Starmer's cheerleaders need to make up their minds once and for all whether Trump is friend or foe

When Alba HQ wonderbairn Robert Reid's dad Bob Reid made his prolonged attack on me about my views on Ukraine (although there was little doubt his real agenda was Alba-related), he asked something along the lines of "James, do you not accept that there is such a thing as a just war?"  That was a straw man on stilts, because I hadn't said anything that even remotely implied that there was no such thing as a just war.  I do have pacifist leanings, it's true, but pacifists have always grappled with the logical problem of how they would have dealt with the Nazis, who would have thought it was Christmas if they had only been faced with a display of Gandhian passive resistance, and would have just carried on conquering, enslaving and exterminating people.

Not all aspects of the Allied campaign in the Second World War can be considered just, to put it mildly.  I can't justify the mass slaughter of civilians in Dresden, for example, and I certainly can't justify the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which constituted acts of genocide.

But to the partial extent that the war against the Nazis was a just war and an unavoidable war, it's instructive to consider how this country actually went about fighting it.  Because to the best of my knowledge, individual men of conscription age always had the option to avoid taking part in direct combat by registering as conscientious objectors and doing non-military work of assistance to the war effort.  It wasn't an easy option by any means due to the likelihood of social opprobrium, but it was there for those brave enough to take it.  I recently discovered that one of my favourite actors, Alfred Burke, who went on to become a household name in the 60s and 70s, was a conscientious objector during the war.  It's heartening that it seemingly didn't affect people's perceptions of him in later life.

Contrast that to the situation in present-day Ukraine, where the right to conscientious objection has been completely abolished.  In practice draft evasion is common, but if you're a male of conscription age and you want to remain within the law, you have no option but to fight and die - and in most cases it really does mean dying, because the casualty rate is insanely high.  That's one of the reasons, one of several, why western progressives are foolish to simplistically view Ukraine as the good guys who should be egged on to fight to the last man.  Even to the extent that Ukraine is a democracy, we ought to be troubled by any notion that democracy is about the majority dictacting to individuals that they have to fight and die, irrespective of their own wishes and beliefs.  That's certainly not liberal democracy, and it's not "freedom" either.

Yes, Russia was the aggressor, and yes, it's a good thing that Ukraine has defied the odds to maintain control over 90% of its sovereign territory.  But it would be nice if there were some people left alive to actually enjoy that hard-won sovereignty, and from that point of view an early negotiated peace settlement would be a highly desirable outcome.  Human life is more important than the sort of 'sovereignty absolutism' that insists every single square inch of Ukrainian territory has to be returned before the killings can cease, or that the perfectly honourable status of neutrality can't even be considered as an acceptable compromise.  Some prices for peace might be too high, but not every price is too high.

All of that said, though, and even though Trump and Vance were posing as peace-makers in their public spat with Zelensky yesterday, my sympathy was entirely with Zelensky.  There was an obvious double-standard in branding Zelensky "disrespectful" when all he was doing was exactly the same thing that Macron and Starmer had done in exactly the same location over the last few days - politely pushing back on a small number of carefully selected points.  It seems that Britain and France still have just about high enough status that Trump feels he has to tolerate some dissent from their leaders, but the same doesn't apply to lower-status countries like Ukraine.  Treating a country and its leader as being of lower value is in itself wildly disrespectful.  Trump would doubtless argue that he gets to do that because of all the money America has poured into Ukraine, but the flipside of the coin is that Ukrainians have been fighting and dying as American proxies in a war against Russia.  OK, that proxy war was being fought on behalf of the former US administration rather than the current one, and the US has every right to elect new leaders and dramatically change course whenever it wishes.  But there is no right to forget decisions taken in the past by the former duly-elected US president and the debts of honour, or at least of courtesy, that are owed as a result.  The human price Ukraine has paid over the last three years far exceeds the monetary price paid by the US.

