Natty Norstat poll is yet another to show the SNP and Greens on course to retain the PRO-INDEPENDENCE MAJORITY at Holyrood - with Labour on the brink of being overtaken by Reform

I was just about to give you the full figures from tonight's new Norstat poll, but the archived page I was relying on has stopped working (probably temporarily).  What I can tell you for now from memory is that the poll shows the SNP and Greens on course to retain a narrow pro-independence majority at Holyrood, with 65 seats between them, and unionist parties on 64.  Labour and the Tories are both dangerously close to being overtaken by Reform - they are on 18 seats apiece and Reform are on 15.

Once again, Alba are not projected to win any seats, and their list vote share has dropped by one point.

The independence question shows an exact 50-50 tie.

I'll update this post once I find the full numbers.

UPDATE: Here are the figures...

Scottish Parliament constituency ballot (Norstat / Sunday Times, 11th-14th February 2025):

SNP 35% (-2)

Labour 18% (-3)

Conservatives 15% (+1)

Reform UK 14% (+2)

Liberal Democrats 11% (+1)

Greens 6% (+1)

Scottish Parliament regional list ballot: 

SNP 30% (-2)

Labour 17% (-1)

Conservatives 15% (-1)

Reform UK 13% (+1)

Liberal Democrats 11% (+1)

Greens 10% (+2)

Alba 4% (-1)

Seats projection: SNP 55, Conservatives 18, Labour 18, Reform UK 15, Liberal Democrats 13, Greens 10

I noticed Alba HQ's resident wonderbairn Robert Reid sniffing around Ballot Box Scotland on Bluesky the other day, and one possible reason for that may be that BBS contradicted John Curtice's official seats projection from the previous Norstat poll by suggesting Alba might actually win one seat.  Alba have since been flogging that unofficial BBS projection for all they're worth, but I'm fairly sure there's no way BBS will be projecting Alba to have any seats now that their list vote is down to 4%.  Remember that since 2021, Norstat (and their predecessor Panelbase) have had a house effect that consistently overestimates Alba's list support, so although 4% would be an encouraging vote share for Alba if another polling firm reported it, in the context of Norstat it's a disappointment for them.

Across all polling firms, this is the fourth out of the last five Holyrood polls to have shown a pro-indy majority on the seats projection, so there's no point in anyone suggesting that it's a fluke at this stage.  The odd one out was the Survation poll, but even that had the SNP and Greens combined on 63 seats - just two short of a majority.

Should Scotland be an independent country?

Yes 50% (-4)

No 50% (+4)

It's now pretty clear that the previous Norstat poll putting Yes on 54% was a bit of an outlier, and that may well explain why the SNP's vote has dipped a little in the Holyrood numbers - the previous poll may just have had too many Yes and SNP supporters in the sample due to random sampling variation.  But I'm actually fairly encouraged by a 50-50 tie, because the data tables from the Survation poll a few weeks ago gave the impression of quite a substantial No lead on the unpublished independence question, so at least there's no sign from Norstat of a swing to No apart from the natural reversion of an outlying result.  Norstat/Panelbase have been a relatively No-friendly polling firm in recent years, and 50% for Yes is very much on the high side from them.

Net ratings of leaders:

John Swinney (SNP): -2

Anas Sarwar (Labour): -17

Russell Findlay (Conservatives): -24

Donald Trump (US Republicans): -32

Keir Starmer (Labour): -34

Kemi Badenoch (Conservatives): -37

And those net ratings are a strong clue that the SNP's lead over Labour is highly unlikely to be overturned in time for next May unless there is some kind of major disruptive event - by which I mean something on the scale of the Falklands War, the Covid pandemic, or a change of Prime Minister.

Nigel Farage is a slightly odd omission from the above list - as intriguing as it is to see where Trump slots in, Farage's rating would have been of greater significance.

There's also a Westminster question in the poll - for some reason the Sunday Times have only published sketchy details of it, but it must be favourable for the SNP because the seats projection is: SNP 38, Labour 8, Liberal Democrats 6, Conservatives 5.

