was Chris Cullen, who presumably recused himself due to the massive conflict of interest of having instigated the action against me along with his fiancée Shannon Donoghue.  In fact, I probably should give Cullen some small credit for agreeing to recuse himself, because he had flatly refused to do so in two previous disciplinary cases against other people where he also had a blatant conflict of interest.  Another absentee was Abu Meron, who never turned up for any of the committee meetings during 2024.  (I'm not criticising him for that, it's just a statement of fact.)

That left just five committee members to hear the case, and of those Morgwn Davies voted against upholding the complaint against me.  So let's take a look at the four individuals who actually voted to expel me from the Alba Party.

Christina Hendry: Directly appointed to the committee by the leadership.  Robert Reid's girlfriend, and Alex Salmond's niece.  Has a 100% record in previous disciplinary cases of voting in favour of whatever McEleny wanted - she voted to expel Geoff Bush for giving an inoffensive interview to The National, and she voted to suspend Denise Somerville for six months for whistleblowing about the rigging of Alba's 2023 internal elections.  In both the Somerville and Bush hearings, she repeatedly expressed the view that Alba is a sort of secret society in which rank-and-file members are absolutely forbidden from expressing their own personal views in public, unless they align with the official Alba position.  I pointed out to her that this effectively makes it impossible for journalists to be Alba members - unless of course they turn their journalism into party propaganda.

Jackie Reid: The mum of Robert Reid.  Technically she's an elected member of the committee, although in reality she's a 'lucky loser' who was only elevated to the committee after Alan Harris resigned in disgust over procedural irregularities and breaches of the constitution.  Has a 100% record in previous disciplinary cases of voting in favour of whatever McEleny wanted - she voted to expel Geoff Bush and to suspend Denise Somerville.  She also expressed some of the most poisonous views that I heard from anyone during my time on the committee.  She indicated a personal dislike of Denise Somerville and said "she's not the sort of person we want in this party", strongly implying that she was abusing her position as a committee member to get rid of people for reasons that had nothing to do with the facts of the case before her.

Josh Robertson: Directly appointed by the leadership as both a committee member and committee chair, with a casting vote and the power to prevent committee members from expressing their own views.  Amazingly, he does not appear to be related to Robert Reid, but his extraordinary behaviour throughout his year as chair leaves little room for doubt that he is trying to curry favour with the leadership for career reasons.  In total loyalty to every detail of McEleny's wishes, he voted to expel Colin Alexander for raising concerns about the 2023 internal elections, to suspend Denise Somerville, and to expel Geoff Bush.  Indeed, he was the person who first "suggested" expulsion as a suitable penalty for Mr Bush, although he was almost certainly under strict orders to make that "suggestion" if nobody else did.  His absolute surrender to McEleny's every desire even extended to him using his casting vote to insert a false account of events into the minutes of a previous meeting, which McEleny later gloated meant that "it officially happened, regardless of whether it actually happened or not".  The reason for this subservience is probably that he sees himself as Alba's next-leader-but-one if he keeps his nose clean (Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh was openly talking up that possibility at his Airdrie campaign launch in June), and also that he wants to be an Alba list MSP.  Well, good luck with that, Josh - you've almost certainly earned yourself a plum spot as an Alba list candidate, but actually getting elected is a very different matter.

Geraldine Harron: Elected to the committee by National Council.  I know very little about her, because she didn't turn up to any of the previous meetings of the committee - with just one exception, when she turned up extremely late and Josh almost had a meltdown trying to work out whether to admit her to the meeting or not.  We eventually agreed on a compromise that she would be allowed in as long as she didn't speak or vote.  So I don't know for sure what motivated her to vote for my expulsion.  She didn't say a single word during the twelve minutes I was allowed to be present for my own hearing - which was plainly a deliberate tactic on the part of all of the leadership loyalists in both the disciplinary and appeals hearings. (The chairs of each committee did speak while I was there, but even they were keeping what they said to an absolute minimum.)

So of the four people who voted for my expulsion, 50% were directly appointed to the committee by the very leadership that was hellbent on my expulsion.  50% of the four were either Robert Reid's girlfriend or Robert Reid's mum.  The combined total of those who were EITHER directly appointed by the leadership OR related to Robert Reid is 75%.

I'm sorry, Robert, but nobody in their right mind is going to look at those statistics as proof that the leadership couldn't possibly have persuaded the committee to uphold trumped up charges.  Nice try, but no.

Because I wasn't a member of the Appeals Committee in 2024 (I was a member in 2023 but it never actually met), I'm much less familiar with the people involved there.  I do know with a reasonably high level of confidence that only three members of the Appeals Committee voted to uphold my expulsion, and those three were Thomas Westen (I'm not sure about the correct spelling of his surname), Hamish Turnbull and John Caddis.  I know nothing about them except that all three have a reputation as leadership loyalists, and that John Caddis has a particularly poor reputation among the Alba members I spoke to.  In fairness to Mr Turnbull and Mr Westen, they are both rumoured to have accepted that McEleny botched the disciplinary process against me from beginning to end, but Mr Caddis was such an extreme leadership sycophant that he not only voted to uphold the expulsion, but also apparently refused to accept that McEleny had even put a foot wrong.

Just a final thought - as far as I'm concerned, Christina Hendry's vote for outright expulsion puts beyond all reasonable doubt that Alex Salmond must have signed off on my expulsion before his death.  Anyone who has sat on national Alba committees knows full well that very little ever happened in the party without Mr Salmond's express approval, and Ms Hendry would certainly have never taken a decision like that against her uncle's wishes.

*   *   *

Coming up in future installments of 'THE ALBA FILES'...

* The rigging of the 2023 internal elections

* Fact-checking the notorious "secret speech" at the closed session of Alba's 2023 conference

* Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh: Woman of Letters

plus much, much more.  Stay tuned.