Vance asked Zelensky a series of questions and Trump refused to let Zelensky answer.  That was disrespectful.  And it was particularly boorish of Vance to attack Zelensky for his alignment with Biden.  If all foreigners are required to show respect to the US because "it's an American world and we run it" as a delightful Fox News contributor put it last night, wasn't respect owed to Biden as US President until last month every bit as much as it's owed to Trump as US President now?  Maybe Vance thinks Zelensky should have played along with the fiction that the 2020 election was stolen and that Trump remained the 'real' President afterwards.  But if that's the case, why should Zelensky pay respect to Trump now that he's in a constitutionally-illegitimate third term?  Shouldn't Zelensky be paying respect to the sacred US CONSTITUTION above all else, JD?

I was in Glasgow yesterday and my eyes rolled to the heavens when I saw the front page of the Mirror, praising Starmer for fawning all over Trump and supposedly building an alliance with the King of the World.  24 hours later the same cheerleaders are denouncing Trump and urging Starmer and other European leaders to fill the void left by American leadership.  At some point these people are going to have to get the story straight and work out whether Trump is friend or foe.  You can't insist on breaking the bank to build up the military capacity needed to take on Russia without American help, while still demanding that we all genuflect to Trump on the logic that nothing can be achieved without him. 

The state religion of Atlanticism is hard to give up, we know, but for the love of God make up your minds, chaps.

The US didn't so much elect a president as a personality disorder.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) February 28, 2025

Spain had the "Caudillo". Italy had "Il Duce". Is Chris McEleny planning to set himself up as the "Primus" of a new Alba Party (Continuity Salmondite)?

A number of seasoned McEleny Watchers set up a quiet vigil yesterday to try to pinpoint the exact moment that the great man gave in to the inevitable and altered his Twitter profile to acknowledge that he is no longer General Secretary of the Alba Party.  That's now happened, but perhaps more significant than the timing is what he's replaced the old wording with - 

"Chris McEleny.  General Secretary Primus of Alex Salmond’s Alba Party."

"Primus" of course means "first", so this could just be a particularly ungracious way of acknowledging that there is now a second General Secretary and it's not him.  Alternatively, he could be drawing a distinction between what he sees as "Real Alba" or "Salmondite Alba" and the version of the party that he regards as having been overrun by interlopers (you know, interlopers such as Moira Salmond).  Perhaps in some strange, metaphysical, almost 'telepathic' way, he regards himself as *still* the General Secretary of the Alba Party, authentic Alba, Salmond Alba.

Maybe this novel distinction will even become formalised, and an "Alba Party (Continuity Salmondite)" will soon be registered with the Electoral Commission, and with one Christopher McEleny listed as the party's "Primus".  Such fascist-sounding titles are perhaps not quite as outlandish as they sound given the ongoing flirtaton between McEleny's faction and Reform UK.  I know some Alba members were determined to believe yesterday that Sky had stitched up Ash Regan, but actually if you watch the video of her comments in their proper context, it's obvious that they were permeditated, well-rehearsed, and carefully calculated to generate an "I will work with Farage" headline.  The intention seems to be to get Reform voters, or Reform-curious voters, to look at Alba afresh and realise that it's the one party that doesn't sneer at the far right or its values.  If this was Germany, Alba would look very much like the guilty party that has "broken the firewall".

Contrary to the perceptions of some, there are quite a number of old school socialists within Alba, and they are absolutely furious with Ash Regan for what she did yesterday.  But admittedly there are also other Alba members who have some growing sympathy with Donald Trump because of his stance on protecting women's spaces and women's sport, and who see Regan's comments as a welcome recognition that left/right distinctions are becoming less useful.  That cultural divide within the party is arguably unbridgeable - and it occurs to me that Ash Regan can count, that she must know Kenny MacAskill is going to defeat her for the leadership, and that her flirtation with Reform is therefore going to make it hard for her to play a prominent role in a MacAskill-led party.  So why is she doubling down and making the rift even worse?  

I still can't escape the conclusion that she's looking beyond her time in Alba and is preparing the ground for when she and McEleny strike out on their own in some form.

Alba civil war escalates into total carnage as McEleny's suspension is upgraded to an outright SACKING for gross misconduct, with strong hints he will also face EXPULSION from the party - this could mean his desperate attempts to stand for depute leader will count for nothing as his nominations are likely to be NULLIFIED

Scotland's most disgruntled employee is an employee no longer.  "Mad Dog" can now run free in the hills.  One chapter - but sadly only one chapter - in Alba's Reign of Terror is now over.  The statues are being toppled all across Scotland this afternoon.