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I launched the Scot Goes Pop fundraiser for 2025 a couple of weeks ago, and so far the running total stands at £1491, meaning that 22% of the target of £6800 has been raised.  If you'd like to help Scot Goes Pop continue with poll analysis and truly independent political commentary for another year, donations are welcome HERE.  Direct Paypal donations can also be made - my Paypal email address is:   jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Reform's Scottish votes are coming from unionist parties to a much greater extent than from the SNP

Yesterday people were looking at the result of the Kirkintilloch by-election, and because there was a Reform surge and an SNP collapse, they were rather simplistically assuming there must have been a big direct swing of votes from SNP to Reform.  Of course it doesn't necessarily work like that, and especially not in a low-turnout local by-election.  Reform could have gained their votes mainly from unionist parties or from people who abstained last time around, while the SNP could have lost votes to Labour, the Greens and abstentions.

I've been getting asked for a while to write a blogpost about where the polls suggest Reform's Scottish votes are coming from, so this may be as good a time as any.  The most recent Scottish poll was from Find Out Now, whose data tables have their limitations, so instead I've looked at the next most recent poll, which was from Survation.

How current Reform UK supporters voted on the 2021 Scottish Parliament constituency ballot:

Conservatives 44%

SNP 16%

Labour 10%

Liberal Democrats 4%

So above all else it's the Tories who are taking a hammering from the Reform surge, and the Kirkintilloch result (which saw the Tories lose two-thirds of their vote share) is consistent with that.  I know some people will instantly leap on the fact that Reform are taking more votes from the SNP than from Labour, but remember the baseline here is the 2021 result, when the SNP took 48% of the vote and Labour only took 22%.  So pound-for-pound, Labour are losing more votes to Reform than the SNP are.  Specifically, Labour have lost 7% of their 2021 vote to Reform, while the SNP have lost only 5% of theirs in the same direction.

That point can be underlined by using the 2024 general election result, when Labour were slightly ahead of the SNP, as the baseline instead.

How Reform UK supporters (ie. people planning to vote Reform in Holyrood 2026) voted in the 2024 Westminster general election:

Reform UK 42%

Labour 23%

Liberal Democrats 10%

Conservatives 7%

SNP 1%

It's hard to escape the impression here that quite a lot of voters who switched from Tory to Labour in 2024 are now switching from Labour to Reform.

Another way to get a sense of the impact of Reform on the SNP's fortunes is to look at the breakdown of the SNP's 2021 vote - ie. how those people are planning to vote next year.

How people who voted SNP on the 2021 constituency vote are planning to vote now:

SNP 71%

Labour 9%

Greens 7%

Reform UK 5%

Liberal Democrats 3%

Conservatives 3%

Alba 1%

So although Reform UK are a non-trivial problem for the SNP, they're not quite the giant monster at the window that people are imagining.  Farage remains disproportionately a threat to the unionist parties.

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I launched the Scot Goes Pop fundraiser for 2025 a couple of weeks ago, and so far the running total stands at £1491, meaning that 22% of the target of £6800 has been raised.  If you'd like to help Scot Goes Pop continue with poll analysis and truly independent political commentary for another year, donations are welcome HERE.  Direct Paypal donations can also be made - my Paypal email address is:   jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

ALBA CLUEDO, THE SEQUEL: So who did it to Tasmina, with the mobile phone, in the Balkan country? Who could *possibly* have a strong enough motive to want to end her political career with a damaging leak? Investigators narrow it down to a list of 6572 prime suspects.

The remaining members of the Alba Party, colloquially known as NYEs (Not Yet Expelleds), have been gripped once again today by Whodunnit fever after yet another catastrophic leak of sensitive information to Paul Hutcheon of the Daily Record.  As before, the information can only have come from an extremely high level of the party, and the leak was undoubtedly calculated to damage or to end the political career of a specific Alba politician.  The previous target was Kenny MacAskill, while today it was Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh.  That's a fascinating twist, because of course MacAskill is standing for the vacant leadership and Ahmed-Sheikh is not.  However, it makes perfect sense, because as I've outlined in previous installments of "THE ALBA FILES", Ahmed-Sheikh has used her role as Party Chair to function as the power behind the throne, and has been largely responsible for the unmitigated disaster of Alba degrading into a narrow, paranoid, authoritarian sect, which regularly carries out 'purity purges' or bullies people out of the party.  The concern of many is that, regardless of whether MacAskill or Ash Regan wins the leadership race, they may keep Ahmed-Sheikh on as Chair and the real power will remain in exactly the same destructive hands as before.