I follow the Moskva

Down to Gorky Park

Listening to the wind of CHA-ANGE

An August summer night

Soldiers passing by

Listening to the wind of CHA-ANGE

Take me 

To the magic of the moment

On a glory night

Where the children of tomorrow dream away (dream away)

In the wind of CHANGE

Mmmmm

It sounds like the sacking actually occurred a while ago, but the reason the news has broken today is simply that today is the day Sky News ran a story about Alba.  They interviewed Kenny MacAskill, who revealed the sacking and also made clear that McEleny faces potential expulsion from the party.  And as we all know, Alba being Alba, potential expulsion means definite expulsion.  Unless he jumps before he's pushed, McEleny will soon find himself in exactly the same position he put me into on 5th December - sitting in front of the rubberstamp Disciplinary Committee with his fate already predetermined.  You know what they say, Chris - you live by the sword, you die by the sword.  

I will not be the only one of McEleny's many victims who burst out laughing upon reading his squeals of protest to Sky about his dismissal: "Alex Salmond used to always tell me that in a political party rational people need to bump along with each other.  Sadly we have not seen people bumping along with each other."  Anyone would be forgiven for thinking McEleny was not Alba's modern-day Robespierre and that he did not preside over countless malicious expulsions and de facto expulsions with considerable relish.

In case you're wondering whether MacAskill's announcement changes anything, given that McEleny was suspended as General Secretary anyway, it actually does.  If normal practice is followed, McEleny's expulsion will be preceded by a period of suspension from the party itself (he was previously only suspended from his paid employment, not from the party).  That will render him ineligible to stand for depute leader and his nominations will be nullified.  It was obvious something was in the air last night - senior leadership loyalists had seemingly been asked to pass on evidence of McEleny's desperate tactics to get the necessary number of last-gasp nominations (which were actually proving quite effective).  It seems a decision was taken that one or way or another, he simply wasn't going to be allowed to reach the ballot.

I'd suggest it's now almost inevitable that McEleny will lead a mini-exodus of his supporters from the Alba Party - but it will only be a mini-exodus, because as the nominations have proved, he doesn't actually have all that many keen supporters.  But what next?  Will he and his chums abandon independence and throw in their lot with Farage?  Will he set up his own party in the hope Ash Regan will join him in the (highly likely) event that her own leadership bid is unsuccessful?  One thing is for sure - he won't be leaving politics, because he's got his heart set on becoming an MSP.  Apparently he's convinced his family he'll be First Minister one day.  Ahem.

The horrors of the Alba dystopia continue as Christina Hendry seemingly bullies a former party member with threats of legal action if a perfectly legitimate tweet is not deleted

In addition to the people who were officially expelled from the Alba Party during the McEleny Purges last year (myself, Geoff Bush and Colin Alexander are the ones I know about, but there may have been others), there was a significantly larger number of others who McEleny bypassed the disciplinary machinery to effectively expel for life by personal diktat.  He was able to do this due to a loophole in the party constitution (albeit almost certainly an intentional loophole) which allows people to be permanently excluded from the party without any form of disciplinary process if the General Secretary simply certifies them as having "publicly resigned from the party", even if in some cases they haven't submitted any sort of resignation at all.  The only safeguard of any sort is that the NEC has to ratify the General Secretary's certification, but I know from personal experience as a former NEC member myself that Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh always made sure that happened on the nod and without any discussion.  The whole process took no more than a minute or two.

One of the many victims of this Kafkaesque practice was Ashley Miller, the former Treasurer of Alba's Dundee LACU.  Regular readers of this blog will already know her story from former NEC member Heather McLean's guest post in mid-January about McEleny's maniacal vendetta against the entire Dundee LACU and anyone associated with its leadership.

"I found out that our Treasurer Ashley Miller who had ran the social media accounts since the inception of Alba had wrongly been reported to Twitter for impersonation.  There was a tweet Chris had taken exception to, but rather than contact Ashley and ask her to remove the tweet he heavy-handedly reported her to Twitter.  Ashley was embarrassed and had her reputation traduced and she felt she had no alternative other than to resign.  In an act of vicious nastiness McEleny deemed Ashley to be a public resignation, meaning she cannot rejoin Alba without a vote of the NEC."

It turns out that Alba's sinister persecution of Ashley Miller for her activity on Twitter is continuing to this day, even though she hasn't been a party member for a long time.  If you read between the lines of what she posted only a few hours ago, it seems pretty obvious that she's been threatened with legal action by Christina Hendry - ie. Alex Salmond's niece, Robert Reid's girlfriend, member of Alba's NEC and Disciplinary Committee, and indeed one of the four members of the Disciplinary Committee who voted for my own expulsion on McEleny's ridiculously vague trumped-up charges.

If you're naive enough to assume that Ms Hendry must have had a very good reason to threaten legal action, you'd be wrong.  Her aim is apparently to bully Ms Miller into deleting a single non-abusive tweet, the full text of which is as follows - 

"oh you mean the unprofessional inappropriate relationship.  When you take on the role of being responsible for the youth group there should be red lines that you don't cross.  No matter what organisation the youth group belongs to."

My reading of that is Christina Hendry must be in charge of Alba Youth (I wouldn't know due to my own age bracket!) and Ms Miller is saying she shouldn't have entered into a relationship with Robert Reid, a fellow member of Alba Youth, without resigning from that position first.  Now, I can certainly see why a comment like that would make extremely uncomfortable reading for Ms Hendry, but there's nothing illegitimate about it - the relationship between Mr Reid and Ms Hendry is in the public domain and has been deliberately put there by both of them, and therefore Ms Miller's opinion about the matter must be regarded as fair comment, regardless of whether you happen to agree with her or not.

Once again it speaks incredibly powerfully to the toxic authoritarian culture within Alba, and perhaps also to the political culture Ms Hendry has been immersed in for longer than Alba has even existed, that the first instinct when a member of the party elite sees a tweet they dislike is not to rely on their skills of persuasion to put the alternative point of view, but instead to make the tweet and the person who posted it vanish by instigating either expulsion proceedings or legal proceedings.

One of my most uncomfortable experiences as a member of Alba was listening to Christina Hendry's quietly menacing line of questioning when she was grilling Geoff Bush at a Disciplinary Committee hearing, just minutes before voting to expel him for the heinous crime of having given an inoffensive interview to The National in which he advocated for cooperation with other pro-indy parties and independent candidates.  The gist of her questions was "if you had your time again, would you give that interview again, or would you keep your trap shut?"  The threat was unspoken but obvious - she would only let Mr Bush stay in the party if he prostrated himself before her and promised to be a good boy in future and to not exercise his right to free speech in a way that she disapproved of.  To his immense credit, Mr Bush just gave her a relaxed smile and confirmed that he would say the same things again.

Ms Hendry had on several occasions in Disciplinary Committee meetings expounded her view that Alba is a sort of secret society in which rank-and-file members have absolutely no right to express personal opinions that differ from the leadership line unless they do so strictly behind closed doors.  Chris Cullen, also part of the Alba elite due to his place within the so-called "Corri Nostra", took a very similar attitude.

McEleny's recent "seek help" Twitter rant against me followed the bog-standard playbook of his hero Campbell by implying I was mentally ill (ironically his own nickname is "Mad Dog McEleny" and he has an alcohol problem that directly led to him being put on trial for threatening behaviour in 2023). He also falsely accused me of "harassing" three categories of people within the Alba Party - "family members, private citizens & young women".  But if you deconstruct which actual individuals he was referring to as being within those three categories, it comes to a grand total of two people.  "Family members" and "private citizens" seems to refer to Bob Reid, dad of Robert Reid, who I don't know from Adam but who decided to carry on his son's campaign of harassment against me by tracking me down and attacking my views on Ukraine at some length.  (My own so-called "harassment of Bob Reid" consisted of my rather robust public response to his unprovoked attack.)  And "young women" seems to refer solely to Christina Hendry herself - I literally can't think of a single other person McEleny could possibly be getting at.  Alba isn't exactly full of young women these days.