The leak reveals, bizarrely, that Ahmed-Sheikh refused to return Alex Salmond's phone to his widow after his death in North Macedonia, despite repeated requests to do so.  I'm still in touch with many current and former Alba members, and there's been considerable bewilderment today about what could possibly have motivated Ahmed-Sheikh to effectively confiscate the phone.  Questions I've heard range from "was there material on the phone that she didn't want anyone but herself to see?" to "did she want to mine the phone for valuable information?".  I've no idea of the answers to those questions and there is very little point speculating.  But what does interest me is the identity and motivation of the senior figure who leaked the story to the Record.  

There could of course be a benevolent motivation - ie. to put an end to the Tas Tyranny once and for all, and ensure that the party can make a genuine fresh start under its new leader.  But I have also heard an alternative theory being darkly whispered.  "What if", people say, "there's a disgruntled senior employee out there who faces disciplinary action, and who knows that in the Mafia-esque world of Alba, that can only ever mean a one-way ticket to expulsion.  What if he's decided that if he can't control the Alba Party, nobody else should be able to either, and has decided to bring the whole house crashing down in an act of raw vengeance."

I'm not sure who they could be referring to but it's certainly an interesting thought.

Strange happenings on Twechar Beach as Labour flatline but still make a by-election gain

So let me once again take you by the hand and try to navigate you through the wacky world of STV by-elections.  The Liberal Democrats were technically defending the seat in Kirkintilloch and Twechar, even though they only finished third in the ward last time around behind the SNP in first place and Labour in second.  Labour have won the seat tonight, so whichever way you cut it, this is a genuine gain for them.

Kirkintilloch East and North & Twechar by-election result on first preferences (13th February 2025):

Labour 30.2% (+1.0)

SNP 22.9% (-16.0)

Liberal Democrats 21.3% (+2.6)

Reform UK 15.0% (n/a)

Conservatives 4.1% (-7.9)

Greens 4.0% (n/a)

Alba 2.0% (n/a)

Sovereignty 0.6% (n/a)

It may seem strange that Labour have made another by-election gain at a time when they're dropping like a stone in national opinion polls and the SNP are doing pretty well, but you have to remember the baseline for the percentage changes is the 2022 local election results, when Nicola Sturgeon was still in her pomp and Labour were still well behind.  As you can see, Labour have barely progressed from that baseline, with a mere one percentage point improvement, so their performance is actually in line with the current polls.  It's the SNP that have underperformed poorly, and I can only assume that comes down to local factors or a below-par campaign.  The swing is consistent with a Scotland-wide Labour lead over the SNP of almost five percentage points, so I think we can safely assume that's misleading.

It's another strong showing for Reform UK, although not quite matching the remarkable 23% they got in Bannockburn a few weeks ago.  Alba have had a poor result, which looks like normal service being resumed after a few OK-ish results towards the end of last year - although there may have been an element of smoke and mirrors to those better results, because Alba were sitting out most by-elections and concentrating all their resources into a very small number of good prospects.  And the Tories seem to be suffering horrendously from the Reform surge.

For the uninitiated, Sovereignty are a right-wing pro-independence party which some have touted as a kind of 'indy Reform', but they certainly aren't getting much traction so far.

By the way, Twechar is very close to Queenzieburn, which was within the catchment area of my secondary school and I was therefore baffled for years by the "Twechar Beach" references.  I thought it was high time for you to be baffled too.

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I launched the Scot Goes Pop fundraiser for 2025 a couple of weeks ago, and so far the running total stands at £1281, meaning that 19% of the target of £6800 has been raised.  If you'd like to help Scot Goes Pop continue with poll analysis and truly independent political commentary for another year, donations are welcome HERE.  Direct Paypal donations can also be made - my Paypal email address is:   jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Nigel Farage on course for Downing Street as cataclysmic Find Out Now poll sees Reform move into record-breaking six point lead

GB-wide voting intentions (Find Out Now, 12th February 2025):

Reform UK 29% (-)

Labour 23% (-2)

Conservatives 21% (+3)

Liberal Democrats 12% (-1)

Greens 9% (-1)

SNP 3% (-)

Plaid Cymru 1% (-)

Scottish subsample: SNP 34%, Reform UK 25%, Conservatives 13%, Labour 12%, Liberal Democrats 9%, Greens 6%

As the data tables are already available, I've given you the Scottish subsample numbers for the sheer hell of it, but bear in mind that non-YouGov Scottish subsamples are unlikely to be statistically reliable.