So who exactly is this vulnerable shrinking violet that seemingly must be protected from brutes like me? She's the person who thinks she has a God-given right to stand in the Banffshire and Buchan Coast constituency next year due to being "of Salmond blood".  (As an anonymous commenter on this blog memorably put it, "this isny Game of Thrones".)  She's the person who tells Alba members to essentially "shut up or else" - and has no compunction about expelling them if they don't shut up.  And she's now the person who apparently threatens former members of the party with legal action simply for expressing legitimate, non-abusive views on social media.

Sorry, Chris, but you're going to have to find a much more promising candidate to portray as a "victim".

*  *  *

Meanwhile, the Alba internal elections are shaping up to be another wretched affair.  McEleny is really, really struggling to get enough nominations to reach the ballot for depute leader - he's miles short with only a few days to go, and in desperation has taken to direct messaging individual Alba members on Twitter and Whatsapp to beg them to nominate him.  He isn't even bothering to pretend he'd be a good candidate - he's arguing he should be on the ballot just for the sake of having a contest.  In reality, many Alba members would probably much prefer a coronation to the acute embarrassment of having a disgraced former General Secretary, who is still suspended for gross misconduct, run for the party's second highest office.

The Mad Dog tactics of Mad Dog may even prove effective if he's persistent enough, but at what cost?  I gather the leadership elite, which no longer regards McEleny as one of their own, is collecting evidence of what he's been doing, perhaps with a view to using it against him in future disciplinary action.

There had been some optimism that Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, regarded by many as an even bigger problem for the party than McEleny, might sit these elections out, but it seems she's dashed those hopes by belatedly entering the mix.  That probably means she'll stay on as the appointed Party Chair, and the Tas Tyranny will continue for yet another year.

There are apparently three times as many male candidates for the NEC as female candidates.  Because each gender gets four slots apiece, that means the immature Shannon Donoghue now has a 50/50 chance of getting on the party's ruling body simply by being on the ballot.

And Donoghue's partner Chris Cullen also looks like the favourite to become the new Local Government Convener.  That will be another terrible step backwards for the party, given the views he expressed on the Constitution Review Group about how Alba members should be treated with extreme distrust and should not be given the right to make decisions or even to be given substantive information about what goes on in the party.

Labour slump to new post-election low of 23%, and a dismal third place, in new More In Common poll

GB-wide voting intentions (More In Common, 21st-24th February 2025):

Conservatives 25% (+2)

Reform UK 24% (-2)

Labour 23% (-2)

Liberal Democrats 16% (+4)

Greens 8% (+1)

SNP 3% (-)

23% is the lowest figure for Labour in a More In Common poll since the general election, and is only 1% above the lowest post-election figure for Labour across all polling firms.  And Starmer ought to be far more concerned by that vote share than by being in third place.  Paradoxically, third place is almost a boon for him because it's a by-product of the right-wing vote being split down the middle, which is actually keeping Labour in contention.  But even though that split has persisted for months now, I still struggle to imagine it continuing for four more years until the next general election.  One way or another, the right-wing vote will consolidate, meaning that unless Labour's own vote recovers radically, they will suffer a record-breaking defeat that will make them nostalgic for 1983 and 2019.

Interestingly, More In Common agrees with the new YouGov poll in that it shows Reform UK dipping by a couple of percentage points and the Tories recovering a bit. That could be the start of a new trend, or it could just be margin of error noise replicated by two different pollsters by pure coincidence.

*  *  *

I said yesterday that Labour's cynicism in cutting the overseas aid budget to spend more on the military was a reflection of the new Trumpian post-morality transactional world, but I'm slightly stunned at how little attempt they're making to hide that fact.  When criticised for the aid cuts, the Defence Secretary John Healey said that "hard power" was more important than "soft power" - as if he couldn't even imagine anyone thinking that humanitarian funding could possibly have any purpose or value other than as a projection of British power.  The idea that rich countries have a moral obligation to assist the world's poorest would, it seems, be entirely alien to him.

*  *  *

I launched the Scot Goes Pop fundraiser for 2025 last month, and so far the running total stands at £1631, meaning that 24% 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

The day that Labour and the Tories both moved to the right - and Scottish independence arguably became more likely as a result

What I found the most significant part of the Tory leadership election last year was Robert Jenrick's unequivocal promise to remove Britain from the European Convention on Human Rights.  That seemed to me to open up a real possibility that Britain would leave the ECHR before 2030, thus offering the SNP an unexpected second chance to use "Brexit Part Two" to win independence for Scotland, having squandered the golden opportunity of doing it with "Brexit Part One".

Of course Jenrick came up short, and events seem to have overtaken that episode anyway with most polls now showing Reform UK, who want to leave the ECHR, with a higher vote share than the Tories.  But as it happens Jenrick's vanquisher, Kemi Badenoch, who had never entirely ruled out pulling Britain out of the ECHR herself, has today radically changed her emphasis by saying she'd be likely to do it at some point.  So it may well be now that regardless of whether Labour's main opponent at the next election is Reform UK or the Conservative Party, defeat for Starmer will open up the "Brexit Part Two" opportunity and the SNP will need to be ready for it.

I know some will argue that voters don't give a monkey's about human rights treaties and human rights courts, but I do firmly believe there's a non-trivial segment of the electorate - liberal, relatively affluent voters who have stuck with No so far - who will be appalled.  For good measure, Badenoch has also raised the possibility of leaving the International Criminal Court, which will outrage the same voters, and if the SNP stress that an independent Scotland would immediately rejoin both the ICC and the ECHR, enough people may cross to the pro-indy side to give Yes a stable majority.

Meanwhile Labour themselves have also moved to the right in a way that would have been unimaginable even in the Blair years by boosting military spending specifically by cutting overseas aid.  I suspect they believe that in this Trumpian, post-morality, transactional world, this is some sort of ingenious step because it prevents voters themselves feeling the squeeze to pay for military adventurism in Ukraine and elsewhere.  And it's impossible to deny that Reform wouldn't be prospering unless there were a lot of voters out there who will thoroughly approve of passing the pain on to poor people in other countries.

But again, there is a subset of the electorate comprised of idealistic voters, some of them young but not all of them, which will see this as a crossing of the Rubicon that means Labour is no longer the party they thought it was.  In England, some of those voters may defect to the Greens and simply never come back.

I gather the three main London parties were all patting themselves on the back in the Commons today for their 'maturity' in creating a consensus for Starmer's choice to favour bombs over humanitarian aid.  I'd suggest that there's an opportunity for the SNP to flag up for voters what was lost when the Lib Dems overtook the SNP in July to reclaim third party status at Westminster.  Not only are questions going unasked on vital issues like Gaza, but there's no longer a leading voice in the chamber to puncture the toxic unity when the London boys gang together and get it all wrong yet again.

*  *  *

I launched the Scot Goes Pop fundraiser for 2025 last month, and so far the running total stands at £1631, meaning that 24% 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

FOURTH YouGov poll in a row shows a Reform lead - but SNP have massive 22-point lead in the Scottish subsample

Reform have the lead in a fourth successive YouGov poll, but they've achieved that despite their own vote share dropping back two points (which may or may not be margin of error noise).  That's been possible because Labour have also slipped back to their joint lowest level of support in a YouGov poll since the general election.

GB-wide voting intentions (YouGov, 23rd-24th February 2025):

Reform UK 25% (-2)
Labour 24% (-1)
Conservatives 22% (+1)
Liberal Democrats 16% (+2)
Greens 8% (-1)
SNP 3% (-)
Plaid Cymru 1% (-)

Scottish subsample: SNP 39%, Labour 17%, Conservatives 15%, Reform UK 14%, Liberal Democrats 10%, Greens 4%

I hate to disappoint our resident Reform-supporting troll, but in one key sense Reform are not AfD - they are not popular with the young.  The poll shows just 9% of 18-24 year olds would vote Reform, compared to 30% of over-50s.  

And in spite of the hype about Reform's breakthrough in Scotland, support for the party north of the border remains only half of what is being seen in both England and Wales.  One very simple explanation is the continuing massive correlation between support for Reform and support for Brexit.  Across Britain, 48% of Leave voters from 2016 are now in the Reform column, compared to just 6% of Remain voters - and of course in Scotland there are simply far fewer Leave voters than there are elsewhere in the UK.