This is the biggest lead Reform UK have ever had in any poll from any pollster, although interestingly they've achieved it while remaining on a static vote share - remember this week's More In Common poll also suggests a more or less static picture for Reform, so it remains to be seen whether the bandwagon is still relentlessly rolling.

23% is not quite a post-election low for Labour - they've been on both 22% and 23% in previous Find Out Now polls, but not at a time when Reform UK were as high as now - hence the record-breaking Reform lead.  Now that Reform have pulled away from the pack somewhat, it's probably a good moment to attempt a seats projection and see just how close Farage is (or isn't) to an absolute majority.  Drumroll please...

Reform UK 269

Labour 141

Conservatives 106

Liberal Democrats 60

SNP 46

Greens 4

Plaid Cymru 2

Others 22

That leaves Reform a hefty 57 seats short of a majority, but on those numbers there's no plausible permutation that doesn't put Nigel Farage in 10 Downing Street.  Even Labour and the Tories in combination don't outnumber Reform.  Ah, the joys of first-past-the-post.

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I launched the Scot Goes Pop fundraiser for 2025 a couple of weeks ago, and so far the running total stands at £1281, meaning that 19% of the target of £6800 has been raised.  If you'd like to help Scot Goes Pop continue with poll analysis and truly independent political commentary for another year, donations are welcome HERE.  Direct Paypal donations can also be made - my Paypal email address is:   jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Second YouGov poll in a row shows Reform ahead - with an enormous SNP lead in the Scottish subsample

When Reform UK took the lead in a recent YouGov poll, I pointed out the oddity that in doing so, they hadn't quite matched their all-time high vote share with YouGov.  Or at least not technically, because Reform are a legal continuation of the Brexit Party, which hit 26% in YouGov polls during a brief purple patch in mid-2019.  However, in the new YouGov poll published a couple of days ago, Reform have now equalled that previous record, while maintaining their one-point lead over Labour, and increasing their advantage over the Tories to five points.

GB-wide voting intentions (YouGov, 9th-10th February 2025):

Reform UK 26% (+1)

Labour 25% (+1)

Conservatives 21% (-)

Liberal Democrats 14% (-)

Greens 9% (-)

SNP 3% (-)

Plaid Cymru 1% (-)

Scottish subsample: SNP 38%, Reform UK 19%, Labour 17%, Liberal Democrats 12%, Conservatives 10%, Greens 3%

As ever, the standard point that Scottish subsamples from YouGov are of more interest than those from other firms, because they appear to be correctly structured and weighted (albeit they still have a very large margin of error due to the small sample size).

This week's other GB-wide poll from More In Common shows a superficially similar picture, with Reform gaining a point to tie with Labour for the lead.  However, they're simply returning to the same vote share (25%) they've been on in two previous More In Common polls since the start of the year, so there's not necessarily any evidence of an ongoing bandwagon.

There's been increasing chatter recently about either a merger between Reform and the Tories, or an electoral pact between the two parties.  The instinctive reaction of many to that prospect is "oh my God, that would put the right-wing coalition in an unassailable position".  In practice it wouldn't be quite as simple as that, because Reform are currently attracting a lot of "economically left, socially right" voters - and as soon as those voters feel they'd be "voting Tory" by backing Farage, a lot of them would return to the Labour fold (and in Scotland there would even be some returning from Reform to the SNP).  

Nevertheless, it's fair to assume a Reform-Tory merger would leave Labour with a substantial deficit in the polls.  My guess is that if a deal does happen, it'll be years from now, because Farage will want the Tories to get used to being firmly in third place so he can negotiate from a position of strength.