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I launched the Scot Goes Pop fundraiser for 2025 last month, and so far the running total stands at £1631, meaning that 24% 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 and MAGA are celebrating the AfD surge in Germany - but the fact remains that AfD are almost certainly frozen out of power for another four years

Our resident pro-Reform troll was gloating on the previous thread about the German election result, presenting it as part of an irresistible international tide towards Reform-type parties, which he claims in Scotland is seeing SNP voters and young voters flock to Farage in their droves.  Of course I've already written a blogpost debunking at least part of that narrative, and demonstrating that the percentage of SNP voters defecting to Reform is relatively modest.  There's certainly no room for complacency, but at the moment Reform look decidedly like a bigger threat to unionist parties.

As far as the youth vote is concerned, it's true that AfD seem - weirdly - to be regarded as the most skilled party in Germany at reaching young people via smart social media messaging.  However, as I understand it, the exit polling shows that the far-left Die Linke, the successor party to East Germany's ruling communists, actually won a narrow plurality among 18-24 year olds, which represents an astonishing comeback for a party that seemed to be dying until very recently.  Even a few days ago, the polls were still suggesting that they might fall short of the 5% threshold and fail to win any parliamentary represenation at all, but the youth vote and the anti-fascist vote has swung heavily behind them in the closing stages.

Nobody can say that AfD have failed - they've doubled their vote and reached second place for the first time in a federal election.  But the bottom line is that they have not won the election, and because all of the other parties have categorically refused to work with them, they have zero prospect of being part of the government for the foreseeable future.  I formed the impression from watching part of the post-election leaders' debate (one of Germany's most bizarre political traditions) that the AfD leader thought her best bet was for the parliamentary arithmetic to force the Christian Democrats to form a three-way, ideologically mixed coalition with the Social Democrats and the Greens, which might prove to be just as unstable as the previous three-way, ideologically-mixed Social Democrat-Green-Free Democrat coalition, and could thus fall apart and bring about an opening for AfD at an early election.  However, if the live results I'm looking at right now are accurate, it appears that the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats will have a clear majority between them.  Previous 'grand coalitions' between those two parties have actually proved quite stable.

So all that's happened is that the AfD have become the largest opposition party, and that will only really matter if they can use it as a springboard to get into first place at the next scheduled election four years from now.  There's nothing inevitable about that - after all, people have been predicting for years that the far-right will get into power in France and it still hasn't happened.  But admittedly it can't be totally ruled out, and even a 10% chance of an AfD-led government is potentially game-changing in terms of perceptions of where Europe is headed.  AfD have been Eurosceptic since their earliest days as a much more moderate centre-right party, but they now seem to have firmed that up into a policy of full withdrawal from the EU.  The EU came through Brexit remarkably unscathed, but without one-half of the traditional Franco-German engine which has driven the bloc forward since the 1950s, it could be a very different story.  

The AfD stance on NATO appears more ambivalent, but at the very least they seem to want American nuclear weapons removed from German soil, which would be a monumental break with the past (and indeed the present).  I won't be a hypocrite about this - it's a welcome policy, although it's safe to assume that coming from a far-right party it's probably a case of 'correct policy, wrong reasons'.

And what about the most basic question of all - are the AfD anti-democracy, as their far-right predecessors the Nazis were?  I can't see any evidence that the AfD leadership are interested in dismantling the democratic system, but when I was growing up I remember it always being said that the only way to truly embed democracy into a society with such a strong authoritarian tradition as Germany's is to embed Germany itself into a united, democratic Europe.  If Germany was outside the European system, and particularly if the European system itself fell apart as a result of Germany's withdrawal, there would always be that little question mark.

But here's the thing - Germany has proportional representation.  When Farage says that he'll take Britain out of the European Convention on Human Rights within 100 days of taking power, that has to be taken very seriously, because under first-past-the-post Reform could win an absolute majority in parliament with less than 30% of the vote.  By contrast, to have any chance of withdrawing Germany from the EU, there would have to a doubling of the current AfD vote from 20% to 40%, and even then they would probably need an anti-European coalition partner.  It looks like the only possible candidate is the new "Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht" party, which is one of those peculiar 'economically left, socially right' parties that are becoming ever more common, although unlike most of those parties, they are in the final analysis regarded as far-left rather than far-right.  But at the moment they look like falling short of the threshold for parliamentary representation by a margin of just 0.1%, which could be a decisive setback that will prevent them even being a credible force by 2029.

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