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As you may have seen, I've updated this blog's masthead, which now states that Scot Goes Pop is one of the three most-read Scottish political blogs.  That's based on the latest estimates for January 2025 from Stuart Campbell's favourite comparison site, which shows that Scot Goes Pop has overtaken Robin McAlpine.  As I've previously rehearsed, there are very good reasons for not trusting these estimates, but as Campbell's fan club treats them as absolute gospel, I may as well take advantage of them when they're favourable.  The only Scottish political blogs with a bigger readership than Scot Goes Pop are now Wings and Wee Ginger Dug - unless you count Craig Murray, but he hasn't posted about Scottish politics since October, so for the time being at least (things may change) it's fair to say that his blog is no longer a Scottish politics blog.  I know some unkind souls would say the same is true of Wings, which by his own definition would now be better titled "Gender Stuff Over Somerset", but he does still post about Scottish politics occasionally, and I gather he comes from Bathgate originally, so we'll stretch the point for now.

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I launched the Scot Goes Pop fundraiser for 2025 a couple of weeks ago, and so far the running total stands at £1281, meaning that 19% of the target of £6800 has been raised.  If you'd like to help Scot Goes Pop continue with poll analysis and truly independent political commentary for another year, donations are welcome HERE.  Direct Paypal donations can also be made - my Paypal email address is:   jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Alba members have finally been sent the report of the Constitution Review Group - this may be your one and only chance to seize democratic control over your own party, and please pay special attention to the vital need to democratise the Conference Committee in particular

I went to my first SNP branch meeting tonight since rejoining the party, and while no political party will ever be perfect, it was something of a relief to symbolically 'turn the page' on my horrific experience in Alba.  Ironically, while I was sitting in the meeting, it looks like Alba members were at long last being sent the recommendations of the Constitution Review Group, which I was an elected member of until September - a fact that ultimately led to my ejection from Alba due to me pushing 'too hard' for internal democratisation.  So although I no longer have any stake in what happens in Alba, I was obviously very curious tonight to see the document and to discover whether it bore any resemblance to what was agreed at the final meeting of the group before McEleny suspended me out of the blue.  I'm grateful to the Alba member (for obvious reasons I won't name her but she knows who she is!) who sent the document to me.

First thoughts: bravo to Mike Baldry.  He was the one remaining pro-reform member of the group after I was removed, and it looks like he's somehow held the line and kept what was agreed last spring more or less intact.  I should also give some grudging credit to the group's anti-reform chair Hamish Vernal, who doesn't appear to have exploited my removal as an excuse to water the document down.

What that means essentially is that where the group was not unanimous or almost unanimous, both the majority and minority positions have been presented in the document for Alba members to consider and choose between.  So that in theory opens up an opportunity for Alba members, if they wish, to decide that the elected members of the National Executive Committee (NEC), the Conference Committee, the Conduct Committee, the Appeals Committee, and the Finance & Audit Committee, should be directly elected by all party members on a one member, one vote basis - as opposed to the current set-up where only a tiny minority of members get to vote.  There are also options presented (sort of) for the Party Chair to become a de facto elected position by being reserved for one of the two people who finish top of the male and female ballots for Ordinary NEC members, and for an expansion in the number of Ordinary NEC members from eight to twelve, thus allowing for a greater range of voices to be heard.  The leadership will presumably lean extremely hard on the rank-and-file membership to reject those options, and of course one of the paradoxes of so many members having left in disgust is that the people who are still left in the party are disproportionately likely to be leadership cheerleaders.  But go on, Alba members - prove me wrong, and reclaim democratic control of your own party.  It may well be the only chance you'll ever get to do that, and if you don't take it, you may be dooming the party forever (whether the leadership realise that or not).

People who support one member, one vote for NEC elections sometimes used to say to me that they worried it might somehow be 'overkill' to extend that to the other national committees.  If you're one of those people, I really do urge you to think again, because the Conference Committee is in practice far more powerful than the NEC.  Alba members theoretically control the party's policy and strategy via the national conference - but that theory is utterly meaningless if they don't also control the national conference's agenda, and they can only do that if they directly elect the Conference Committee.  Although the Conference Committee is the only national committee I was never a member of, I've heard reports from those who were members, and they all agree that in its current form it's a one-woman Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh dictatorship.  She insists on "consensus decisions", which in practice means the committee is required to agree to whatever she wants without a vote.  

Famously (and to Daniel Jack's displeasure I brought this incident up in the Constitution Review Group), Tasmina responded to a proposal that national conference should consider the introduction of a policy development committee by bellowing "THAT'S A BIG NO FROM ME!!!!", which apparently was supposed to be the end of the matter.  Good luck, Alba members, in trying to democratically control your own party unless you transform the Conference Committee from a Tas dictatorship into a directly-elected body.

The case for the Conduct and Appeals Committees to be elected by one member, one vote is pretty straightforward - it's not fair for any party member to be expelled or suspended unless they've had an opportunity to elect the bodies making that decision.  I suppose I would concede it may not be the end of the world if the Finance & Audit Committee is not directly elected, but in principle I do think it should be.

I'm slightly disturbed by one of the documents that has been distributed along with the main report, which appears to set out proposed revisions of how the Disciplinary Committee should operate.  I'm not totally sure whether that originates from the Constitution Review Group itself or from somewhere else, but amazingly it makes an already bad situation even worse in some respects.  It limits the 'defendant' in any disciplinary case to just five minutes for an oral presentation, and it also limits each committee member to "approximately" just two questions.  As you may remember, I was only permitted to be present at my own disciplinary hearing for twelve minutes, and a big part of the reason for that is the leadership loyalists on the committee had very obviously been instructed not to ask me any questions at all in case it gave me ammunition.  So only one person was interested in asking me questions, and if that person had been restricted to only two questions, I'd have been there for an even shorter period than twelve minutes.

It hardly seemed possible that such an awful disciplinary procedure could be made even worse, but they seem to be managing it somehow.

After McEleny's firing, Alba's biggest remaining problem is spelt T-A-S - so is there *any* way Alba members can use the internal elections to depose the party's unelected Queen?

Among the large number of people, some of them quite senior, who have been bullied out of the Alba Party, there is a difference of view over whether the party's most baleful influence has been Chris McEleny or Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh - but if anything the majority view is that "Tas" is the worse of the two.  "She's poison, that one" said a former NEC member to me a few months ago.  Most of the harm Ahmed-Sheikh causes is largely unseen, but all of the indications are that she was the driving force behind the party leadership's sudden and inexplicable vendetta against the likes of Jacqui Bijster, Eva Comrie and Denise Findlay - which ultimately led to the rigging of the 2023 internal elections.  She also seems to have been a major roadblock, perhaps the biggest one of the lot, to constitutional and democratic reform of the party.

A few months ago, I made a passing criticism of Ahmed-Sheikh on this blog, and someone messaged me afterwards to say "that's it, James, now you've mentioned Tas by name, you're guaranteed to be expelled".  I've no idea whether that really was the trigger for my expulsion, but as I recently outlined, I do have direct experience of a separate incident in early 2024 when Tas maliciously launched a half-hearted "disciplinary investigation" into myself, Alan Harris and Morgwn Davies as a distraction technique to save McEleny's skin.  At a meeting of the Disciplinary Committee, the three of us had all raised points of order related to the discovery that McEleny had told us the direct lie that the person he was trying to get expelled from the party did not wish to attend the hearing.  Tas creatively reframed our legitimate and politely-expressed points of order as "possible misogynistic bullying of the committee chair" (Marjorie Ellis Thompson) and informed us that there would be a one-person investigation into the matter, with herself as the one person, naturally.

I'm going to reveal a lot more details about the lengthy email exchange between myself and Tas in a future installment of "THE ALBA FILES", but what I'll tell you for now is that I pointed out to her that the recording of the meeting would confirm I had shown no aggression towards Marjorie whatsoever, but that Marjorie had expressed some aggression towards me in trying to shout down my points of order and to protect McEleny and his deputy Corri Wilson.  I said that if Tas was hellbent on launching an investigation into something everyone on the committee knew hadn't happened, she wasn't really leaving me with much option but to protect myself by submitting a complaint about what really did happen.  So I told her I reluctantly wished to lodge a formal complaint against Marjorie for bullying directed against myself, Alan and Morgwn.

The reply from Tas was extraordinary.  She told me she wouldn't be considering my complaint in a formal way because it was impossible for women to bully men.  Not just that it was less likely to happen, but that it was literally impossible.  My guess is that her response would have been more than enough to get Alba into a great deal of legal difficulty about direct discrimination on the grounds of sex/gender if I or anyone else had decided to pursue the matter.

So if the antics of Tas are a major part of "the problem" for Alba, can members use the forthcoming internal elections - which were effectively launched today with a lengthy email - to find "the solution"?  It's certainly not going to be easy, because her position as Party Chair is appointed, not elected - a state of affairs that did not come about by chance.  However, counsels of despair are no use to anyone, so here are some ideas that might be worth trying.

1) Ideally there needs to be a third candidate for leader, ie. someone who isn't Kenny MacAskill or Ash Regan.  As things stand, MacAskill is the lesser of two evils because he would get rid of McEleny once and for all, but it looks almost certain he would retain Tas as Chair or in some other senior role.  The so-called "Corri Nostra" are all backing MacAskill, and it seems highly unlikely they would be doing that unless their ally Tas had received firm assurances.  It's going to be incredibly difficult to get a third candidate onto the ballot paper, but it might be a game-changer if it happened, because it could widen the debate to cover the question of whether there needs to be a change of Party Chair.

2) If Tas failed for the first time to top the female ballot for Ordinary Members of the NEC, that would at least make a psychological difference and weaken her position.  Again, it's going to be murderously hard to achieve that because Ordinary Members are elected on a pay-per-vote basis, and Tas has wealthy backers (one of whom is herself, of course).  But if you're an Alba member, all you can do is try your best - buy your own vote by purchasing a conference pass, and then rank Tas bottom of all the female candidates.  When I argued on the Constitution Review Group that the Party Chair should be directly elected in some form, Daniel Jack insisted (as he'd probably been told to insist) that it was unnecessary because Tas had topped the NEC ballot and it was therefore only natural that she was appointed as Chair.  I immediately jumped on that and suggested if he felt that way, we should write into the constitution that whoever receives the most votes in the NEC election should automatically be offered the position of Chair.  You should have seen the look on his face - he realised he'd just walked into a trap of his own making.  Tas clearly has no intention of risking her position being directly elected in any form, even if the voting system is relatively easy to manipulate or subvert.

3) Get some independent-minded people onto the NEC so at least Tas will face challenges and questioning if she remains in harness. Morgwn Davies leaps out as the sort of person desperately needed on the NEC - if he sees something wrong happening, he'll call it out.  He won't be cowed by Tas or by anyone else.

WINGS-WATCH: In a poll run by Wings himself, almost two-thirds of Wings readers say Wings is no longer an independence website. It's now a 'gender stuff' site.

A comment on the previous thread: 

"O/T. Judging by his most recent blog Campbell really has lost the plot. The frothers are in overdrive. Grrr grr."

So, with a degree of trepidation, I donned my trusty Wings-Watch cloak and took a look.

The post is about Nicola Sturgeon and is entitled "The End of the Reich", which probably tells you all you need to know, or as much as you'd ever wish to know.  Early on, we're treated to the results of a Twitter poll Campbell ran, asking his readers whether they think Nicola Sturgeon or Donald Trump has done more for women.  96% say Trump, 4% say Sturgeon.  With wonderfully delusional pomposity, Campbell then poses the question - 

"Is the above how she imagined her feminist legacy, do you think, readers?"

What, that in a totally unscientific, self-selecting poll mainly consisting of readers of the rabidly anti-Sturgeon, pro-Trump website Wings Over Scotland, it would turn out that readers of the rabidly anti-Sturgeon, pro-Trump website Wings Over Scotland prefer Trump to her?  Yes, I think that's broadly what she would have anticipated.  This is one she'll have very much seen coming, Stew.

Actually of far more interest is another totally unscientific, self-selecting poll Campbell ran on Twitter a few days ago, because the one thing Wings readers can be considered an authority on is what type of site Wings now is.  They were asked what content they come to Wings for, and this is what they said - 

Gender Stuff 48.8%

Independence Stuff 37.6%

Other 13.6%

So in a poll of his own readers, almost two-thirds said that Wings is not an independence site.  He can't quibble about that, and neither can anyone else.  The one-third expecting to find independence-related material on Wings these days can only be described as 'statistical optimists'.

Wings used to be an independence site, but no longer is.  Unionists demanded in 2014 that Yes campaigners "move on", and Campbell took that advice.  He reached the fork in the road depicted in the famous Chris Cairns cartoon with one sign pointing to "INDEPENDENCE" and another pointing to "OTHER STUFF", and he wandered jauntily down the "OTHER STUFF" road.

Fortunately, most of the independence movement took a very different decision.

Blue Sky Thinking

Over the last few weeks, several people have encouraged me to set up a Bluesky account and to promote my blogposts there.  My view is that Twitter (I refuse to call it "X") remains much more important than Bluesky and I'd be foolish to abandon it - but on the other hand there's no getting away from the fact that a lot of left-of-centre people have moved across to Bluesky, and therefore the engagement rate for people like me on Twitter isn't what it used to be even a couple of years ago.  So I may be missing a trick by not having a presence on both sites.

I can't say I'm filled with enthusiasm at the thought of duplicating posts on two sites, but what I've done for the time being is set up a Bluesky account so people can follow me if they wish.  If I get to, say, 100 followers, I may start promoting my blogposts there.

So if you're on Bluesky, you can follow me HERE.

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I launched the Scot Goes Pop fundraiser for 2025 a couple of weeks ago, and so far the running total stands at £1281, meaning that 19% of the target of £6800 has been raised.  If you'd like to help Scot Goes Pop continue with poll analysis and truly independent political commentary for another year, donations are welcome HERE.  Direct Paypal donations can also be made - my Paypal email address is:   jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk

Labour slump to new post-election low in Opinium poll - plus Alba civil war intensifies as Ash Regan blasts the MacAskill leadership as a "vacuum" that has led to "chaos" and "drift"

In a sense, this weekend's Opinium poll has bucked the trend of a Reform UK bandwagon, because it shows Reform down a point on two weeks ago.  However, that's statistically insignificant, and Reform are still at a higher level than in all but one of Opinium's previous polls.  Where the recent trend is clearly continuing is in the ongoing slippage of Labour, who have dropped to a post-election low of 27% with Opinium, and remain only one point ahead of Reform.  Bear in mind that Opinium have been pretty much the most Labour-friendly pollster in recent times, so 27% is worse for Labour in an Opinium poll than it would be in a poll from another firm.

GB-wide voting intentions (Opinium, 5th-7th February 2025):

Labour 27% (-1)

Reform UK 26% (-1)

Conservatives 22% (+1)

Liberal Democrats 11% (-)

Greens 8% (-)

SNP 3% (-)

Plaid Cymru 1% (-)

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Anecdotally, I've heard that Ash Regan's interview with LBC went down very poorly with rank-and-file Alba Party members, probably because it was seen as disloyalty to the MacAskill leadership and perhaps also to the Salmond family.  However, she's doubled down now by posting a TikTok video with the same message - she starts by describing the MacAskill leadership (although she doesn't mention him by name) as a "vacuum" which is causing "drift" and "chaos".  If consistency is maintained, that presumably ought to lead to her referral to the Disciplinary Committee for possible expulsion from the party, because her ally McEleny has over the last year been using any sort of minor criticism of the leadership as an all-purpose excuse to pretend "injury" has been caused to the party and to get people expelled.  Rather brazenly, though, in the very next breath Ms Regan says she wants to become leader so she can "restore discipline".  The subtext seems to be "lots and lots of discipline, please, but not for me or Chris, obviously".

And the question must surely be asked - after a year of the McEleny Purges, and in the context of the party leader and the General Secretary currently both using the disciplinary machinery to try to get each other expelled, just how much more "discipline" can the Alba Party actually take?  What it really needs now, surely, is a good deal less "discipline", and the introduction of normal, mature politics whereby people resolve their policy and strategy differences by debating each other and then a vote being held.  Quaint, I know, but I do believe the concept of democracy has some real potential if it's ever given a chance.

It's also worth noting that Ms Regan keeps using the soundbite "Scotland needs a real independence party not a sideshow" but without specifying that the party in question necessarily has to be Alba.  That's arguably consistent with my theory that she and McEleny have a Plan B up their sleeve of launching a new party if MacAskill wins the leadership election.